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Unlocking Literacy:

Combining reading and writing for accelerated learning

Danni Stone

Year 7/8 Kaiako

Pt England School

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Where I began...

I began by identifying a problem: the rate of student achievement in year 7/8 was stalling when compared with the lower levels.

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Initial Investigation

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Getting advice from others

English Second Language

Academic English

Language of learning

Grammar and Syntax

Clear communication

Age of students - widening of curriculum

I then discussed my inquiry with a range of educators. I talked to my students, other primary and intermediate teachers, high school English teachers and a few facilitators like Lenva and Russell who had experience with a range of age groups. I identified the common themes that occured from this conversation, which ultimately came down to the students command of academic english and the language of learning, particularly due to the students learning English as a second language. Of course I was also presented with a range of other challenges that occur from year seven, from hormones, to peer pressure, the widening of the curriculum or timetabling. I chose to focus on the themes that I could directly target from my role as a classroom teacher. I found it interesting how many times teachers discussed coherence in writing, it sounded as if it was the main demand from the current teacher to the last, which illustrated both that it was an important issue and one that would take time to address.

Lenva Shearing: Lenva works with a range of students around the cluster, from primary to high school level. She has noticed that the students struggle with academic vocabulary and the language of learning. This language becomes increasingly important as the students proceed through the school. She also noted that the students were being supported to reach curriculum level four at years nine and ten. This observation has also been noted by my team at school, as we realised that we are often teaching our students at level three of the curriculum as we attempt to fill the ‘gaps’ that they come to us with. This may decrease the amount of acceleration that we achieve.

High School English Teachers (Tamaki College and Mt Roskill College) :

Like Lenva, these teachers noted that their students are not able to understand the language of learning - for example they would be unsure of what a noun or perimeter might be. They also had issues with grammar - as many of our students speak English as their second language, they may follow the syntax of their first language or use broken English. This can affect their sentence structure and their ability to write coherently.

Russell Burt and teachers at PES: During our school writing moderation, Russell and our staff discussed the aspects of writing that our students struggle with the most. Again, the staff agreed that it was the students poor grammar and lack of academic vocabulary that was preventing them from achieving higher scores. When meeting to moderate or discuss our students literacy progress, the same issues arose time and time again.

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Classroom Application

1. Students have a discussion about the focus, analyse a text to identify how the author uses this effectively. Make the academic vocabulary and learning vocabulary explicit.

2. Students respond to the text through a personal statement - they could use screencastify to video their thoughts as they find it easier to articulate their findings orally.

3. Students apply this focus in their writing. They continue to note the technique in their reading and writing throughout the week

4. Students share their response as a reader and writer on their blog.

I created a whole class plan similar to my smaller inquiry. At the start of the week my whole class would read the same short text. Ideally this text would be an example of roughly a level 5 piece of writing. After responding to the text as readers, they would look at the writing techniques used by the author. This could be the paragraph structure for example, or the use of adjectives. I would question the students about the specific features that were the focus of the lesson, but I encouraged them to identify other techniques as well. I would work with my lower readers and look at any new vocabulary with them, like a traditional reading session. I had originally planned for the students to share their response to this text and to film their reaction, but instead I found that they were eager to get stuck into the writing and they would blog their text analysis and writing later.

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Tool in Action

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Explanation Writing Term 1

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Progress

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New Considerations!

What if I had a website bank of both the texts that were analysed and the students responses. Could be prompts for other students to build on to what the students on the site have said.

I then began to consider how time consuming it was to find or create texts that clearly illustrated specific techniques. Particularly because my learners are sitting in a tricky age range. My higher readers are able to understand and are interested in reading texts at their level, however some of the language and concepts discussed in these texts are inappropriate for their age. In contrast, the texts available for my lower ability readers are often targeted at younger students and it is especially difficult to find examples of academic writing! I also hoped to use the same texts for my entire class, to ensure that they were exposed to texts that exemplified level 4 and 5 writing.

When I looked for exemplars online I really struggled to find texts that would suit my learners. A lot of the texts involve contexts that are very unfamiliar to them, that are at the wrong level or that simply do not engage them. Despite finding a lot of research that backed up the idea of using text analysis and the use of models or exemplars, I was spending a lot of time trying to find them!

I wondered whether creating a bank of resources might support teachers who were encountering the same issues as I was.

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Creating a Tool

A tool to help teachers find resources, but to make the expectations visible for kids!

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Text Bank Site

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Read like a writer, write like a reader

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Feedback

Initial feedback from Kariene and my MIT peers suggested that I add an ESOL section and some multimodal exemplars which I went on to add.

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Where to next?