Kia ora koutou and welcome to the September newsletter for English, ESOL and Literacy Online.
Welcome to Hamish Chalmers, our new ICTs in English community facilitator. Hamish is now moderating the mailing list and would welcome your contributions to those discussions.
Items of note include the recent changes to reporting the progress and achievement of English language learners, explained by Gaylene Price below. Also of interest are the NZQA regional workshops and updates on their refreshed website. Please share this newsletter with your colleagues and invite them to subscribe.
All the best for the remainder of the term.
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
Kia ora and welcome from Chris Henderson
This month has seen some changes to the School Journal. The Level 3 September 2011 School Journal, the second of the newly realigned school journals, has just been distributed to schools.. Because of the demands of the curriculum at Levels 3 and 4, these journals have been increased to 48 pages. allowing space for longer texts and for more links between items..
Issues of The New Zealand Education Gazette on August 8th, September 19th and forthcoming on October 25th contain updated information about these key resources for schools.
Education Counts research
Read the age report in this on-going longitudinal study: Forming Adulthood
This longitudinal competent learners study followed the progress of a group of around 500 young people at two-yearly intervals from age 4 to 16. The latest phase of the study revisited 401 of the participants at age 20 and looked at how they had fared since they left school andwhat role their school experiences and performance played as they progressed into early adulthood.
International Literacy Day
This was held on September 8 and the UNESCO focus was on literacy and its contribution to peace. UNESCO noted that despite many efforts, literacy remains an elusive target: about one in six adults is still not literate; 67.4 million children are out-of-school and many more attend irregularly or drop out.
Kind regards,
Chris Henderson
Facilitator: Primary Literacy Community
Secondary Literacy
Kia ora and welcome from Denise Hitchcock
This month saw the continuation of NZQA regional workshops focussed on the Literacy and Numeracy Unit Standards. These workshops have been very useful in terms of clarifying the requirements of the standards and looking at exemplars of student work.
Linking research and practice
Recent research about adolescent literacy has been linked to effective classroom practice in this recently published text: ‘Adolescent Literacy Resources: Linking Research and Practice’, Julie Meltzer, Brown University. It includes sections linking research to practice in:
- Student Motivation
- Integrating Reading and Writing across the Curriculum
- Ensuring Sustainability through Organisational Structures and Leadership.
A New Zealand website of interest to secondary teachers
On this site you will find the Adult Learning Progressions – the basis from which the Literacy Unit Standards were developed. If you follow the link to the literacy related progressions, (Listen and speak to communicate, Read with understanding, and Write to communicate) Koru 4 (down the side of the page) is the level at which the literacy standards sit. The progressions provide a useful reference when thinking about assessor judgements for these standards.
Conferences
- Language Education and Diversity (LED 2011) - to be held November 23-26, 2011 at the University of Auckland. There are four key strands - Literacy Education; English Language Teaching; Bilingual Education and Language Policy.
- The NZ Association for Research in Education conference will be held in Tauranga from November 28th – December 1st
Kind regards
Denise Hitchcock
Facilitator: Secondary Literacy Community
English Online
Secondary English
Kia ora and welcome from Mike Fowler.
The NCEA based conversations in the secondary community have shifted from internals to externals with only a few school weeks left to the end of the academic year for Year 11, 12 and 13 students. Exams start on 9 November and Level 2 English is scheduled for 10 November.
The loss of the specific Shakespeare standard from the Level 3 achievement standard matrix [and the erroneous assumption that Shakespeare has therefore been removed from English programmes] has been a perennial media favourite and surfaced again. This link to Rosemary McLeod on the relevance of Shakespeare appeared on the secondary English forum, while this opposing perspective didn’t.
Several members of the secondary English community feature in the secondary middle leaders’ section on The New Zealand Curriculum Online. The site contains resources and ideas to help middle leaders to lead curriculum change in their departments.
New resources released:
NZQA has developed a NCEA mythbusters page. Each sheet sets out the myths and facts about a particular assessment topic and, most importantly, good practice guidelines. Current listings include the numbers of credits available in a subject, storage of student work, further assessment opportunities and internal moderation.
Level 1 Oral Presentations exemplars from NZATE.
Loaded onto the Teacher Resource Exchange this month:
- Year 13: The Crucible, Mr Pip, The Book Thief
- Year 12: Life is Beautiful, Hotel Rwanda
- Year 11: Boy, Debating, Tomorrow When the War Began, Secret Life of Bees
- Year 10: Romeo and Juliet
- Year 9: Chronicles of Narnia
Regards
Mike Fowler
Facilitator: Secondary English Community
ESOL Online
Primary ESOL
Kia ora and welcome from Gaylene Price.
This month, community members contributed ideas for a student with high levels of mathematical knowledge who was new to learning maths in English. The ideas included:
- continuing to use the texts the student was using before coming to New Zealand (if available)
- while learning the language of maths in English.
- ensuring the student translates tricky vocabulary
- using real objects rather than the pictures.
Specific resources highlighted were the Illustrated Maths Dictionary for Australian schools, Excel English and Maths Yr 1 book and Yr 2 and Pinada publications, A Guide to Mathematics written by: Gladys Adams and Den Pinder.
Website recommendations included:
Rugby World Cup
Many schools are adopting a team or spending some teaching time investigating the participating countries. The competition provides plenty of scope for engaging English language learners.
Updated Ministry of Education information
Updated guidelines have been issued in reference to reporting the progress and achievement of English language learners to parents so that they are consistent with the requirement of NAG2A. Schools with funded ESOL students were informed that, ‘Where a school has students enrolled in years 1-8, the Board of Trustees, with the principal and teaching staff, is required to: Report to students and their parents on the student’s progress and achievement in relation to National Standards.’ The guidelines also recommend that schools use the English Language Learning Progressions to report progress towards meeting the National Standards.
New resource
- Mele Togiaso of Aranui Primary School in Christchurch has written a teaching and learning sequence/unit of work (targetting years 5 & 6) drawing from visual arts about Siapo – Printmaking. Mele models an explicit focus on language and literacy through the visual arts curriculum. Students are supported to consider visual symbols in artworks and what they represent. Students then consider how the groups and organisations they belong to could be symbolically represented.The students then create their own personal artwork (Siapo). All of the teaching steps and resource templates are included.
- This teaching and learning sequence mirrors that modelled for teachers on the DVD ‘Making Language and Learning Work 3’, available from Down the Back of the Chair – Item number 113358. You may wish to view the materials as a syndicate or whole staff and consider how they could be used in your own school,.
CLESOL Conference
The CLESOL Conference 2011 proceedings are now available on the TESOLANZ website.
Kind regards,
Gaylene
Facilitator: Primary ESOL Community
Secondary ESOL
Kia ora and welcome from Breda Matthews
This month the community discussed:
- the use of dictionaries in ESOL unit standard 2969. Do remember if you have comments about ESOL unit standards these can be communicated to NZQA
- the relationship between the English Language Learning Progressions (ELLP) and ESOL unit standards
-
ELLs studying Economics
Refugee Co-coordinator roles - the current university entrance requirements and IELTS
We shared resources for:
- 17361
- 17372
- 17359
- The Rugby World Cup and discussed how this topic can be turned into a teaching resource that will add to our students’ language skills.
Please do consider uploading resources to the Teachers’ Resource Exchange.
NCEA News
NZQA now provide an:
- NCEA update page with detailed communications on NCEA and related matters. You can sign up for email alerts.
- an update page for NCEA resources
- an NCEA Resource Kit
- annotated level 1 literacy exemplars
Two of the new English for Academic Purposes (EAP) standards will be used for university entrance from 2014. Details can be found in the NZQA circular entitled ' New University Entrance requirement from 2014' which includes links to the current UE requirements.Thanks to Denise Mckay and Julie Luxton who provided discussion on this topic.
To see which L2 English standards (current and new in 2012) will be acceptable for UE literacy, go to the NZQA circular Literacy requirements for university entrance.
Conferences and meetings
- TESOLANZ AGM on Saturday 8 October
- The Refugee Education Conference AUT 2011, Learning, Collaboration, Connections, will take place on 28-29 November.
- CLESOL 2012 4th -7th October, 2012
Community events and notices
- Diwali will be celebrated in September and October. Find out more details here.
- On Sunday, 11 September, TVNZ aired the story of a Kiwi family who arrived as refugees from Myanmar and recently established the first Burmese supermarket in New Zealand. You can view it on TVNZ online. For more information contact: Priscilla Dawson on 09 270 0870 .
- Islam Awareness Week 31st September to 5th October
Kind regards,
Breda Matthews
Facilitator: Secondary ESOL community
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