Key Learning Areas (QLD) : Literacy

The literacy activities in this entry is more suited & is undertaken by children in the early years & in context of primary schooling.

Learning activity 4.2: Access your English/literacy/language arts syllabus and compare its description of reading with the Literate futures definition above. Are the reading learning experiences in your syllabus linked to its reading belief? Give examples of this.

Reading is a social practice that draws on a repertoire of social, cultural and cognitive resources to construct and reconstruct meanings from various traditional and multimodal texts. It is enacted in different ways for different purposes in a variety of public and domestic settings. Reading is therefore a cultural, economic, ideological, political, psychological and social act.

(Source: Education Queensland (M Anstey) 2002, Literate futures: reading, p. 23)

A definition of reading is not found in the Queensland English syllabus, but rather, one that encompasses the practice of reading with other literacy practices as follows:

In English, students learn to speak, listen to, read, view, write and shape texts to make meaning with purpose, effect and confidence in a wide range of contexts. They learn how language use varies according to context, purpose, audience, and content, and they develop their abilities to use this knowledge. Students develop their ability to use language to talk about language and to reflect on and critique its use.

The study of English occurs in a rapidly changing world — culturally, socially, economically and technologically. Increasing social diversity, the globalisation of economies, cultures and workplaces, as well as new information and communication technologies, place increasingly complex demands on citizens to be multiliterate. (Education Queensland (2005) English: Years 1-10 Syllabus, p.1)

Both these definitions of reading and literacy practices place an importance on students acquiring skills which require students to draw from their background knowledge as well as learn and develop a multitude of skills from a range of literacy practices. The onset of globalization taking place in a rapidly changing world has come to mean that students would no longer be able to be complacent but would need to develop a wide range of literacy skills in order to be considered as “literate” and read from a wide range of texts, include that of traditional texts, i.e. newspapers, brochures, posters, banners, to multi-media, which encompasses website prints, powerpoint presentations, television advertisements, cinema advertisements and perhaps holographic shows.

The reading learning experiences in the syllabus are linked to its reading beliefs as stated, as the English syllabus framework is divided into three sub-strands, which are the Cultural, Operational and Critical sub strands. The study of these three interrelated strand are developed and planned that it encourages students to develop a range of literacy practices to help them become multi-literate, active and and informed citizens able to participate as lifelong learners in a rapidly changing world (Education Queensland, 2005, p.3).

An example for planning is taken from the Level 1 Statement for the strand Reading and Viewing as states: Students interpret and construct simply structured brief texts that make connections with own experiences in familiar situations. They use textual resources including awareness of stages of the generic structure of texts, patterns of simple sentences, words, letters, images, sounds and voice. They identify similarities between textual representations and own experiences.

(Education Queensland (2005) English: Years 1-10 Syllabus, p.15)

The core learning outcomes for this strand states that students acquire the reading viewing skills by the end of Year 2 are:

Substrand: Cultural

• That familiar written, visual and multimodal texts have particular cultural purposes.
• That texts maintain a topic or idea related to their personal experiences or familiar texts
• The roles and relationships that texts can be produced for different audiences
• The texts can be produced in familiar paper and electronic mediums.
  
  Substrand: Operational
• Different Text types which have their own genre and generic structure
• Students develop understanding of subject matter of what consists of a sentence, use of vocabulary choice, noun groups, verb groups, adjectives, statements, questions, and commands, questions,
• Students develop understanding of the different types of mode and medium of what consists of linguistic elements of text, starting point and direction, simple conjunctions, patterns, pronouns, simple synonyms, Word structure (spelling) and punctuation,
• Students develop understanding of skills reading through use of graphophonic cues, visual letter patterns and rimes, two-letter consonant blends,
• Students develop understanding of punctuation in reading texts: full stops, question marks, capital letters.

Substrand- Critical:

• Students demonstrate these reading and viewing outcomes
• Students recognise that in texts people can be recognised by how they are portrayed.
• Students understand that background effects and facial expressions can be used to represent people, places, events and things in particular ways.

ECP3002: Day 1 at a Catholic Primary School.

Thursday was officially my first day at a primary school. Even though it was the first day of the practicum, I did not find it as hectic or busy as I had stayed for almost half a day with the children during Orientation on Wednesday. It must be admitted that I was feeling a little bit at unease on Orientation, and the extra hours and extra day I spent with the children helped me to ease into the mindset and also possibly made the children feel more comfortable with me (or more for me indeed!)

Just to add more details to what we did on Wednesday, the class went for a swimming session at a public state. It was exciting (for me because it was my first time joining a class for swimming!). The children really enjoyed themselves there although they possibly only swam for about 13 minutes and possibly had taken more time to change into and out of the swimming attire than swimming! On Wednesday afternoon, the children watched possible the first third of the cartoon movie “The Incredibles”, which is part of their unit for Term 4. The children continued watching another third of this movie today after their lunch.

The children in this class with Ms. J (she’s married btw) and another class, Mrs. C collaborated together to write out the unit plans. Both classes watched the movie together, and undertook learning for the same unit as well as similar lessons. The difference that exists maybe the style of teaching that is demonstrated by the homeroom teacher, as well as to differentiate for some of the students in the class who may need differentiation with the learning of the curriculum.

The children have a routine that they follow when they come into the classroom each morning. However, they do not enter the classrooms till about 8.30am when the morning bell rings. This is among the routine that they perform when they enter the classroom.

• Put their bags away on racks.
• Take out their homework folder and hand in their homework.
• Take out the Red sheet (reading log) and place on the table
• Change Readers
• Get morning talk ready
• Hand tuckshop in (Mon, Wed, Fri).

I believe a routine helps children to ease into the mindset of getting ready for class and learning for the day. After the children have done that, the teacher will take roll for the day. Once she has done this, one of the children will take it to the office. The teacher also checks for the homework and the red sheet (reading log) each day.

There was Assembly after morning tea, and students from all year levels gathered in this room beside the Year 1 classrooms. One of the Year 3s presented a very beautiful moving message conveyed through powerpoint, videos, a play, singing and dancing. I believe that they must have put in a lot of time and practice to put in this performance for Assembly. The children from the other classes also enjoyed the Assembly as well.

Among one of the enjoyable aspects during the Assembly was when the teacher was called out to take a Raffle ticket from a jar. The Raffle tickets was given as part of positive behaviour management reinforcement strategies for children who “made good behaviour choices” during morning tea or lunch time.

The fact that the prize presented was a Tuckshop voucher for $1 did not matter, but all the students were awed by the “tuckshop voucher”, and this seemed to motivate the rest of the students to give a louder applause when the receiving child from Year 2 went forward to collect his prize.

I also enjoyed understanding the management and the workings of a Catholic school as up to this point of time, I had not been to one. I find it much more enjoyable as I also share and believe in many of the core values of the Catholic faith. Over all, the first day of the practicum was found to be a very enjoyable experience.

There are many so called "Catholic" and Christian schools in Malaysia, but the question is how many of them are actually run the way they are here? I'm not too sure how many of these schools have management that has been returned to the govt, but I do hope that it could be run voluntarily, as I do believe that there will be parents back in KL who would still aspire to have their children sent to these schools too.

Volunteer work debrief

It's been a while since I have written here... and there's been much that has gone through in the past couple of weeks, which I shall touch on briefly.

I just came from the school (I didn't debrief in the past 2 weeks before this). Today is the last week of school before their holidays. the university is currently having their 2-week holidays, so I am coming in during my hols (lol).

Anyways, the past couple of weeks, I have observed how the teacher worked with the children on their modelled writing and their shared writing. The class is currently doing a unit on fairy tales. Last week, the teacher modelled to them how to write a letter to their a character of the fairy tale of their choice, and they had to choose a character to be. The activity requires the children to roleplay characters, and also had an indepth understanding of the story in order to be able to do that. The students who had difficulty would go to the bookshelf to take the respective storybooks to re-read and get some ideas from there.

All this while, I have only done reading with one literacy group. So today, I realised that the students worked in
rotations for their literacy group. For the students who were not reading, they were given other literacy work.

On Friday, which is Pupil-Free day, the teachers are going for some kind of professional teacher training workshop. My lecturers in class said that if there is an opportunity to observe a Reading Recovery class in session, it is an excellent opportunity to observe the strategies used in place to aid the students who had difficulty reading.

For the sem after the break, the children will be moving on to another unit, which is either MemFox or diversity in Australia. Anyways, after the break, the teacher told me that I could go and help out in another Year 3 class, as it would enable me to watch another class in action and see a more holistic picture of the education system in place.

Volunteer: public school (Day 1).

After many weeks of pausing, waiting (and not doing anything but freaking out), last week I finally called up a school to do volunteer work. I managed to get a school on the first try. Actually, I didn't know which school to call up so my friend, J. asked me to write down the names on pieces of paper and pick lots. *lol*. Not exactly the best way, but it worked. So there!

I managed to get a school on the first try ......which was really great, because I wasn't really sure which school to call up as they all looked like really great options. On the same day, I went to the school to personally sign up as I wasn't free any other day.

So today I woke up really early feeling much excitement in my bones! I arrived at the school, D.H (which is a block south-west walk from my university). It was really not exactly the best day to go in as apparently on that very day, all the schools were having Testing for the Year 3, 5 and 7s. The deputy principal was really busy, and I sat waiting in the office for about half an hour before anyone could direct anywhere (yes, principals and staff are always busy, you know?). So I had to excuse them for that.

I was directed to a Year 3 class *yeah!* There really wasn't much more me to do on that day, so I took two children (who had only just arrived not too long ago) and did some writing & reading activities with them, as they were not doing the testing. There were about 20+ students in that classroom, with about 2 middle-east students, and 1 new student who just arrived (and had to do the test!). That's strange in my opinion anyways.

I did manage to have a look at the Year 3 Test papers. It's not exactly a test that students can study for, as it just assesses the student's literacy and mathematical skills, and there are no pre-set questions or ways to help students. It is done as an on-going assessment, whereby students who do not do as well will be allocated assistance (or funding) by the govt. for remedial work. The questions were actually quite tricky, and the students had to read the questions on their own. Today they were assessed on the numeracy part (hence, the teacher was allowed to read from the paper), but tomorrow the students will assessed on the literacy part of the paper (and hence, have to read everything on their own without the teacher's assistance).

When the students went off to the library (after doing an hour of testing), one of the girls in the classroom by the name of Caroline, spoke to me and took me around. She was one of the longest as she had to repeat a year in the same class and knew her way around. (She acted like one of the student leaders, although she technically wasn't an assigned one, lol). The class went to the library, where the librarian (who had her arm in a bandage due to a blood clot) read a book to the children with a stern looking expression on her face.