1ST SESSION
LANGUAGE DEMANDS OF SUBJECT CONTENT AND ACCOMPANYING TASKS
BY ANDREW STEELE
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| Andrew Steele |
Genre- based Approach
A method/ way - looking at different text types and identify the features used (language structure, words, grammar) so that the students are aware of it and how to use.
For example:
A business proposal has different language features compared to the spoken presentation script
The process in learning to produce any genre
Stage 1 is dependent on the teacher being able to explain clearly and coherently.
Stage 2 requires teachers to model their thinking. We need to be able to show how our thoughts become writing. For example, use Thought Stems as showed below;
Stage 3 is where group work comes in. In order to avoid
cognitive overload, students need to transfer what they’ve learned from
working to long term memory. As any fool knows, the best way to do this
is use what you’ve learned.
Stage 4
is where they are able to work independently and at this point you
should, if you’ve talked effectively, be able to finally zip it. This is
true independent work, where students are confidently able to
transcribe their thoughts without having to speak because of all the
high quality talk to which they’ve been exposed.
More readings on this Teacher Talk: The Missing Link go here.
The final stage is Comparing where students compare their work with other texts of the same genre-type and consider similarities and differences.
2ND SESSION
COGNITIVE AND HIGHER ORDER THINKING SKILLS ACROSS THE CURRICULUM
BY CAROLE ALLSOP
Cognitive skills/ Thinking skills
HOTS vs LOTS
Key concept
- Progressively more chalengging taska
- A language- rich classroom
- Wait time before answering questions (7 seconds)
- Thinking time before doing tasks
- Awareness of the cognitive demands of the tasks
The students should be provided with frames to ensure they are able to use the words/ sentence/ language features that we want in the classroom. This is one example of language frames to scaffold what the students want to say.
More readings on this example : Sentences Frames: Helping students Become Writers, go here
3RD SESSION
CONSOLIDATING LEARNING WITH DIFFERENTIATION AND MIXED ABILITY GROUPS
BY BILL BOWLER
OVERVIEW BY HARLINI BT KHAIRUDDIN
From Marco Polo to King Kong
“A mixed ability group of
learners is one in which there are more able, average and less able learners in
the same group. Many teachers find mixed ability classes problematic to teach.
However, unless you are teaching ‘one-to-one’ you will always be teaching mixed
ability classes, to a greater or lesser extent.”
Having a big number of students in a single classroom (sometimes could total up to 52 students per class) is a real challenge to me. Normally, the composition of the class would consist of nearly half of the students with average ability, less than a quarter with strong ability and the remaining are students with weak ability. Hence, my main concern is to cater the needs of these mixed ability students in the classroom. In planning out my daily lessons, I have tried to do activities that I think could cater the different needs of them but it always frustrates me to see that what I’ve planned did not turn out as how it should be.
I first heard about ‘Differentiation’ from my home tutor, Andrew. I was piqued by the
term and wanted to know more. Today’s lesson with Bill Bowler on ‘Consolidating Learning with Differentiation
and Mixed Ability Groups’ was an eye opener for me. Some of the points that
were being discussed:
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How to deal with level diversity?
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Supporting students for success
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Personalization, tiered tasks, and extra ‘early
finisher’ tasks
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Open-ended activities
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Differentiated homework
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Exercises with answer key feedback
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A ‘sliding’ correction scale
At the end of the lesson, we were also given samples of exercises that focus on differentiation for the mixed ability students. Short articles on Marco Polo, The Middle East, Rain Forest, and King Kong were used and expanded into varieties of exercises that integrated all the four essential skills namely reading, writing, speaking and listening.
All in all, the art of differentiation in
designing materials is one of the key elements that should be taken into
consideration in my future classes.
Pen off - Oxford
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