ECL310 Responses

The blog contains my responses for ECL310 Tumblr assessment task

[jmfirns]

A 12-year-old app developer

Most 12-year-olds love playing videogames -- but Thomas Suarez taught himself how to create them. After developing iPhone apps like "Bustin Jeiber," a whack-a-mole game, he is now using his skills to help other kids become developers.

When we think about literacy it is very easy to think about children writing stories or information reports, these text based literacy forms are important ways for students to communicate as the embedded skills required to create these texts cross over into many other literacy and curriculum areas. What I’ve chosen to focus this post on is Speaking and Listening as a form of literacy.

Thomas Suarez shows in his video discussing his success with coding and app development how the styles of Biography and Recount can be combined to produce a powerful literary piece. With his inclusion of a PowerPoint, he supports some of his speech visually to boost audience connection. Would his speech have been as powerful had it been written down? What if someone else told his story?

Verbal expression is a child’s first method of communication, before they can read and write, so why don’t we afford our students more chances to verbally express themselves. If a student can combine the strengths of writing and speaking then they may just tap into an area of passion, a method of literacy that allows them to feel hear and understood. I plan on my students having the opportunity and the power of speech and presentation within my future classrooms.

[jmfirns]

Joel Michael Firns (213 374 679)

Review of Fountas & Pinnell Running Records and EAL Learners

[jmfirns]

I am the first to say that I am not an English teacher, I am hard-wired as a Mathematics and Science brain, and it is these areas that I feel the most comfortable planning and teaching. However, my own goal at the start of this unit was to develop my knowledge and understanding of English Grammar so that I had a stronger base when teaching writing and reading skills.

When I first began completing my research into potential resources, I was surprised that I did not instantly consider the location I found first. The Department of Education [DET] (n.d.) have a list of professional development resources at https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/literacy/Pages/default.aspx.

The list contains links to resources across several areas (Figure 1), including ‘Reading and Viewing’, ‘Writing’ and ‘Multimodal literacy’ (DET n.d.).

Figure 1:Literacy Teaching toolkit – Primary school resources, DET, n.d.

These linked resources allow educators to select the area of need and gain valuable learning on that area without the burden of costs for short courses or online modules (which I found during my research). I am glad that the DET has provided links to resources as I sometimes find that the department outsources professional development and information for educators and therefore the information can be overcomplicated, misaligned with practice or even irrelevant to the needs of teachers. While exploring these links, I found several links to learning content from our course including the Freebody and Luke ‘Four Resources Model’ (cited in DET 2018b) and ‘Creating multimodal texts’ (DET 2018a).

The other resource that I would like to share doesn’t, at first, seem like a resource to improve knowledge in literacy. It has, however, had a profound impact on my writing ability due to the immediate and specific feedback I get while writing and editing my pieces. The resource I am referring to is Grammarly (Grammarly Inc. 2019), which is an online document grammar checking and editing program. I have used it for the past 12 months as an editing tool for my university assessments. Within this time, I have learnt about Tautologys and how to identify that I have written a Hanging Preposition. To aid in my explanation of this resource, I have put together a video of myself editing this TUMBLR post with a voice recording.

These two resources come from very different origins; however, I believe that if you have a need or can find value in a tool or resource, then that is what makes it valuable. The resource doesn’t have to be a one size fits all solution; it just needs to cater to the needs to you have as an educator at the time.

References

DET – see Department of Education

Department of Education 2018a, Creating multimodal texts, Victorian Department of Education, retrieved 8 September 2019, <https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/literacy/multimodal/Pages/createmultimodal.aspx>.

—n.d., Literacy Teaching Toolkit, Victorian Department of Education, retrieved 8 September 2019, <https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/literacy/Pages/default.aspx>.

—2018b, The four resources model for reading and viewing, Victorian Department of Education, retrieved 8 September 2019, <https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/literacy/readingviewing/Pages/fourres.aspx>.

Grammarly Inc. 2019, Homepage, Grammarly Inc., retrieved 9 September 2019, <https://www.grammarly.com>.

[jmfirns]

At Hawker Brownlow Education we are passionate about the education of students We strive to produce outstanding resource materials for teachers, parents, school administrators and other professionals in education and allied fields. This passion grew from Elaine and David Brownlow’s interest in the publication and distribution of educational resources when, as parents, they struggled to find appropriate resources to meet the educational needs of their own children. (Hawker Brownlow Education [HBE] 2019a, para. 1-2)

Image 1 - Hawker Brownlow Education: Literature Units Website (https://www.hbe.com.au/products/series/literature-unit.html)

Image 2 - Hawker Brownlow Education - Literature Unit: Matilda (Contents Page) (https://files.hbe.com.au/samplepages/4825.pdf)

While there are many resources for information and advice on selecting and using Children’s Literature within the classroom I wanted to focus not only on selecting a text but also where you can source quality resources to help in the planning and delivery of lesson sequences.

Hawker Brownlow Education [HBE] is a publisher of a variety of education resources from educational pedagogies to lesson plans across many areas of the curriculum. The resources that I find most beneficial in regard to Children’s Literature are Lesson Plans/Sequences that relate to specific texts. I have used these in the past to help develop lessons that related to a specific text and have found them a valuable source of information and guidance. HBE have developed a series of Literature Units (HBE 2019b) (Image 1) that provide detailed information including introductions to the text, sample lesson plans, pre-reading activities, writer’s workshop sessions, text summaries and vocabulary lists (HBE 2002) (Image 2).

Despite these being paid resources, the benefit to selecting a text and having a wealth of already created information and activities can lighten the load when planning and delivering lessons which frees up more time to focus on the students’ learning and engagement within the lesson.

References

HBE - see Hawker Brownlow Education

Hawker Brownlow Education 2019a, About Us, Hawker Brownlow Education, retrieved 25 July 2019, <https://www.hbe.com.au/about-us.html>.

Hawker Brownlow Education 2019b, Literature Unit, Hawker Brownlow Education, retrieved 24 July 2019, <https://www.hbe.com.au/products/series/literature-unit.html>.

Hawker Brownlow Education 2002, Literature Unit: Matilda (Year 3-6), Hawker Brownlow Education, retrieved 25 July 2019, <https://files.hbe.com.au/samplepages/4825.pdf>.

[jmfirns]

Image - Expanded Noun Phrases poster created by Grade 4 students

This week I took the opportunity to work with several Grade 4 students within my classroom, where I work as an Integration Aide. Within this group I chose a mixture of ability levels from below, at and above level in the area of Writing. Continuing with the Noun Phrases topic covered within the ECL310 Seminar, and in line with the Victorian Curriculum English: Level 4 content descriptor ‘Understand that the meaning of sentences can be enriched through the use of noun groups/phrases and verb groups/phrases and prepositional phrases’ (VCAA n.d.), I decided to get the students to think about the simple Nouns of ‘Cat’, ‘Tree’, ‘Castle’ and ‘Storm’ and the words they could use to describe each. This activity was derived from the sequence of activities given by Ljungdahl (2014, p. 322-3). Around the pictures, we listed all the words that the students came up with, from simple ideas such as ‘Playful’ for the Cat to ‘Old looking but still standing tall’ for the Castle. While I facilitated the discussion I ensured that I didn’t use any technical language or prompts other than “how could you describe these objects” and “could we use some of these in a sentence to make the object seem more exciting”. I was extremely surprised by the variety of descriptors that the students came up with as they included many types such as appearance, position and number amongst others. When the students began to build sentences, they effectively bounced their ideas off the previous students and ended up with extremely complex sentences that included a variety of descriptors. Without students being given technical language such as ‘determiners’ and ‘prepositions’, they were still able to use these grammatical functions to develop amazing sentences. Hopefully this activity has given the students new skills to improve their writing within the general classroom activities.

References

Ljungdahl, L 2014, in G Winch, R Ross Johnston, P March, L Ljungdahl & M Holliday (eds), Literacy: Reading, Writing and Children’s Literature, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, Australia, pp. 304-28.

VCAA - see Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority

Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority n.d., English: Curriculum, Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, retrieved 18 July 2019, <https://victoriancurriculum.vcaa.vic.edu.au/english/curriculum/f-10>

[jmfirns]

Image - Front Cover of The Forests of Silence (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-22/emily-roddas-deltora-quest/10146704)

I don’t quite remember when I began reading the Deltora Quest series however the first book in the series, The Forests of Silence (Rodda 2000), was released in 2000 so I imagine that I would’ve been in Grade 4 or 5 when I first picked it up. With its Fantasy Fiction genre, which Burcher et al. (2009, p. 227) describes as ‘one of fiction’s largest and fastest growing genres’ including ‘any work that contains magic or other elements that cannot be understood by the rules of reality’. I believe it was this idea that appealed to me as my home life as a child and teenager was difficult and I found an escape in these books. I guess my mind was enveloped in a similar way to the idea of Bastian Balthazar Bux disappearing into the magical world of Fantastica in The Neverending Story (Ende 1979). It was this escape and exciting adventure that led me to develop a passion for reading the fantasty genre, a passion I still hold today.

Reflecting upon this text and how it might influence my literacy teaching allowed me to explore the idea of which literacy mode I would explore first. I think reading to children and exploring a variety of text types sparks the curiosity of the child and then, after developing the reading ability, allows them to explore their own choice of text and genre. I had to do this exploration on my own later in my childhood but I feel that it is imperative that children discover their literary passions very early on in childhood. This passion will help them to listen to stories being read, engage in them thoughtfully and put them on a good path towards achieving the ability to read early on due to a self-driven desire.

References

Bircher, C, Hollands, N, Smith, A, Trott, B & Zellers, J 2009, ‘Core Collections in Genre Studies: Fantasy Fiction 101′, Reference & User Services Quarterly, vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 226-31, retrieved 14 July 2019, JSTOR Journals.

Ende, M 1979, The Neverending Story, Thienemann Verlag, Stuttgart, Germany.

Rodda, E 2000, The Forests of Silence, Scholastic Australia, Lindfield, NSW, Australia.