Solved: Effective Literacy and Numeracy Pedagogy

Assessment Task 2: Criteria and instructions: Create a pedagogy, adapt a unit

Task description

An essay style assignment utilising an academic tone, with an annotated unit appendix. Identify the building blocks of an effective literacy and numeracy pedagogy, and use these to create a bespoke pedagogy for a context. Begin to identify teaching strategies that result from this work. Then, take a unit of work that you think is a bit ordinary in terms of literacy/numeracy and applied learning and annotate it, showing where you have made improvements. Give reasons why the improvements were necessary. Explain, using more tailored strategies, how you will teach aspects of the unit for a diverse cohort, using the classroom profile for inspiration if you wish. Back up your work with reference to a synthesis of literature from the fields of applied learning, literacy and/or numeracy teaching, or other scholarly works that are loosely grounded in or relate to, constructivist theories of learning.

Housekeeping

3000 words, plus or minus 10%, 60% of unit grade. The adapted unit is not part of the word count. The reference list is not part of the word count. Please avoid using headings in this assignment, it is an essay, not a report. However, you must pay attention to the structure and flow of your argument. One way of doing this is through use of strong topic sentences (the TEEL model is good for this). Please include an introduction, setting out what you will do, and a conclusion, that sums up your main points for the marker. Please don’t put in text citations in your introduction or conclusion. Paragraphs should be three or more sentences long, and each paragraph should be centred around one main point, with evidence from appropriate scholarly sources from reputable sites (mostly the Deakin Library). Use of ‘I’ is permitted, but please apply with caution and sparingly. Avoid casual or simple vocabulary such as kids, a lot, big. Please proof your work for spelling, grammar and typographical errors before submission.

Purpose of task

This task is designed to give you the opportunity to put pedagogy into practice, and assist you in developing your bank of resources ready for employment. It it hoped that you will also build confidence in navigating what are often murky and controversial waters of literacy and numeracy teaching, and allow you to develop your critical thinking skills so that you can consider alternative perspectives and make or defend effective decisions in your role that best meet the needs of your students, in whatever setting you may find yourself in.

Interpreting the criteria

Create a literacy or numeracy pedagogy with reference to literature and a hypothetical or real context. Include reference to at least five best practice strategies that exemplify your pedagogy.

To first create a pedagogy, you must understand what a pedagogy is, what typical pedagogies have been used or offered by scholars, and what an applied learning pedagogy generally typifies. None of these understandings happens quickly or without deep reflection and so you are encouraged to sit with texts and create space and time to think around these issues by engaging with unit materials and discussing them with your peers. There is no correct or right answer. As with AT1, best practice and pedagogy is interpreted in this unit as phenomena that are constructed between yourself, your context, ideas from the literature, and policy constrictions. Therefore to meet this criteria you will need to demonstrate that you have considered all four of these aspects. Plucking ideas out of thin air and putting them forward as your opinion or what you believe does not fully meet this criteria. You are welcome to highlight areas of potential tension or difficulty when attempting to produce transformative or hybrid pedagogies. For example, a pedagogy informed by the work of Dewey would be expected to result in teachers always searching to create the most authentic experiences for their students. However, you might have aspects of your unit in which experiences are simulated, classroom based or teacher led. What does that mean for your pedagogy? What kinds of statements will you include in your pedagogy that might address and navigate the way you would teach and manage any tensions you identify? Please note that you are not being expected to make radical statements or push a certain ideology, but to offer a well thought through pedagogical framework that is tailored to pragmatic considerations of your context, your professional development goals and educational philosophy – a framework that you think will help you hit the ground running. This still offers room for you to be bold, but again, it’s important to also be realistic. A personal pedagogy is made up of statements, a bit like the applied learning principles, but which have been interpreted and applied a bit more specifically to literacy/numeracy, applied learning theory and your methods. Avoid making statements like ‘build relationships’ this is too general -who, how why when where – and what about literacy/numeracy? You should aim for around 5-8 ideas that constitute your pedagogy. Pedagogical ideas are not strategies, and your strategies should be additional to these. Finally, please avoid using the word ‘try’. As Yoda reminds us, ‘Do, or do not. There is no try’.

Define, describe and reflect on the process of adapting a unit of work so that it can be identified as improved and applied learning. Include reference to your professional development goals, a hypothetical or real context and the policy or politics of literacy and numeracy teaching. NOTE: Reference to applied learning is not required if you are not a MALT student

To demonstrate this criteria, you will need to first identify a unit of work from your method areas to work on, up to year 10, i.e. a diverse mainstream classroom. You need to use a unit of work that is previously unseen – perhaps downloaded from the internet. You cannot use a unit that you created for other assessment tasks. However, it is possible to use a unit that one of your peers created for another assessment task, so please discuss this with each other and share/swap accordingly – units can only be used once, so if you are sharing, send your unit to one person only. Always cite and give acknowledgement of the source of your original unit. This is very important because if you use a peers’ unit your Turnitin score may be higher than normal and this needs to be clearly accounted for. Applying your pedagogy, you need to annotate the unit, you can use the track changes and/or comments function in MSWord, or other format as long as it’s clear where and what your changes are. You should aim for 5-10 substantive changes to the unit, which should be a mix of removing, adding or adapting already existing strategies, ideas, and text. The annotations should be very brief and in note form – you can expand on them in your discussion. These changes should be congruent with your pedagogical statements. The changes don’t need to reflect every single one of your pedagogical statements, but should generally be in line with a few/most. After you’ve done this, you need to reflect on the process you went through. Firstly, you should make statements concerning how you appraised the unit initially, to determine what was wrong/good or in need of adaptation. Then, you should make statements regarding why you picked out the 5-10 areas in particular for change. Then you need to reflect on your ability to do this, whether you found it easy or hard to make these kinds of changes and how this relates to your professional skill set. You will not lose marks for expressing difficulties or identifying gaps in your skill set.

Justify your adaptations and improvements with reference to literature and your pedagogy.

You can weave your response to this criteria in with C2. To justify means to offer substantiated argument as to why the changes to the unit were necessary, so that you would expect a) improved student literacy and numeracy outcomes and b) a recognition by the marker that the unit embodies aspects of applied learning theory (more than it did before).

Explain how you will draw upon your pedagogy to teach the adapted unit, with reference to a diverse cohort. Include at least five specific (different from C1) strategies that you will use to teach and assess a few aspects of the unit.

To explain means to set out a description of how you will teach this adapted unit to a diverse cohort. A classroom profile has been added to unit materials that you may reference, this is optional. If you wish to use the profile, you can cite it with the in text citation (classroom profile, 2020) – it does not need to be included in the reference list. Your specific strategies can include detail that is not in the adapted unit, such as how you would differentiate a task, or how you would offer a certain modality or choice of modalities for a task, the way you would introduce a task, or what background organising or relationship work you would do before or after a task has been attempted. You can also make statements concerning how you would check to see if your teaching strategies had worked, and what you might try instead.

Hypothetical classroom profile

Referencing this profile in your discussion is optional, you may just wish to use it as a thinking tool. If you do not use it you will not get a lower mark. You may use it to show how you are differentiating for the whole or just part of the class with particular strategies. It is acknowledged that no one unit of work will ever satisfy the educational needs of a whole class at one time – we do our best to focus in on certain groups/strategies at certain times. Ages/year levels have been deliberately omitted so that you can add and expand your own preferred hypothetical detail if you wish.

Simon is big for his age. He is seen as a leader by his peers but teachers find him easily distracted and ‘inappropriate’ sometimes. He is orally very confident and enjoys talks and group discussion. He is academically able in all areas but this is not always reflected in his grades as he tends to be careless and brief in written work.

Tim has an English mum and a French dad and is bilingual. He has bright brown eyes and is quick to grasp ideas, which is not always reflected in his writing. Tim is small, fast and coordinated, but he is forced to miss large stretches of school with chronic asthma. He is a social boy who is capable of learning independently at this stage, and misses classroom interaction.

Mathilda is very large for her age and self conscious about her weight. A bit of a struggler academically, Mathilda loves drama and music and is a good character actor. She sits next to Julie but has no close friends and eats by herself at lunchtime.

Grace is considered by her peers to be a tomboy. Grace has white blond hair and is quite tall for her age. She is young for her year level, and she is having extra tutoring in maths. Grace’s latest test scores suggest she is bright, but there are some learning problems associated with certain areas of the curriculum, principally numeracy problem solving abilities and concentration.

Claire is a short girl with a shy smile and a generally happy disposition. She keeps to herself a great deal at school, doing what needs to be done, no more, no less. She seems to like school this year because one of her teachers has encouraged her journal writing. She is an avid reader, always borrowing books from the library, but only read when she is given time to, as she puts it, ‘when she can get stuck into’ a novel. Claire would like to be a great writer like Katherine Patterson one day.

Youseff is an Iranian boy who has been in Australia for less than two years. School is hard for Youseff and he is reluctant to go each day as he struggles to understand the language and the classroom culture. His teachers say he often gives up on a task and won’t cooperate. They are at a loss as to how to assist him. Youseff is increasingly withdrawn at school and seldom talks in front of the class.

Brad is a lanky and tanned boy with sandy spiked hair and a cheeky grin. School is a bore for Brad, a drag, keeping him from what he really loves (skate boarding) and he sees little point in attending. At school, Brad tunes out much of the time. He is difficult to communicate with or motivate and appears to always be in a world of his own. Brad is sharp at maths but shows little interest in it.

Anna (Tien) is a dark, raven haired girl, with a Vietnamese mother and Spanish father. She is fluent in both Spanish and Vietnamese, picking up both languages with ease. Tien likes the social aspect of school but finds a lot of the work boring. She is a prolific writer, and is currently working on a novel. She is well read and highly capable student who works well beyond her year level.

Jack is a talkative boy who has recently arrived at the school. Of average height, he has reddish hair. Heedless of classroom etiquette, Jack tends to irritate teachers by calling out in class and offering irrelevant suggestions. A sport lover, he is not overly engaged in classroom activities unless they have a direct impact on his thinking.

Kelly came to school last year. She is blond, socially confident and pretty. As soon as Kelly arrived, she provided a gravitational point for both boys and girls. Largely unaffected by what others think of her, Kelly bonded with Kate and socially formidable unit, respected by almost all class members. Kelly loves drama, story writing and sport. If there were an election for class leader, it would fall to Kelly.

Koichi came from Japan this year. Arriving with no English, he has caught on quickly, and is known as a ‘maths genius’. He is a keen soccer player and also loves computer games. He wears contact lenses most days is a popular boy who laughs and plays games a lot.

Kate is the third daughter of a professional single mum. Kate is a very able student. Her language skills are excellent and she is artistically creative. She is verbally witty and quick to judge peers as worthy or not of her attention. Not sporty, she and Kelly are pop music experts and like to dance.

Ahmet is Turkish, born in Australia. Ahmet has a stocky, solid build, a cheeky grin, and great social skills. He lives in a very traditional Turkish home within a tightly knit Turkish community that is male dominated and where Turkish is the only language spoken at home. In school, Ahmet’s lack of concentration can get him into some trouble. He finds it difficult to sit still and is loud, talkative and inattentive.

Julie is a sandy haired girl, an only child to two overly protective parents. She performs well in any group task, doing loads of work and helping others stay on task. Julie’s teachers believe Julie is coping well with the work given to her as it is always completed on time, neat, beautifully presented and generally accurate. Yet Julie masks poor conceptual skills in maths and in science. Although she can perform tasks well if the method is explained to her, she has not grasped very basic understandings.

Sherry is well liked. She is tall and bubbly with a long blonde ponytail and a face full of freckles. Her family life is stable yet her world outside the family is small. No one in her family has travelled outside of Victoria. Sherry readily engages in school and is a bright student and well read. She is inquisitive, alert and interested in knowing about the world. Yet, Sherry’s expectations of herself are low and she is certain she will get a full time job at Safeway once she completes Year 12.

Robert is somewhat immature. He comes from a family with two younger siblings and parents who live together but are experiencing some financial difficulties. At 7, Robert was diagnosed with ADHD syndrome and he has been taking Ritalin to try and counteract his condition. He often arrives at school late and without lunch or with only junk food to eat. Robert loves sport but finds himself physically uncoordinated and often struggles to keep up with his peers.

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