Archive of ‘EALD’ category
NAPLAN and EALD Language and Literacy Levels
NAPLAN writing assessment is a tool to assess student writing in either persuasive or narrative texts. The assessment uses a rubric in a number of specific areas to determine a score.
In both text types the following aspects are analysed:
- Audience
- Text structure
- Cohesion
- Sentence structure
- Punctuation
- Spelling
Additionally when analysing narratives Language devices are assessed, and when persuasive writing is analysed persuasive devices are also monitored.
Comparatively the EALD Language and Literacy Levels divide the analysis of writing into the following areas:
- Composing learning area texts
- Text Knowledge
- Organisational structures
- Text cohesion- Foregrounding
- Text and paragraph openers
- Sentence openers including using passive voice to change what is foregrounded
- Reference: pronouns, determiners and substitution
- Grammar Knowledge
- Sentence structure
- Simple
- Compound
- Complex
- Punctuation
- Sentence level
- Basic punctuation
- Beyond basic
- Words and word groups
- Verbs and verb groups
- Adverbs, adverb groups/ phrases and prepositional phrases
- Noun groups/ phrases, including plurals, articles and nominalisation
- Expressing opinion and point of view
- Evaluative language
- Modality
- Expressing opinion directly
- Sentence structure
- Word Knowledge
- Understanding/ using learning area vocabulary
- Spelling
NAPLAN is a measurement tool, providing information about where students are in relation to the aspects measured – a summative assessment.
The EALD Language and Literacy Levels are a description of how language skills develop. Therefore they provide much more information to the teacher about where to next – a great teaching and assessment tool; formative and summative assessment.
Although specifically designed to support the development of language and literacy of high needs students, the Levels are a teaching tool to support teachers with all learners. They provide a framework for “high expectations and high support (Mariani 1997)”, enabling a closing of the gap between a student’s language resources and those required for their year level.
Underpinned by a systematic and explicit pedagogy based in:
- Teaching in advance of language development
- Stretching students’ knowledge and imagination beyond what they can readily do independently
- Encouraging the use of strategies such as self-correction and trial and error
- Customising support for individual learners, including modifying the level of support and the timing of its withdrawal as students move to independence
Implications on practice
Gradual release of responsibility
Zone of proximal development
Explicit teaching – unpacking the demands of the curriculum – How language works, why language choices are made, what the effects of certain choices are and how to use language in powerful ways.
The teaching and learning cycle – 4 key stages
1. Setting the context
2. Modelling and text deconstruction
3. Joint construction
4. Independent construction
Differentiation and Explicit Teaching
http://www.teachingacenglish.edu.au/
This one looks great for providing clear explanation of explicit teaching and differentiation in the areas of Spelling, Reading, and Punctuation and Grammar. We have identified the need at our school for more focus on explicit teaching in terms of sentence structure, and differentiation is continually an important factor in meeting the wide ranging needs of individuals and cohorts within any class.
High Support High Challenge
Last Friday I attended the Literacy Leader’s Conference at EDC. One of the speakers was Jenny Hammond from the University of Technology, Sydney. I found her presentation interesting, inspiring and relevant to our school. She has written a research paper in the most recent ALEA Journal (Vol 35, No 2, 2012) Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, on the same topic.
Her presentation focused on findings from her research exploring language learning of EALD (English as and Additional Language or Dialect) students within the Science curriculum. Although she focused on Year 6 and 7 students you could see the relevance for all levels.
Her main message was to provide a High Challenge/ High Support environment.
The article in this month’s ALEA journal was referred, and I have just finished reading it.
Hope and Challenge in The Australian Curriculum: Implications for EAL Students and their teachers
Jennifer Hammond, University of Technology, Sydney
Some key points made:
* English area specifies the content in terms of language, but other curriculum areas don’t
* the ‘how’ isn’t specified in the Australian Curriculum (our department makes this pretty clear through the TfEL model though)
* curriculum hasn’t been watered down for EALD students, or those with learning disabilities, although differentiation expected
* demands of the new curriculum are high
* high levels of differentiated support expected for EALD students in particular to be successful
* thorough knowledge of the area needed by the teacher to be able to deliver
* EALD students need support to develop language in all curriculum areas not just English, so the specific and technical language of other curriculum areas needs to be explicitly taught, exposed through a wide variety of methods – oral, visual, encouraged conversations, reference material around the room written, pictorial, etc. (This is an aspect I would like to focus on.)
* importance of Vygotsky’s model of Zone of Proximal Development used to scaffold learning
* Language demands of various text types explored and made explicit, as well as the structure and function
Things to do:
* Plan carefully, having a clear picture of the language demands of the topic.
* Use scaffolding, building to independence
* Have a reference point in the classroom
* Criteria for success includes use of technical language