Kia ora koutou and welcome to the March newsletter for English, ESOL and Literacy Online.
We take this opportunity to welcome our new facilitator, Janet McQueen, to the primary ESOL community. Janet has extensive knowledge in this domain and we are delighted to welcome her to our team of expert community facilitators. We do hope that you will take the time to contribute to the community discussion.
We are in the process of making some changes to the homepages of the 3 sites based on the online survey that many of you participated in. This includes alerting you to new information, resources and events, so tune in from time to time to see fresh developments.
Nga mihi nui,
Dr Phil Coogan - Project director
Maria Lute – Project manager
Cognition Education for the NZ Ministry of Education.
In this issue
News from:
Literacy Online
English Online
ESOL Online
Literacy Online
Literacy
Kia ora from Kate Birch
As it is only a couple of weeks before the end of term, it is timely to stop and reflect on where we are at in our teaching as inquiry cycle. During the term you will have learnt a lot about your students– where they are at, where they are going and what their next steps are, as well as knowing about them as unique individuals within a community, and as learners. You will have put effort into designing tasks and learning experiences and hopefully your students are all fully engaged and challenged by these. Now is the time to seek some feedback in terms of your impact on students’ learning. We need to be constantly monitoring their progress through collecting and analysing evidence. Data will always be collected formally, but it is good practice to keep your ‘ear to the ground’ for informal data.
- Listen to the voice of your students
- Can your students remember and articulate learning intentions and success criteria?
- Do they know how they are going?
- Do they know what they need to learn next?
- Have you got a system for recording this type of data?
Some teachers find the group modelling books a great place to record observations of individual students on a daily basis.
Webinar
Last week Hamish Chalmers, ICTs in English community facilitator, conducted an interesting webinar on the use of Google docs to give timely feedback to students on their writing. He showed how this tool can provide valuable feedback and feedforward during the writing process.
New site on TKI
There is a new site on TKI: Te Mangōroa. Considering one of our national priorities is around raising achievement levels for Maori students, it is great to see some practical, evidence based resources to help us achieve this. Maybe check out this new resource over the holidays.
Conference
Reading Between the Vines NZ Reading Association, Hawke’s Bay, September 30-October 3.
Ka kite
Kate
Facilitator: Literacy community
Secondary Literacy
Kia ora and welcome from Denise Hitchcock
A timely reflection
As we near the end of term one, it is timely to reflect on what you know about your current students and their literacy learning needs. Do you need to dig deeper into the data? The material available on the TKI assessment pages can assist you in using evidence for learning, working with data, analysing data and target setting.See:
- Working with data: loading or downloading data onto a spreadsheet, creating graphs, disaggregating data
- Reading and analysing data: how to read data from some commonly used tools such as e-asTTle, PAT
- Target setting
Literacy Unit Standards
- Annotated exemplars for the Literacy Unit Standards have been updated.
- For other resources to support the planning, implementation and assessment of the Literacy unit standards, follow this NZQA link: Literacy resources
Conferences
- Words to Burn, Ideas to Ignite NZATE Conference, Dunedin, 4-6 July.
- Reading Between the Vines NZ Reading Association, Hawke’s Bay, September 30-October 3.
Kind regards
Denise Hitchcock
Facilitator: Secondary Literacy
English Online
Secondary English
Kia ora and welcome from Mike Fowler.
For many schools, written reporting to parents and caregivers occurs during the next month or two. Watch out for the webinar on reporting in secondary English which is planned for early term 2. Reporting achievement against the new curriculum, showing progress and achievement in NCEA at Years 11 to 13, as well as making specific descriptive comments are some of the key challenges the webinar will touch on. If you’re unfamiliar with the webinar format, you can view ICTs in English facilitator Hamish Chalmers' recent webinar on using ICTs to help students’ writing.
The secondary English forum has hosted some challenging conversation threads recently. This conversation about the basis for deciding whether an author or text has critical acclaim has provoked diverse responses. A robust discussion on critical thinking and visual literacy, amongst other areas, originated from this posting on the Kony video.
Teaching as inquiry has been foregrounded in recent postings and most recently, recognising how students are reacting to their learning using Graeme Aitken’s approaches. The Te Mangoroa website provides useful approaches for improving outcomes for Maori and Pasifika students through the inquiry process. With a wealth of school stories and teacher case studies, Te Mangoroa gives a diverse picture of effective practices, including teaching as inquiry in many school settings.
Conference
- Words to Burn, Ideas to Ignite NZATE Conference, Dunedin, 4-6 July.
Regards
Mike Fowler
Facilitator: Secondary English Community
ICTs in English
Kia ora and welcome from Hamish Chalmers.
There was continued discussion in the community this month around ICTs and how to use these in teaching and learning. It’s interesting to see how much more varied the uses for ICTs are becoming for both students and teachers. The shift from just considering technology as a delivery mechanism for content to considering wider and more integrated uses in the teaching and learning process, is encouraging and fascinating. In an effort to further this, we ran the first ICTs in English webinar on tools to encourage ideas development through writing. There are more webinars to come, structured within English learning areas and should hopefully be of interest to all teachers of English, ESOL and literacy.
Also, don’t forget the mobile devices in classrooms conference on April 19. This is run the Learning Network New Zealand and is being held at Albany Senior High School.
Kind regards,
Hamish Chalmers
Facilitator: ICTs in English community
ESOL Online
Primary ESOL
Kia ora and welcome from Janet McQueen.
I am really looking forward to moderating the forum this year and know that I will be learning alongside of you all as we share ideas and successes for teaching English language learners.
I recently attended a celebration at Auckland University to mark the ten year anniversary of the Grad Dip TESSOL scholarship programme. Bruce Adin gave a speech in which he said over 50% of students in Auckland schools are now non-European. We can no longer afford complacency as much of New Zealand looks very different to the New Zealand we grew up in. It is essential that all teachers know how to support second language acquisition within regular classroom contexts. We also need to be able to do this in a culturally appropriate way. What is the level of knowledge among teachers in your school and how can you assist other teachers to gain this knowledge?
Annual Award
The Faculty of Education at Auckland University has introduced an annual award for postgraduate study of $1000 for one teacher or senior manager who has completed the GradDipTESSOL or equivalent and wants to pursue postgraduate study at the faculty.
Updates and News
Schools with funded ESOL students will have received the Ministry ESOL News Update for March. They are also available to read online.
ESOL Professional Learning Clusters will be getting under way for 2012. If you don’t know where your local cluster is, or want to start a cluster in your area, contact Daniel Haddock.
LEARNZ
The material available on the LEARNZ site was shared on the forum. This material is based on the New Zealand curriculum, the contexts ‘are around central themes like environment, energy, earth science, living world, endangered species etc.’ As it includes a lot of visual material it is a great resource for using with ESOL students.
CLESOL 2012 conference
It would be great to have more primary teachers attend and present at the CLESOL 2012 conference to be held in Palmerston North from October 4th -7th. Submissions close on 2 April, 2012. This is a wonderful opportunity to hear great speakers and to share your practice with a wider audience. This year’s theme is ‘Emerging opportunities in new learning spaces: He akoranga hou, he huarahi hou.’ CLESOL brings together the wider ESOL community with academics from tertiary institutions, independent English language schools, school teachers, and community language teachers from primary level to adult education.
New resources for ESOL
Using The English Language Learning Progressions: professional support for leaders and teachers , Module 4, Primary reporting has been revised and updated to align with the revised National Standards and English Language Learners’ Guidelines.
The Ministry has also developed a guide for Boards of Trustees on annual reporting which can be downloaded from Annual reports: Guidance for reporting student progress and achievement . It provides an example of how boards may report the progress and achievement of English language learners to inform parents, families, whānau and the school community. Providing student progress and achievement data in relation to the English Language Learning Progressions illustrates the progress made by students, who may not yet be making marked progress in relation to the National Standards four point scale (at, above, below or well below).
Kind regards,
Janet McQueen
Facilitator: Primary ESOL
Secondary ESOL
Kia ora and welcome from Breda Matthews
On ESOL Online
The Qualifications /NCEA section under Impact on ESOL Online has been updated and now includes links to literacy assessment materials, the NZQA framework search page, NZQA assessments, and resources for all level 3 and 4 ESOL and EAP unit standards. There are assessments for all level 3 and 4 standards and summative assessments for eight level 2 and 3 ESOL unit standards on the theme of ‘Belonging’.
Virtual Learning Network (VLN)
A further new development is the opportunity to discuss ESOL and EAP unit standards issues with the national moderator, Jenni Bedford. To join the discussions or ask a question you will first need to register with the VLN.
- Go to the VLN and register by clicking on this link. (If you are already a member of the VLN skip this stage)
- Fill in the registration details using your preferred email address.
- Then click 'Register'.
- You will receive an email confirming your membership.
- Use the link in the confirmation email to log in using your email and password.
- In the VLN, search for ESOL Online in the top right hand search box.
- Click on ESOL Online under 'Groups' (not 'Wire Posts' which displays at the top of the search results)
- Look for the heading ‘ESOL and EAP unit standard discussions’ where you can view the discussion and contribute.
Don’t hesitate to ask for further instructions if you need assistance.
Kind regards,
Breda Matthews
Facilitator: Secondary ESOL
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