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This unit is called Learning Through Play. Learning Through Play (PDF 3MB)

To successfully complete this unit, students need to:

• understand and follow written instructions
• conduct research to gather information from descriptions and explanations and data (from websites and in reference materials).
• develop ideas and plans through writing
• write an evaluation.

Why would you focus on learning about text types?

Reading and writing different  text types (for example, explanations, instructions, arguments, narratives) is important for learning in technology.

In this unit, students are asked to read:

• the Learning Through Play Student Instructions  Learning Through Play - Student Instructions (PDF 335KB) that will guide them through the unit
• the explanations that they will use in their research.

They are also asked to write an evaluation as an outcome for the unit.

What teaching is needed?

Introduce the Learning Through Play Student Instructions  Learning Through Play - Student Instructions (PDF 335KB) by pointing out the different text types students will encounter and what this means when they are reading them. For example, explain to students:

• You will need to read every aspect of the instructions carefully. Each piece of information is relevant, such as the due date, the next step to be taken, and the definition of a concept.
• You may not need to read the entire internet article, “Buying toys for infants”. You may only need to read the section on educational toys.

Ask questions that will help students identify and respond to different text types. For example:

• What type of text is this?
• What can you see that tells you that?
• How is it structured?
• Who is the intended audience?
• What is the purpose of this text?
• How should you go about reading it?

Adapt these questions for texts that contain multiple text types, for example, texts that contain an explanation and instructions/procedure.

What are you looking for?

Look for students who are able to articulate their understanding of text types, features, and purposes. Notice when they read particular text types for a specific task. You will want to see your students increasingly:

• answering the questions accurately
• reading and using the texts more independently according to their type and the students’ purpose.

Next steps

Continue to introduce and discuss a range of new text types, for example, news articles, essays, timelines.

Why would you choose to focus on learning to preview?

Using text features (for example, headings, illustrations) to provide information about the content will help students to:

• build knowledge of the topic
• locate the information they need
• give them confidence to start reading. (This is especially important if you have  profile 1 students in your class.)

What teaching is needed?

Model how to preview information from text features. Use these questions and answers to guide your teaching:

Q: If you read all the information in the text features, what do you know about the topic already?

A: It will tell me what I need to do for this unit of work in technology. It is about making educational toys and tells me the many steps I need to take – from deciding on the person and the toy they need through to research, planning, and making the toy. Then I need to evaluate the process.

Q: Why has the author used these text features?

A: The numbers and letters show me the steps. The bolds show me headings and the important language I will need to understand and use.

Q: How could you use text features to make sure you have understood the instructions?

A: I can use the headings, numbers and letters to make sure that what I have read and understood makes sense and I am following the instructions in the right order. I can see the bolded words are important words to learn and use, so I have to make sure I understand their meanings.

What are you looking for?

Look for previews that include all the important information from the text features. Students should begin by writing these so you can see they are making sense of the information by combining and linking ideas. When they have more experience, students will begin to preview in their head as preparation for reading new texts.

Next steps

Use previews to analyse text features in a range of technology texts.

Why would you choose to focus on working out, learning, and using technology vocabulary?

There are specific words and languages that students use in technology. Students may:

• recognise but find the meaning unexpected, for example, “brief”
• not recognise for example, “conceptual statements”, “key attributes”.

It is often possible for students to work out the meanings using vocabulary problem solving clues.

What teaching is needed?

Identify and use technology vocabulary

Introduce important technology vocabulary and language, and provide opportunities for students to use it in their reading and writing.

Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9 to 13 pages 44-45 (PDF 130KB) describes strategies that can help students recall and use new vocabulary.

Clues for problem solving

Teach the clues for problem solving and provide opportunities for practice. Provide instructions (verbal and written) that contain different types of clues. For example, clues from the Learning Through Play Student Instructions  Learning Through Play - Student Instructions (PDF 335KB)

Using the sentence definition in technology

“Write a brief to communicate what you are developing and why.”

• What does brief mean in this sentence?
• How did you work out that it is an instruction that tells what you are developing and why?
• Are there other words or phrases that you can work out in the same way?

“Draw and annotate your sketches of possible solutions presented in 2D and 3D drawings, including colour / materials / texture and detail, as you would expect to see the product finished.

• What does annotate mean?
• How did you work that out?

Using context clues in technology. “Identifying a need: Write a conceptual statement”.

• What conceptual does statement mean in this instruction?
• Can you use the information around the words to help you work out the meaning?
• What about the example? What does that tell you about the purpose of a conceptual statement?

Using morphemic clues. “Produce a sequential diagram.”

• What does sequential mean?
• Are there any words or parts of words in this unfamiliar word that could help you work out what it might mean?
• Have you read the word sequence before?
• What does that mean?
• How can it apply to a type of diagram?

What are you looking for?

Look for fewer requests from students to explain word meanings as students become more familiar with the vocabulary used in technology. Notice an increased use of these words in quickwrites and other writing tasks.

Next steps

Continue to ask students “How did you work that out?”.

Why would you choose to focus on quickwrites?

Quickwriting is a form of note making that helps students to remember what they know and understand.

Quickwrites support students to:

• focus on their technology learning (they are a great lesson warm up)
• build their fluency in writing, which is important for the evaluation writing
• think about and formulate their plans
• learn and use the vocabulary required for evaluation writing
• think about and develop ideas before taking part in class or group discussions.

Quickwrites can also provide ongoing information about the students’ developing understanding of technology concepts and use of technology specific vocabulary.

What teaching is needed?

Give students a short amount of time to write their reactions, feelings, and ideas in response to prompts. These can be specific or generic, for example:

• Explain why you think it is important for some toys to be educational.
• Describe what your toy must have and must do to be a successful educational toy.
• You have a great idea for an educational toy. To develop your toy design further, what do you need to consider? Where will you find your answers? How will you know?
• To take your design to the next stage of manufacture, what will you need to show in your drawings?
• Write about something you have just learned in this class.
• Write about a technology problem that you think may be a challenge in this class.
• Explain how you learned something new in this class. What helped your learning?

Next steps

Continue to use quickwrites. Ask students to design the prompts and highlight the technology vocabulary they have used.

Why would you choose to focus on writing an evaluation?

This is the major written outcome for the unit. See the Learning Through Play Student Instructions. Learning Through Play - Student Instructions (PDF 335KB)

Evaluation of a product is an important step in technology. Its purpose is to establish the fitness for purpose of the product, which links back to the initial brief and research.

What teaching is needed?

There are notes for teaching students to write evaluations included in the Learning Through Play. Learning Through Play - Student Instructions (PDF 335KB)

What are you looking for?

Look at the structure of the evaluation:

• Is it organised logically?
• Do each of the paragraphs deal with one main idea?
• Are there transitions to guide the reader through?

Next steps

Build on this formal writing instruction in other technology units. Ask students to revisit any feedback when they are setting their writing goals in technology.

The following extract, from the introduction to the  learning areas section of The New Zealand Curriculum, makes it clear that students will be most successful when all of their teachers provide literacy and language teaching and learning experiences in their subject areas:

“Each learning area has its own language or languages. As students discover how to use them, they find they are able to think in different ways, access new areas of knowledge, and see their world from new perspectives."

For each area, students need specific help from subject area teachers as they learn:

• the specialist vocabulary associated with that area
• how to read and understand its texts
• how to communicate knowledge and ideas in appropriate ways
• how to listen and read critically, assessing the value of what they hear and read.

As language is central to learning and English is the medium for most learning in the New Zealand Curriculum, the importance of literacy in English cannot be overstated”

(Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 16).

Literacy is the ability to understand, respond to, and use those forms of language that are required by society and valued by individuals and communities.

(Ministry of Education, 2007).

• Forms of language: The written, oral, and visual texts that students use in their everyday lives – at school, at work, at home, and in their communities.
• Text: A piece of spoken, written, or visual communication that is a whole unit, for example, a conversation, a poem, a web page, a speech, an article, or a poster.

Defining literacy in this way is based on two key understandings:

• Literacy is reading and writing, underpinned by oral language. These are the interactive tools that students use to engage with the world, including all learning areas of the curriculum; they underpin students’ development of the key competencies. These skills are cumulative. Without this knowledge and skills, students’ further development in learning will be limited.
• Literacy is a set of social and cultural practices that is integral to each student’s identity.

Literacy can be thought of as a tool for learning. Reading, writing, and oral language are the basis for the development of the key competencies outlined in The New Zealand Curriculum. They enable students to make sense of information, experiences, and ideas to personally critique the issues surrounding them as they live, learn, and work. Having this toolkit supports students to understand, make decisions, shape actions, and ultimately control the direction of their lives.

As students progress through the curriculum, the texts and the tasks they undertake become increasingly complex, abstract, and specialised. For each subject area:

• texts become longer
• text purpose and style varies
• structural complexity increases
• word complexity increases, with the use of academic and content-specific vocabulary
• sentence complexity increases
• graphic and/or visual representations become more important
• conceptual challenge increases - students are required to read across multiple texts to locate, analyse, evaluate, and synthesise information and ideas and present them in increasingly sophisticated formats.

Download the image above:  LSSCdiagram2_SpecialisationLiteracy (PDF 125KB)

Note: While basic literacy is the learning that occurs in the early years, the ‘intermediate literacy’ referred to in the diagram does not translate to intermediate years at school. Research tells us that students begin to face the demands of disciplinary (or subject area) literacy from year 4 or 5, as the specialisation of literacy and language knowledge and skills increases within each subject. This literacy progression is explained in more detail in  Module 2, Part A.

This resource is guided by the teaching as inquiry approach described in The New Zealand Curriculum

‘Since any teaching strategy works differently in different contexts for different students, effective pedagogy requires that teachers inquire into the impact of their teaching on their students.’

Features of the teaching as inquiry approach:

• Teachers use a range of assessment information on student learning to inform the next teaching steps.
• Teachers seek feedback from students and colleagues on what works and why.
• Teachers make and act on decisions, based on evidence about what to teach and how to teach it.
• Teachers use a range of teaching approaches to meet different purposes and needs.

 Download the image above:  LSSCdiagram1_TeacherInq (PDF 78KB)

The New Zealand Curriculum Online explores aspects of teaching as inquiry and makes links to key research.

Reading and writing English language texts presents particular challenges for students who are learning English as an additional language. All teachers need to be aware of these challenges and be able to identify the differing language learning needs of these students.

English language learners in New Zealand schools have very diverse language learning needs. Students with minimal English will have obvious needs, while other English language learners may have good social English language but may lack proficiency in the academic English that is needed to access the curriculum. Teachers need to be aware that all students, not just those who are learning English, will need specific instruction in academic English.

Resources for teaching English language learners

The English Language Learning Progressions (ELLP) explain what specialist and mainstream teachers need to know about English language learners. They enable schools and teachers to identify starting points for new learners of English and to track and monitor their progress over time. They help teachers to choose content, vocabulary, and tasks that are appropriate to each learner's age, stage, and language learning needs, possibly including learners for whom English is a first language but who would benefit from additional language support. The ELLP resource is made up of four booklets, one of which is aimed at years 9–13.

English Language Intensive Programme Years 9–13 (ELIP) supports teachers to select appropriate language outcomes and language learning focus points in a range of text types across learning areas in the curriculum, for beginning to advanced English language learners. Illustrated oral, reading, and writing texts show some of the key text features and language features that may need to be taught. They provide ideas and strategies that may be used to scaffold the language learning.

Making Language and Learning Work. These videos show teachers how they can effectively integrate content area teaching and language learning in science, mathematics, English, and the social sciences. 

Subject area literacy instruction

Subject area literacy instruction focuses on the specialised literacy and language knowledge and skills that students need to be successful in meeting subject area learning outcomes. It is most effective when:

• it takes place within the context of current units of work
• it builds on the literacy and language knowledge and skills that students develop in the early years of school
• it teaches all students how to be more independent and flexible in meeting the literacy and language demands of authentic subject area learning and assessment tasks.

The role of subject area literacy instruction

Subject area literacy is important for secondary level students. Explicit teaching is crucial to ensure students develop the literacy knowledge and skills they need in order to meet the demands of The New Zealand Curriculum. This includes making sense of information, experience, and ideas to critique the issues and then communicate this understanding in the formats required by each learning area.

The Literacy Learning Progressions describe and illustrate the literacy-related knowledge, skills, and attitudes that students need to draw on in order to meet those demands.

When they enter year 9 students will be required to read and write a wide range of texts in order to meet a variety of specific learning purposes across the curriculum. The language and forms of these texts will be increasingly subject specific. Most curriculum tasks will require students to use both their reading and their writing to a greater or lesser extent. Students will read a single or multiple text(s) on a topic in order to locate, analyse, evaluate, and synthesise information and ideas. They will write to develop and shape their thinking as well as to record information, reveal their understanding, and to communicate their ideas. Often the main purpose of their reading and writing is to support an oral or visual language task, such as an oral presentation on a specific topic, or writing in response to a visual text or a practical task.

Reciprocal knowledge and skills

Identify aspects of subject area literacy and language knowledge and skills that your students need to know and use. Consider the reciprocal relationship between reading and writing, for example:

• When students understand how texts such as reports, instructions, and essays are organised, it not only prepares them for reading, but it helps them to organise their own writing.
• When students know how to read and work out the meaning of subject specific vocabulary, they are more likely to learn and use it in their writing.
• Many students do not recognise this reciprocal relationship, so it is important to make them aware of how they can transfer their learning.

Reading knowledge and skills

By reading a range of texts, for a variety of purposes, across the curriculum, students can:

• develop their knowledge about the different text types that are typically used in different subjects
• understand the author’s purpose and the intended audience for the text
• locate, infer, and synthesise complex ideas from information-dense texts on a range of topics
• work out the meanings of increasingly academic and subject specific vocabulary.

Writing knowledge and skills

By using writing to think about, record, and communicate experiences, ideas, and information in each subject area, students can:

• understand the purpose of the writing task and the intended audience
• use the specific vocabulary that relates to different subject areas, as well as the academic vocabulary that is used across the curriculum
• use their knowledge of the different features and structures that are appropriate to the different text types
• interpret and respond to the requirements of a range of writing tasks.

Using The Literacy Learning Progressions

The Literacy Learning Progressions are an important reference point for thinking about your students’ literacy knowledge and skills in relation to the demands of the curriculum.

Find out more about the literacy expectations of your students by the end of year 8 and by the end of year 10 .

See page 17 of The Literacy Learning Progressions to learn about:

• the texts that students need to read and write/create by the end of year 8.
• the knowledge and skills that they need to draw on by the end of year 8.

See pages 18 and 19 of The Literacy Learning Progressions to learn about:

• the texts students need to read by the end of year 10 and the characteristics of those texts.
• the knowledge and skills that they need to draw on when reading, by the end of year 10.

See page 20 of The Literacy Learning Progressions to learn about:

• the characteristics of texts that students write by the end of year 10
• the knowledge and skills that they need to draw on when writing, by the end of year 10.

As students progress through years 11–13, they will draw on this knowledge and skills as they read and write increasingly sophisticated texts on more specialised topics.

Focusing inquiry

Part 3 will help you to develop your ‘focusing inquiry’ as part of the teaching as inquiry cycle.

The teaching as inquiry approach can support you to strengthen your students’ literacy knowledge and skills. Possible questions include:

• What are the important literacy demands typically found in the units you teach in your subject area?
• What literacy knowledge and skills have your students already learned and can use independently?
• What is it important to spend most time on in the future?

You will need to have available a typical subject area unit of work and your student assessment information.

Identifying literacy demands

Select a unit of work that is typical for your subject area. Use the following questions to help you to identify the literacy demands.

In this unit, do my students need to:

• read and interpret instructions to help them through the unit?
• read to locate, analyse, evaluate, and synthesise new information and ideas on this topic?
• learn and use any new academic vocabulary and/or content specific vocabulary?
• write to help them think about the ideas, experiences, and information?
• write to record and communicate ideas, experiences, and information?

What literacy skills and knowledge have my students already learned?

Gather a range of  literacy assessment data for your students.

If you would like more information, there are a variety of ways (formal and informal) to identify the literacy skills and knowledge your students have already learned.

Refer also to:

• The Literacy Learning Progressions as a point of reference
• the range of literacy knowledge and skills of New Zealand’s 15 years olds, as assessed by the Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA)
• Assessment Online for more information about gathering and using assessment data in the classroom.

You can also use the important information about your students’ strengths and needs that you have observed in the classroom and in their work, and any student voice you may have collected about their literacy strengths and needs.

Using profiles to address your students’ varied literacy strengths and needs

Once you have collated your literacy assessment information, it is likely that you will see some predominant patterns of strengths and needs. These will be helpful as you plan for variations in your teaching.

To assist you with this planning we provide three profiles of students’ literacy behaviours. English language learners may be included in any of the three profiles.

Throughout the rest of this module and modules 3–5, we use these profiles to help you develop the next stages of your inquiry cycle as you consider the evidence-based strategies that are most likely to help your students learn and what happened as a result of the teaching.

Take a look at the profiles to see if they reflect your students’ behaviours. Feel free to add and adapt them.

Profile 1 students may:

• find and use only readily accessible information (for example, dates, statistics) from the texts they read
• appear not to use information from headings, tables, diagrams
• appear reluctant to read for more than a few minutes at a time
• rely on you for explanation of the content and any unknown vocabulary definitions in their reading
• prefer to copy notes from the board than read to make their own
• write incomplete answers, that are often grammatically incorrect
• prefer to have sentence starters and frames for writing
• seem unaware of the different features and text structures used for arguments, instructions, explanations, and other types of writing required by your learning area.

Profile 2 students may:

• read only the parts of text they need to lift pieces of specific information from the text
• prefer you to read to them and offer to read aloud to the class
• appear to overlook headings rather than use them to help identify main ideas
• sometimes copy entire sections for their notes
• have trouble organising the information from multiple texts, seeming to be uncertain about what is important
• sometimes use colloquial vocabulary in place of academic and subject specific vocabulary
• write all the information they know on a topic without responding to the specific requirements of tasks
• find and use appropriate information on a topic from multiple texts
• appear confident to read any of the class texts
• sometimes miss reading important information from tables or graphs
• write too much information in their notes, seem unsure about important or main ideas
• make inferences and synthesise parts of the content that they read when you prompt them with questions
• do not always answer the question/prompt carefully
• seem uncertain about developing and linking paragraphs or using the expected structures to organize their ideas when writing arguments, instructions, explanations, research reports.

Profile 3 students may:

• find and use appropriate information on a topic from multiple texts
• appear confident to read any of the class texts
• sometimes miss reading important information from tables or graphs
• write too much information in their notes, seem unsure about important or main ideas
• make inferences and synthesise parts of the content that they read when you prompt them with questions
• do not always answer the question/prompt carefully
• seem uncertain about developing and linking paragraphs or using the expected structures to organize their ideas when writing arguments, instructions, explanations, research reports.

Text types and the purpose for writing

Students need to understand purpose and audience so that they can make decisions about how they read or write a text.

Common text types found in years 9–13 are explanations, arguments, procedures/instructions, and narratives.

Explanations

Explanations are used in most subject areas to explain information, ideas, and concepts. They can often be found in reports, essays, textbooks, newspapers, and Internet articles.

They are usually written with headings and titles that signal the main ideas to be explained in the whole text and in each section. Additional important information is often provided in diagrams, tables, and other visual information.

Some textbooks (for example, science and maths textbooks) contain explanation that are followed by procedures/instructions. Students can read all of the information or choose sections appropriate to their needs. They can work out the main ideas in the text by using the headings and subheadings.

Arguments

Arguments are also used in most subject areas but are less common than explanations. They are used to argue an opinion on an issue that is of interest to readers. They can often be found in essays, editorials, and advertisements.

They usually have a title or heading and often have a sub-heading that gives the reader some indication of the author’s opinion on the issue. The author’s opinion is supported by evidence that can include statistics, quotes from experts, and personal experiences. Students should read the whole text to identify the opinion and supporting evidence.

Procedures/instructions

Procedures/instructions are commonly used in all subject areas where students need to follow written instructions. They can often be found in assessment guidelines, textbooks, and recipes

They contain steps or lists and very few paragraphs of information. They need to be read in the order they are laid out. Students often need to reread parts of the text as they follow the instructions.

Narratives

Narratives are most common in English and other language subjects where students read stories. They can be found in novels, short stories, poems, and sometimes essays that contain characters, setting, plot, and theme.

Readers must carefully read all of the text in a narrative. When an anecdote (a very short narrative often of someone’s experience) is included with another text type such as an explanation, it may be simply to catch the reader’s interest. In such cases, the anecdote is usually less important.

For more about text types see Features of text forms .

Before students read a new text on an unfamiliar topic, they should take a few minutes to preview the information that is available from the text features to increase their background knowledge of the topic.

Ask the students:

• What type of text has this author used?
• Who is the intended audience?
• What is the purpose of the text?/Why has the author used these text features?
• What text features do you see that tells you this?
• Which features tell you the most important information?
• What do you know about the topic from reading all of the information in the text features?

Using the profiles

Students in all of the profiles will benefit from learning about the different text types in the context of their reading and writing. We suggest you record what the students are learning about text types as a reference.

Profile 1 students are likely to answer with single pieces of information or a list of ideas. They will need modelling, practice, and feedback that teaches them to locate, gather, and combine related pieces of information from the different text features. You may need to ask additional questions that refer them to the features and structure, for example, What evidence is this author using to support their opinion? What are these headings doing? How should we use these instructions?

Profile 1 and 2 students should record their previews to help them think about what they are learning from the text. Previewing may be slow to begin but with practice it should take only 5 minutes for two or three pages of text.

Profile 3 students may not need much instruction on previewing. However, it is important that they see the usefulness of finding the main ideas from their preview. This will help them to understand what information is important to emphasise when making notes. They should write some of their previews to keep them focused on important content and to think about the main ideas.

This is discussed further in the subject area modules ( Previewing in technology,  Previewing in science,  Previewing in social studies).

Teaching your students to locate information and make connections in texts

Most students can locate literal information. It is often highlighted, written at the start of a paragraph or shown on a diagram. However, other important information is less accessible.

These three steps provide a useful way to begin teaching students to use deeper reading skills, such as inference and synthesis. To use these skills, students would learn to:

1. Locate and use the literal or easily accessed information (as evidence) from the text.
2. Combine related and relevant pieces of information from the text asking themselves: “What does this now mean?” and then “What can I now say on this basis?”
3. Combine this information from the text with prior knowledge they have of the topic asking: “Am I certain the prior knowledge is accurate or reasonable?”, “How can I be sure?”, “What do I need to check?”.

Students will need explicit teaching and multiple learning opportunities to practice these skills.

You can:

• Ask carefully selected questions that require students to use evidence to find their answers. Sometimes have them write the answers to the questions and also identify the evidence they used.
• Model the process identifying the steps and the evidence information.

Listen for and capitalise on times when students use these skills by asking: “Do you know how you decided/learned that?”, “What information did you use?”

Previewing the text feature information

Text features are used to help organise the sections of text and present information visually. Text features may differ according to the text type and purpose, and by the subject context. Some examples of text features are:

• titles
• headings and sub-headings
• maps
• diagrams
• illustrations
• photographs and/or video clips
• use of symbols or mathematical, scientific or technological representations
• font size and type
• tables
• text boxes.

The information contained in text features needs to be readily accessible to students.

Research tells us that when readers begin reading, any accurate background knowledge helps them to make sense of the material and learn new concepts. However, at secondary school level, students often read about unfamiliar topics.

By previewing the text feature information before they begin to read the more densely written paragraph information students can increase their prior knowledge of the topic. Use the framework for analysing the subject-based language demands of a text in your planning.

Teaching your students to use subject specific and academic vocabulary

Strategies include:

Looking for clues

Teach these clues to the students in the context of their reading. The clues will help them become more independent in learning the vocabulary and more confident in using it:

• appositives – definitions of words contained within the sentence
• context clues – found in the surrounding text features, sentences, the paragraph, the whole text
• morphemic clues – the prefixes, suffixes, and word roots.

Ask students to preview and read sections of the text without providing the definitions of the important vocabulary. Following their previews and reading ask:

• What word meanings did you need to problem solve?
• What do you think they mean?
• How did you work that out?

Once students have had the opportunity to problem solve the words they encounter in the reading, work as a whole class to create a glossary of the words they need to know

Building vocabulary

Use vocabulary building strategies to provide opportunities for them to learn and remember the important vocabulary as required.

Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9 to 13  Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9 to 13 pages 44-45 (PDF 130KB) describes strategies that can help students recall and use new vocabulary.

Provide opportunities for practice

Provide frequent opportunities throughout the unit of work for students to practise using the vocabulary through quickwrites when they are required to express the abstract concepts of the subject.

All students will benefit when you follow a question asking, ‘What does ____ mean?’ with ‘How did you work that out?’

Student profiles

• Profile 1 students may rely on teachers for explanation of word meanings and have low expectations of understanding the information they read. They need many opportunities to learn and use the different clues. Gradually introduce and chart how to work out meanings with context and morphemes and model this process for them.
• Profile 2 students may have the skills to use context clues but need opportunities to use them and an expectation of success. As these students may be reluctant to write, it will be useful to ask them to record the meanings they are working out to build their skills and confidence in meaning making. You want this to become automatic in-the-head behaviour, so gradually reduce the number of times that you ask this.

Profile 3 students will easily understand and apply vocabulary problem solving strategies. These are likely to be students who already read and make sense of text with a good degree of independence and probably use these skills intuitively. Making these strategies explicit will build their skills further.

Quickwrites

Quickwrites are short, independent writing exercises that help students to:

• apply the subject specific and academic language to express their thinking and learning
• organise the new ideas and knowledge they are learning
• respond to specific writing tasks.

Teaching your students to use quickwrites

Ask students to carefully read the question/prompt and then write their response. Emphasise that this writing is to help them think and use the knowledge and vocabulary they are learning in the subject area.

You will need to:

• decide on the prompt/question that will guide your students to think about important learning and use the language of the topic
• decide what kind of response you want, for example, whether you ask them to explain, describe, or justify
• provide feedback to students to scaffold their quickwriting skills.
• They will not need to receive written feedback on every quickwrite. Students could select one in every three or four for your comments.

Student profiles

• Profile 1 and 2 students may not be confident writers, so quickwrites will be important for building their stamina and fluency in conveying and grappling with unfamiliar ideas. You may need to begin by modelling quickwrites.

Profile 3 students may need practice at formulating the main points they want to communicate, so responding to the quickwrite prompt will be useful. They may need feedback on the accuracy and identification of key information and how to eliminate any unnecessary detail.

Writing tasks

In most classes, students are expected to write to communicate what they have learned. They may need to write a response to literature, a research report, an evaluation, or make some notes.

Students may need scaffolding to:

• look carefully at the task and what it requires them to do
• decide what text type they will use depending on their purpose (to argue, explain)
• identify the features of the text type
• decide whether they are writing for their own thinking/learning, making notes for future reference, or to communicate and present information
• decide how they will organise or structure their writing
• understand the features of that structure.

Student profiles

All students will benefit from making links to prior knowledge. Ask profile 1 and 2 students to record this prior learning to help them to focus on the requirements of the task.

The literacy demands of a science unit

The unit is called Genetics and Variation.  Genetics and Variation (PDF 144KB)

In the unit, students are asked to read ‘Chapter 13-2 Genes at Work’,  Genes at Work Chapter 13-2 (PDF 2MB) from Hook, P., Stannard, P., & Williamson, K. (1999). Science World 10 for the New Zealand Curriculum. pp. 270-272. Auckland: Macmillan.

To successfully complete this unit, students need to:

• understand unfamiliar science phenomena, processes, and events from reading information-dense texts
• work out the meaning of science vocabulary, learn meanings, and use the vocabulary in writing
• understand concepts that are explained through a combination of paragraphs, captions, and diagrams (text features)
• develop and communicate understandings through writing.

Why would you choose to focus on learning about text types?

Science textbooks often contain a lot of information in a confined space. They frequently contain more than one text type within sections and chapters.

For example, the ‘Chapter 13-2 Genes at Work’,  Genes at Work Chapter 13-2 (PDF 2MB) includes an explanation and instructions. These two text types need to be read quite differently.

What teaching is needed?

Once you and your students are familiar with the different text types and how to go about reading them, teaching should become a very brief part of any lesson with new text.

Introduce the ‘Chapter 13-2 Genes at Work’,  Genes at Work Chapter 13-2 (PDF 2MB) by identifying the different text types within the chapter. For example:

• There is an anecdote at the start. It is fiction and intended to hook the reader’s interest by providing a real life context.
• The explanation contains a lot of information in the paragraphs, diagrams, and text boxes.

In the activity, the students must read each instruction carefully. The steps need to be followed in order and they will need to keep referring back to them as they complete each step.

You will need to have questions ready that can help the students to identify and respond differently to the text types:

• What types of text can you see here?
• What can you recognise about these text types?
• How are these pages structured?
• Who is the intended audience?
• What is the purpose of the text?
• Where is the most important information?
• How should you go about reading them?

What are you looking for?

Look for students who are able to articulate their understanding of text types, features, and purposes. Notice when they answer questions accurately.

Next steps

Introduce new text types that your students will read in science. Continue to discuss text types as students encounter new texts, for example, news articles, websites.

Why would you choose to focus on learning to preview text feature information?

Using text features (for example, headings, illustrations) to provide information about the content will help students to:

• build knowledge of the topic
• locate the information they need
• give them confidence to start reading. (This is especially important if you have  profile 1 students in your class.)

What teaching is needed?

Model how to preview information from text features. Use these questions and answers to guide your teaching:

Q: If you read all the information in the text features, what do you know about the topic already?

A: It will tell me how the genes in the chromosomes of fish determine the skin colour. It shows that there is a gene on each chromosome of the pair of chromosomes that determines colour. One of the genes is dominant and one is recessive. The babies’ genes come from the parents. Some babies get a combination of genes that gives them a red colour, but more babies get a combination of genes that gives them a black colour. This is because the gene for black colour is dominant.

Q: Why has the author used these text features?

A: To give the reader a better understanding of genes. For example, in the diagrams you can see what they mean by the different combinations. It would be harder to write that in paragraphs.

Q: Which text features tell you the most important ideas?

A: The title, diagrams, and the captions. Often the pictures on their own don’t tell you very much.

Q: How could you use text features to make sure you have understood what you’ve read in the paragraphs?

A: You read the diagrams and captions, then read the paragraphs and look back at the diagrams to see if what you think is right, makes sense.

What are you looking for?

Look for previews that include all the important information from the text features. Students should begin by writing these so you can see they are making sense of the information by combining and linking ideas. When they have more experience, students will begin to preview in their head as preparation for reading new texts.

Next steps

Use previews to analyse text features in a range of science texts.

Why would you choose to focus on working out, learning, and using science vocabulary?

Science uses vocabulary and language that many students may not understand. However, it is often possible for them to work out the meanings using vocabulary problem solving clues.

What teaching is needed?

Identify and use science vocabulary

Introduce important science vocabulary and language, and provide opportunities for students to use it in their reading and writing.

Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9 to 13  Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9 to 13 pages 44-45 (PDF 130KB) describes strategies that can help students recall and use new vocabulary.

Clues for problem solving

Teach the clues for problem solving and provide opportunities for practice. Provide instructions (verbal and written) that contain different types of clues.

Using the sentence definition (This is very common in science.). “The physical characteristics of an organism, or what it looks like, is called its phenotype.”

• What does phenotype mean in this sentence?
• How did you work that out?
• Are there other words or phrases that you can work out in the same way?

“The fish with genotype BB is said to be homozygous, or a pure breeder, because both genes for skin colour are the same.”

• What does homozygous mean?
• How did you work that out?

Using context clues in science. “The gene for red colour, which is masked by the dominant gene, is called the recessive gene.”

• What does recessive mean in this sentence?
• Can you use the information around it to help? It is the gene that is masked by the dominant one.

“What is a Punnett square?”

• You can use the textbox information, the paragraphs, and the diagram. All of these context pieces can be used to work out the meaning.

Using morphemic clues

“Genotype”

• What does genotype mean?
• Are there any words or parts of words in this unfamiliar word that could help you work out what it might mean (gene, type)?
• Does that make sense when you read the sentence definition?

“Offspring”

• What does offspring mean?
• Are there any words or parts of words in this unfamiliar word that could help you work out what it might mean (off, spring)?
• In this context, if you put these two parts of the word together, what do they mean?

What are you looking for?

Look for fewer requests from students to explain word meanings as students become more familiar with the vocabulary used in science. Notice an increased use of these words in quickwrites and other writing tasks.

Next steps

Continue to ask students “How did you work that out?”.

Why would you choose to focus on making connections in texts?

The science textbook, like many science texts, uses a combination of text features (for example, diagrams and tables) and paragraph writing to explain information.

Many students are unaware that they need to read and combine information from all the sources to help them understand the information. This is a more difficult skill, but very important in science in years 9–13.

What teaching is needed?

Finding literal information

Ask students questions that require them to find literal information. Explain that sometimes it is possible to read and easily find the item of information required to answer a question or learn something new. It might be bolded or at the start of a paragraph or even be a number or fact that stands out or is shown on a diagram.

Ask students to read ‘Chapter 13-2 Genes at Work’,  Genes at Work Chapter 13-2 (PDF 2MB) and answer the following questions. Follow up by asking students how they worked out the answer.

• What is a dominant gene?
• How do you represent genes?
• In these fish, how many genes on a chromosome control colour?

Combining and synthesising many pieces of information

In order to understand more complex ideas, concepts, and processes, the author needs readers to locate and gather relevant information from several places in the text, then to combine these ideas together to create the answer. This is what a reader does to synthesise information.

Model this process to begin with. It may be useful for students to make notes about key pieces of information as they read.

Ask students to read ‘Chapter 13-2 Genes at Work’  Genes at Work Chapter 13-2 (PDF 2MB) and answer the following question.

• Q: If you get half of your genes from your mother and half from your father, why don’t you have half your mother’s features and half your father’s features?

Explain that first you need to think about what the question asks.

• It asks you to answer the second part.

Next look for information about how the mother’s genes and father’s genes combine.

• For each characteristic, there is one gene from each parent. (See the diagrams on page 271)
• The characteristic that you end up with depends on the combination of the genes you get from each parent.
• Each parent has two genes for each characteristic, one in each chromosome pair. Each offspring only receives one of these two genes from each parent. (See figure 18)
• Genes are dominant or recessive with dominant genes masking recessive genes. (See paragraphs and diagram on page 270)
• If you get two recessives genes for the same characteristic, this can make you look different from both parents. (See the red fish)

What are you looking for?

Look for students who are increasingly able to understand, find, and use information from the text. Notice when they explain the process of combining and synthesising by answering questions such as: “How did you get that?” and “What pieces of information told you that?”.

Next steps

Keep teaching this skill using other texts. Ask the question: “What pieces of information did you combine to get this information?”

Why would you choose to focus on quickwrites?

Quickwriting is a form of note making that helps students to remember what they know and understand.

Quickwrites support students to:

• focus on their science learning
• build their fluency in writing – important for writing answers to science questions
• think about and learn new information
• learn and use specific science vocabulary
• think about and develop ideas before taking part in group discussion.

Quickwrites can also provide ongoing information about students’ developing understanding of science concepts and use of science specific vocabulary.

What teaching is needed?

Give students a short amount of time to write their reactions, feelings, and ideas in response to prompts. These can be specific or generic, for example:

• What do genes do?
• Which characteristics do you think you have inherited from your parents? Don’t forget to say why.
• Explain why it is important for scientists to understand how genes work.

Quickwrites can be more open-ended. You might ask students to write about something they have just learned in class and how this has helped their learning, or a science concept that they find challenging.

What are you looking for?

Module 2 Part C will help you see how you can use the quickwrites as effective “of the moment” evidence of learning. ( The New Zealand Curriculum).

Next steps

Continue to use quickwrites. Ask students to design the prompts and highlight the science vocabulary they have used.

The literacy demands of a social studies unit

This unit is called Short, Sharp Research: Women’s Rights in New Zealand History.  Short, Sharp Research (PDF 191KB)

To successfully complete this unit, students need to:

• conduct research – locate, gather, and make inferences using information from a timeline
• develop ideas and understandings through writing
• write a research report.

Why would you focus on learning about text types?

Reading and writing different  text types (for example, explanations, instructions, arguments, narratives) is important for learning in social sciences learning across all year levels.

In this unit, students are asked to read an explanatory text (archived material from the  Ministry for Women | Minitatanga mō ngā Wāhine)

What teaching is needed?

Introduce the timeline by pointing out how it is different from other texts used in social studies. For example, students may not need to read the entire timeline as they would read a set of instructions or an Internet article.

Ask questions that will help students identify and respond to different text types. For example:

• What type of text is this?
• What can you see that tells you that?
• How is it structured?
• Who is the intended audience?
• What is the purpose of this text?
• How should you go about reading it?

Students will need to think about how the timeline will help them to complete the tasks outlined in the Short, Sharp Research Student Instructions.  Short, Sharp Research - Student Instructions (PDF 103KB)

What are you looking for?

Look for students who are able to articulate their understanding of text types, features, and purposes. Notice when they read particular text types for a specific task.

Next steps

Continue to introduce and discuss a range of new text types, for example, news articles, web pages, essays.

Why would you choose to focus on learning to preview text feature information?

Using text features (for example, headings, illustrations) to provide information about the content will help students to:

• build knowledge of the topic
• locate the information they need give them confidence to start reading. (This is especially important if you have  profile 1 students in your class.)

What teaching is needed?

Model how to preview information from text features. Use these questions and answers to guide your teaching:

Q: If you read all the information in the text features, what do you already know about the topic?

A: I know that the timeline shows the order of important events for women and women who played important roles from the 1800s until the present time. It focuses on acts of parliament that impacted on women’s rights to equality in education, employment, and health. From 1980, it appears that women have had more representation in politics. The timeline also shows the events of significance for Māori.

Q: Why has the author used these text features?

A: The timeline allows the reader to see where events are concentrated, how one precedes and follows another so that consequences and causes can be inferred. Relationships between events can be identified and themes can be explored, for example, “firsts” or “education”.

Q: Which text features tell you the most important ideas?

A: The points on the line show important information. They are supported by information in the captions and pictures. Red type highlights the event, personalities, and other important information.

What are you looking for?

Look for previews that include all the important information from the text features. Students should begin by writing these so you can see they are making sense of the information by combining and linking ideas. When they have more experience, students will begin to preview in their head as preparation for reading new texts.

Next steps

Use previews to analyse text features in a range of social studies texts.

Why would you choose to focus on working out, learning, and using social studies vocabulary?

Social studies teachers use a wide range of texts that are not always written with students in mind as the audience.

These texts often contain vocabulary and language that they may not understand. However, it is often possible for them to work out the meanings using vocabulary problem solving clues.

What teaching is needed?

Identify and use social studies vocabulary

Introduce important social studies vocabulary and language, and provide opportunities for students to use it in their reading and writing.

Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9 to 13  Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9 to 13 pages 44-45 (PDF 130KB) describes strategies that can help students recall and use new vocabulary.

Clues for problem solving

Teach the clues for problem solving and provide opportunities for practice. Provide instructions (verbal and written) that contain different types of clues. For example, from the timeline of the history of women in New Zealand:

Using the sentence definition (appositives). “The Constitution Act gave the vote to men who individually owned land, which excluded women and most Māori.”

• What do you know about the meaning of the Constitution Act?
• How did you work out that it was an act that concerned land ownership and benefited Pākehā men?
• Are there other words or phrases that you can work out in the same way?

Using context and morphemic clues. “Thirteen Māori women were signatories to the Treaty of Waitangi.”

• Can you use other information in the text to help you work out the meaning? For example, the text states that some Pākehā men did not allow Māori women to sign. What does that suggest?
• What about the photo and caption? What are the people in the photo doing?
• Do you recognise any part of the word? Sign – what does that mean?
• Does this help you to work out the meaning of signatories?

Specific use of morphemic clues “… legally enforceable awards and agreements …”

• Are there any words or parts of words in this unfamiliar word that could help you work out what it might mean (force, able, en)?
• What does force mean?
• What does able mean?
• What does en mean on the start of a word, for example, enable, encourage?
• Does this help you to work out the meaning of enforceable?

What are you looking for?

Look for fewer requests from students to explain word meanings as students become more familiar with the vocabulary used in social studies. Notice an increased use of these words in quickwrites and other writing tasks.

Next steps

Continue to ask students “How did you work that out?”.

Why would you choose to focus on making connections in texts?

In social studies, students are often asked to make inferences. This involves identifying and reading a range of texts and making a conclusion based on the summary of the evidence.

Sometimes the inference is inconclusive, leaving the student uncertain of what they can claim based on the reading. This is speculation and should be investigated further or described using phrases such as “it appears” or “it seems likely”.

At other times, students need to link pieces of text information to their prior knowledge. Knowing to check any prior knowledge for accuracy is an important aspect of learning to make inferences.

Recognising the limitations of evidence is an important aspect of learning to infer in the humanities and social sciences.

What teaching is needed?

Ask students questions that require different responses, for example:

• Questions that can be answered by locating information from the text, for example, when or why something occurred. The answers are explicitly stated.
• Questions that require students to use and check their prior knowledge for accuracy.
• Questions that prompt inference require students to locate more than one piece of relevant information, combine these pieces, and think about what these mean. You may need to introduce this strategy by modelling the questions and answers. For example:

Q: What do you notice about women’s employment around 1900?

A: Teaching and nursing seemed to be more common jobs for women at that time rather than being lawyers or doctors.

Q: What evidence did you use to make that inference?”

A: In 1901, the New Zealand Women Teachers' Association was formed, and the Nurses’ Registration Act provided training for nurses that same year. 1896 was the year the first woman graduated as a doctor, and 1897 was the year of the first woman law graduate.

Q: How did you make that inference?

A: I found pieces of related evidence about employment for women from around 1900, I looked at how they could be combined and what I could reasonably claim from that evidence. There were some things that showed that a lot of women must be involved. But the fact that only the first women graduated in law and medicine in the mid-1890s suggests that not many women would have been in those professions.

What are you looking for?

Look for students increasingly using evidence from text in their answers and gathering information through inference. Notice whether students recognise that they need to check their prior knowledge.

Next steps

Continue to introduce new text types.

Why would you choose to focus on quickwrites?

Quickwriting is a form of note making that helps students to remember what they know and understand.

Quickwrites support students to:

• focus on their social studies learning
• decide on their research topic
• think about and learn new information
• learn and use the specific vocabulary and language of social studies
• think about and develop ideas before taking part in group discussion.

Quickwrites can also provide ongoing information about students’ use of social studies vocabulary and language, and their ability to make inferences from a range of information sources.

What teaching is needed?

Give students a short amount of time to write their reactions, feelings, and ideas in response to prompts. These can be specific or generic, for example:

• What was the most interesting thing you read in the History of women in New Zealand timeline?
• Is there anything else you would like to investigate related to this timeline? Why?
• Choose two events or personalities on this timeline and explain how you think they are linked to each other.

Quickwrites can be more open-ended. You might ask students to write about something they have just learned in class and how this has helped their learning, or a social studies concept that they find challenging.

What are you looking for

Module 2 Part 3 will help you see how you can use the quickwrites as effective “of the moment” evidence of learning. (The New Zealand Curriculum, page 39).

Next steps

Continue to use quickwrites. Ask students to design the prompts and highlight the social studies vocabulary they have used.

Why would you choose to focus on writing a report?

A report is one of the outcomes for the unit. See the Short, Sharp Research Student Instructions.  Short, Sharp Research - Student Instructions (PDF 103KB)

Reports are often used in social studies to describe and classify information. Reports have a logical sequence of facts that are stated without any personal involvement from the writer.

What teaching is needed?

There are notes for teaching students to write research reports included in the unit, Short, Sharp Research: Women’s Rights in New Zealand History.  Short, Sharp Research (PDF 191KB)

English Online also includes information about report writing. However, it is important to be flexible about the features in a text form as authentic text forms are often mixed.

What are you looking for?

Look at the structure of the report:

• Is it organised logically?
• Do the paragraphs address one main idea?
• Are there transitions to guide the reader through?

Next steps

Build on this formal writing instruction in other social studies units. Ask students to revisit any feedback when they are setting writing goals in social studies.