Literacy and Numeracy Strategies.
Standard 2.5
Rationale:
My literacy instruction reflects the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983) as evidenced in Artifact 1. The content of my literacy instruction is very much guided by the works of Fountas & Pinnell, Harvey & Goudvis, Debbie Miller, Regie Routman, Lucy Calkins and Katie Ray.
My numeracy instruction reflects the four proficiency strands as directed by the Australian Curriculum. They include understanding, fluency, problem solving and reasoning. I have documented my understanding of the strands, including a snapshot of how they may apply to a grade 1 class, in Artifact 2. I have chosen an early childhood lesson plan to further document my understandings (Artifact 3).
My literacy instruction reflects the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983) as evidenced in Artifact 1. The content of my literacy instruction is very much guided by the works of Fountas & Pinnell, Harvey & Goudvis, Debbie Miller, Regie Routman, Lucy Calkins and Katie Ray.
My numeracy instruction reflects the four proficiency strands as directed by the Australian Curriculum. They include understanding, fluency, problem solving and reasoning. I have documented my understanding of the strands, including a snapshot of how they may apply to a grade 1 class, in Artifact 2. I have chosen an early childhood lesson plan to further document my understandings (Artifact 3).
Artifact 1:
Literacy Strategies
Gradual Release of Responsibility Model (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983)
Quality literacy programs allow students to be supported with the necessary scaffolds for them to achieve success. The Gradual Release of Responsibility Model addresses this belief and explicitly guides our teaching and learning practices in all learning areas. The model includes the following steps:
Familiarising: raising awareness and activating prior knowledge
Description:
Key Features:
In the Classroom:
Analysing: examining the parts in order to understand the whole
Description:
Key Features:
In the Classroom:
Modelling: demonstration of the thinking process behind how and why something is done
Description:
Key Features:
In the classroom:
Sharing: to jointly construct meaning
Description:
Key Features:
In the classroom:
Guiding: provision of scaffolded support through strategic assistance at predetermined checkpoints.
Description:
Key Features:
In the classroom:
Applying: independently using a skill, strategy or understanding to achieve a purpose.
Description:
An Example of a Writing Block
Explicit Instruction (10 – 20 minutes)
The session begins with the teacher explicitly focusing on a key element of the writing process. It may involve modelled, shared or interactive writing. Modelling of effective strategies and procedures occurs. The focus will depend on the particular needs of the children and will vary from one session to the next. A number of mini-lessons will occur within a week. Each session has a very specific focus.
These may include:
Role of the Teacher
Role of the Students
Guided Writing (20 minutes)
Involves working with small groups of children with a common identified need. The needs are identified through working with the children and analysing their writing on a daily basis. Groups are very fluid and are rarely the same from one day to the next. The focus may include:
OR
Interactive Writing (20 minutes)
Involves working with small groups of children either grouped based on need or heterogeneous groups (to provide different role models). Groups are fluid and based on a specific focus. An Interactive Writing session could focus on recounting a Big Book, a pre-teaching episode with students on how to write a recipe or writing a response to a shared book. The options are endless.
Role of the Teacher
Role of the Student
Independent Writing (20 minutes)
Role of the Teacher
Role of the Student
Sharing (10 – 15 minutes)
This is a crucial part of each session. Students have the opportunity to share what they have done or are working on as well as share what strategies and processes they have used. They can receive constructive feedback from others on what they can do to improve their writing. It is important to spend time teaching the children how to be critical friends to their peers to ensure this is productive. This information is then fed back into future planning so it targets specific needs and children.
Role of the Teacher
Role of the Student
Artifact 2:
Numeracy Strategies: The Four Proficiency Strands
Understanding
Connecting names, numerals and quantities, and partitioning numbers in various ways.
Fluency
Counting number in sequences readily, forward and backwards, locating numbers on a number line, and naming the days of the week.
Problem Solving
Using materials to model authentic problems, giving and receiving directions to unfamiliar places, and using familiar counting sequences to solve unfamiliar problems and discussing the reasonableness of the answer.
Reasoning
Explaining direct and indirect comparisons of length using uniform informal units, justifying representations of data, and explaining patterns that have been created.
Artifact 3:
A balanced numeracy program incorporates a variety of numeracy strategies, carefully selected materials for each activity and a responsive teacher. Components of a balanced program include:
Warm Up
The numeracy block starts with the whole class working together. This is a warming up or tuning in experience where students work together on a strategy or skill that will be developed further in the whole class activity. Examples could include:
Whole Class Teaching
The whole class focus builds a community of mathematics learners focused on a common aspect of numeracy. This may be a modelled approach where the teacher introduces or revisits a new concept. It could also be a shared approach where the teacher and students jointly work through the process. When using a shared approach the teacher prompts students, questioning and supporting them as they reinforce, modify and extend their skills and understandings. Groupings now occur with the approach determined by the needs of the students.
Modelled Maths
This approach is brief and dynamic. The teacher introduces the learning experience, demonstrates effective strategies and makes explicit the mathematics to be focused on in the session. The teacher “thinks aloud”. The students observe, ask questions and, directed by the teacher, model the strategies for themselves, explaining their workings.
Guided Maths
This involves the teacher guiding a small group of students with like needs as they think, talk and work their way through a mathematical experience. Following a brief introduction by the teacher, students have the opportunity to choose strategies and materials they will use. The teacher elicits responses from the students to determine their concept development (and misunderstandings!) – it has to be more than “I did it in my head”.
Independent Maths
This follows directly after a guided maths session where students work individually with the teacher prompting and helping at each student’s point of need. Students engage in independent mathematics directly related to the work they were doing in their small teaching group.
Reflection
Reflection or whole class share time can be done in many ways. It may be recording the strategies they used in a maths journal, articulating to the group the process or problem-solving technique they used in the session or the teacher might record the key concepts in a class big book. Teachers might also use a cooperative learning tool or structure to allow students to reflect on their understandings.
It is the teachers role to:
Artifact 4:
An Example of a Numeracy Lesson Plan (Early Childhood)
Where are they now?
Where to next?
Outcomes:
Indicators
Students will:
How?
Warm-Up:
Whole Class Experience: (modelled / shared maths)
Group Activities:
Teacher Group:
Reflection:
Tell me a combination to 10 from Koala Ten Frame Game
Quality literacy programs allow students to be supported with the necessary scaffolds for them to achieve success. The Gradual Release of Responsibility Model addresses this belief and explicitly guides our teaching and learning practices in all learning areas. The model includes the following steps:
Familiarising: raising awareness and activating prior knowledge
Description:
- How teachers introduce students to an area of learning.
- Reading, listening to or viewing subject matter.
- Activating students’ prior knowledge after exposure to subject matter.
- Building up understanding of the learning focus.
Key Features:
- Range of receptive experiences.
- Builds knowledge.
- Activates prior knowledge.
- Exposure to a variety of text types.
- Awareness of text types in daily life.
In the Classroom:
- Students need to be actively engaged.
- Students need to focus on techniques and content of various text being presented.
Analysing: examining the parts in order to understand the whole
Description:
- Problem solving, evaluating and classifying activities that require students to break texts into parts to understand their relationship with the whole.
Key Features:
- Focus on relationship between parts and whole (letters within words, sentences within paragraphs, paragraphs in written texts, colours, symbols and positioning in visual texts).
- Builds knowledge.
- Activates prior knowledge.
- Exposure to a variety of text types.
- Awareness of text types in daily life.
In the Classroom:
- Students search for and identify patterns to comment on.
- Translate ideas to other texts and look for connections.
Modelling: demonstration of the thinking process behind how and why something is done
Description:
- Thinking about the key teaching practice that is used.
- Talking the learner through steps.
- Demonstration is explicit.
- Students need to be actively involved in demonstrations.
Key Features:
- Breadth of instruction (5-10 mins).
- Clear ‘think-aloud’ statements.
- Singular or limited focus.
- Repetition.
- Connection between modelling sessions.
In the classroom:
- ‘Think-aloud’ statements are central to the success of modelling.
- Focus on the process of thinking not the outcome of thinking (example might be modelling self-correction in reading).
- Concentrate on a particular focus.
Sharing: to jointly construct meaning
Description:
- Cooperative and supportive way of engaging learners.
- Teacher leads the demonstration of the understanding or skill.
- Pause for learner prompts and all contributions receive positives.
- Involves the teacher and the learner as collaborative participants.
Key Features:
- Interaction focused on the joint achievement of a clear purpose.
- Teacher-managed blend of modelling, student input and discussion.
- Negotiated decisions about the text.
- 10-15 minutes.
- Text visible to all.
- A single or limited focus.
- Targeted feedback.
- Connection between sharing sessions.
In the classroom:
- Each participant has equal involvement.
- Process of comprehending or composing is shared by the teacher and students.
- Teacher leads dialogue with probing questions.
- Questions stimulate comprehension or creation of the text.
- Shared writing varies depending on who is writing but what is important is who provides the direction of comprehension.
Guiding: provision of scaffolded support through strategic assistance at predetermined checkpoints.
Description:
- Practice of teacher explicity scaffolding the task.
- Pulling out key parts or key points and providing assistance.
- Student maintains control of the process but can request assistance.
Key Features:
- Frequent support and opportunities for teacher-student interaction.
- Frameworks that scaffold the task; e.g. note-taking templates, questioning patterns.
- Decisions made by students.
- Targeted feedback supplied at predetermined stages.
- A singular focus for each students-teacher interaction.
In the classroom:
- Different to sharing because the student is performing the task.
- Task is structured by the teacher to include opportunities for assistance.
- Completion of the task is controlled by the student.
- Degree of guidance depends on the student, the context and the nature of the task.
- Some students may be in a small group dissecting a text rather than writing or students may use plans or frameworks
- to complete individual tasks.
- Teachers provide feedback at regular intervals throughout the writing process.
Applying: independently using a skill, strategy or understanding to achieve a purpose.
Description:
- Contextualised and purposeful use.
- Often end point in teaching cycle due to level of student independence.
- Often pseudo-assessment task.
An Example of a Writing Block
Explicit Instruction (10 – 20 minutes)
The session begins with the teacher explicitly focusing on a key element of the writing process. It may involve modelled, shared or interactive writing. Modelling of effective strategies and procedures occurs. The focus will depend on the particular needs of the children and will vary from one session to the next. A number of mini-lessons will occur within a week. Each session has a very specific focus.
These may include:
- Moving through the writing process – planning, drafting, conferring, refining, publishing
- Teaching specific strategies – predicting, self-questioning, creating images, determining importance, paraphrasing/summarising, connecting, comparing, re-reading, synthesising, sounding out, chunking, using visual memory, using spelling generalisations, using analogy, using meaning, consulting an authority, using memory aids. During these sessions the teacher uses ‘think alouds” to let children in on the secret of writing.
Role of the Teacher
- The teacher takes control of this process, slowly releasing control to students.
Role of the Students
- Students listen actively and share their ideas and make suggestions.
Guided Writing (20 minutes)
Involves working with small groups of children with a common identified need. The needs are identified through working with the children and analysing their writing on a daily basis. Groups are very fluid and are rarely the same from one day to the next. The focus may include:
- Punctuation
- Writing a complete sentence
- Creating paragraphs
- Hearing and recording the sounds in words
- Print conventions
OR
Interactive Writing (20 minutes)
Involves working with small groups of children either grouped based on need or heterogeneous groups (to provide different role models). Groups are fluid and based on a specific focus. An Interactive Writing session could focus on recounting a Big Book, a pre-teaching episode with students on how to write a recipe or writing a response to a shared book. The options are endless.
Role of the Teacher
- The teacher carefully analyses students’ work to identify common elements for an explicit teaching focus.
- Teachers group students based on a common need.
- Teachers think on their feet and support children in successfully engaging in their writing.
Role of the Student
- Students are more actively involved in this component.
Independent Writing (20 minutes)
- During this time students have the opportunity to compose their own texts and demonstrate their control of what has been modelled to them in previous parts of the session. During this time children write for real purposes and audiences.
- Engage students in purposeful writing tasks.
- Observe and record what is happening for each child.
- Provide feedback to students.
- Actively involved in all process of writing.
Role of the Teacher
- Engage students in purposeful writing tasks.
- Observe and record what is happening for each child.
- Provide feedback to students.
Role of the Student
- Actively involved in all process of writing.
Sharing (10 – 15 minutes)
This is a crucial part of each session. Students have the opportunity to share what they have done or are working on as well as share what strategies and processes they have used. They can receive constructive feedback from others on what they can do to improve their writing. It is important to spend time teaching the children how to be critical friends to their peers to ensure this is productive. This information is then fed back into future planning so it targets specific needs and children.
Role of the Teacher
- Put structures in place for effective sharing.
- Facilitate the process.
- Provide feedback.
- Be an active member of the audience.
Role of the Student
- Share work with others.
- Provide feedback to others.
- Be an effective audience member.
Artifact 2:
Numeracy Strategies: The Four Proficiency Strands
Understanding
Connecting names, numerals and quantities, and partitioning numbers in various ways.
Fluency
Counting number in sequences readily, forward and backwards, locating numbers on a number line, and naming the days of the week.
Problem Solving
Using materials to model authentic problems, giving and receiving directions to unfamiliar places, and using familiar counting sequences to solve unfamiliar problems and discussing the reasonableness of the answer.
Reasoning
Explaining direct and indirect comparisons of length using uniform informal units, justifying representations of data, and explaining patterns that have been created.
Artifact 3:
A balanced numeracy program incorporates a variety of numeracy strategies, carefully selected materials for each activity and a responsive teacher. Components of a balanced program include:
- Warm Up
- Whole class teaching
- Modelled maths
- Guided maths
- Indpendent maths
- Reflection
Warm Up
The numeracy block starts with the whole class working together. This is a warming up or tuning in experience where students work together on a strategy or skill that will be developed further in the whole class activity. Examples could include:
- Finger plays
- Skip counting
- Chants
- Songs
- Big Book
- Movement activities (make a group of 4, make a small shape etc)
- Counting with the 100’s chart
- Flash cards
- Number games (Guess my number)
Whole Class Teaching
The whole class focus builds a community of mathematics learners focused on a common aspect of numeracy. This may be a modelled approach where the teacher introduces or revisits a new concept. It could also be a shared approach where the teacher and students jointly work through the process. When using a shared approach the teacher prompts students, questioning and supporting them as they reinforce, modify and extend their skills and understandings. Groupings now occur with the approach determined by the needs of the students.
Modelled Maths
This approach is brief and dynamic. The teacher introduces the learning experience, demonstrates effective strategies and makes explicit the mathematics to be focused on in the session. The teacher “thinks aloud”. The students observe, ask questions and, directed by the teacher, model the strategies for themselves, explaining their workings.
Guided Maths
This involves the teacher guiding a small group of students with like needs as they think, talk and work their way through a mathematical experience. Following a brief introduction by the teacher, students have the opportunity to choose strategies and materials they will use. The teacher elicits responses from the students to determine their concept development (and misunderstandings!) – it has to be more than “I did it in my head”.
Independent Maths
This follows directly after a guided maths session where students work individually with the teacher prompting and helping at each student’s point of need. Students engage in independent mathematics directly related to the work they were doing in their small teaching group.
Reflection
Reflection or whole class share time can be done in many ways. It may be recording the strategies they used in a maths journal, articulating to the group the process or problem-solving technique they used in the session or the teacher might record the key concepts in a class big book. Teachers might also use a cooperative learning tool or structure to allow students to reflect on their understandings.
It is the teachers role to:
- emphasise connections.
- encourage sharing of strategies.
- make the mathematics explicit.
- raise challenges.
- promote a language to talk about mathematics.
- encourage students to reflect on what they have learned, how they learned and what assisted them in their learning.
Artifact 4:
An Example of a Numeracy Lesson Plan (Early Childhood)
Where are they now?
- Emergent - Unable to coordinate number words with items when counting.
- Perceptual - Needs to see, touch or hear items to work out answers. Counts from one.
- Figurative - Can complete concealed items tasks but counts from one.
- Counting-on and back - Uses larger number and counts on to find the answer.
- Facile - Uses known facts and count-by-one strategies (e.g. doubles, portioning) to solve problems.
Where to next?
Outcomes:
- Models numbers and number relationships in a variety of ways, and uses them in solving number problems.
- Supports answers to mathematical questions by explaining or demonstrating how the answer was obtained.
Indicators
Students will:
- recognise numerals 1-10
- demonstrate one-to-one correspondence
- uses concrete materials to support conclusions
- understand value/quantity of number value
How?
Warm-Up:
- Rhyme “One, two, three, together."
- Bunny Ears (make a number using finger patterns).
- Forwards and backward number counting to 10.
Whole Class Experience: (modelled / shared maths)
- One to one correspondence and conservation of number (different numerals have different quantities).
- Looking at numeral identification cards and dot patterns in standard and non standard ways.
Group Activities:
- Playdough numbers (numeral identification).
- Humpty Game (conservation of numerical quantity).
- Dog and Ladybird Dot Patterns (conservation of numerical quantity).
Teacher Group:
- Koala Ten Frame Game for Blue and Red Groups.
- Dotted Plates for Green and Yellow Groups.
Reflection:
Tell me a combination to 10 from Koala Ten Frame Game
- How did you do it?
- How do you know it is right?
- Is it the only way?
- Can you prove it?
