Kia ora koutou and welcome to our first 2011 newsletter for English, ESOL and Literacy Online.
This year we will continue to build on community engagement through the mailing lists and increase our focus on the professional development function of these communities.
We will also focus strongly on resource development for secondary literacy, literacy leadership and the ESOL community.
We look forward to working with you in the year ahead.
Nga mihi nui,
Dr Phil Coogan , Project director
Maria Lute , Project manager
Cognition Education for the NZ Ministry of Education.
In this issue
News from:
Literacy Online
English Online
ESOL Online
Literacy Online
Kia ora and welcome from Chris Henderson
I hope your year has started well.
Welcome to the new members who have joined our community. We encourage all members to contribute to the community, ask questions, add comments and support each other by sharing your knowledge, expertise and experiences.
Literacy Conference for facilitators of PLD
You will be aware that a government priority is a focus on Māori achieving educational success as Māori. This was a focus at the recent conference that literacy, numeracy and ESOL facilitators attended. Professor Angus McFarlane, from the University of Canterbury presented a keynote address entitled ‘Diversity’s plea to educators: Kia hiwa rā!’ where he highlighted the importance of teachers recognising that they do not have to be of the same culture to be able to connect with a different culture and make a difference to student achievement. Learn more about Angus’ work here.
Also read the ERO report released last year on Promoting success for Māori students .
National Standards illustrations
Late last year three National Standards illustrations for reading were added to literacy online and further illustrations will be available online by the end of March.
Literacy conference
The New Zealand Reading Association conference is being held in Rotorua from July 17 – 20 2011.It is entitled ‘A Literacy explosion’ and workshop submissions close on 19 March. This is a great way to get to know and contribute to the wider literacy community of New Zealand.
Kind regards,
Chris Henderson
Facilitator: Literacy Online community
Secondary Literacy
Kia ora and welcome from Denise Hitchcock
As the year gets underway literacy leaders have been thinking about the best ways to introduce or revitalize interest in the literacy needs of students. Some of these ideas have been shared on the Secondary Literacy mailing list .
Teachers may be interested in reviewing NCEA results, thinking about their approaches to teaching and learning for the year, and getting to know the new students they have. This provides a great opportunity to focus attention on literacy demands for students and involve teachers in planning to address needs. There is a wealth of information in this module: Professional Learning about Adolescent Literacy – particularly the first section about engaging teachers.
Literacy Unit Standards
The NZQA site for Literacy Unit Standards provides supporting material to assist teachers as they begin to gather evidence for these standards and make assessor judgements. The material includes, for example:
- Further explanation about ‘Naturally Occurring Evidence’ in each unit standard and what evidence might look like in different subjects.
- The requirements for national external moderation of these standards
- Examples of thematic approaches to gathering evidence
PISA 2009 Our 21st century learners at age 15
If you have not yet had a chance to see this report you can access it here at Education Counts . This document provides information that you might wish to use in those early discussions with staff about the overall ‘New Zealand literacy picture’. The main focus of this study was on reading literacy.
Wishing you all the best for the year ahead
Denise Hitchcock
Facilitator: Secondary Literacy community
English Online
Secondary English
Kia ora and welcome from Mike Fowler.
The secondary English forum has got off to a lively start as teachers hunt down texts and resources to start the year. There have also been plenty of conversations about the new aligned standards.
Level 1 standards exemplars
With the ongoing roll out of new Level 1 English exemplars , keep this exemplars page bookmarked.
Moderation matters
NZQA have advised in a recent Secqual that, while the new Level 1 achievement standards have also not been selected for external moderation, schools may choose to nominate either the older and expiring Level 1 internally assessed achievement standards or the new Level 1 achievement standards.
That means you can negotiate the replacement of any expiring Level 1 achievement standard that has been requested for external moderation with any similar new Level 1 achievement standard. If you have assessed student work ready to submit by your school’s submission date, it makes sense to request a change. Ask your principal’s nominee to email your requested change to the school’s moderation plan to your School Relationship Manager. If you haven’t yet seen the English standards nominated by NZQA for moderation, talk with your school’s principal nominee.
IFTE conference
A reminder to catch the early bird enrolment [by 1 March] for the International Federation for the Teaching of English Conference – the conference is a major four yearly English event last held here in NZ in 1990!
Regards
Mike Fowler
Facilitator: Secondary English community
ESOL Online
Primary ESOL
Kia ora and welcome from Gaylene Price
This month we have welcomed members of the Primary ESOL online community back to the new school year. There are now over 450 members of our community. The conversations over the first few weeks have been focussed on establishing good practices for the beginning of the school year.
New Online ELLP professional development module
There is now a new module - Module 4 Reporting (Primary) on the ‘Using The English Language Learning Progressions’ section on the ESOL website.
Teachers are able to make use of the online modules to support their learning and use of The English Language Learning Progressions. The modules step teachers through the process of making an overall teacher judgement to establish the stage of English language learners’ oral language, reading and writing achievement. The purpose of the new ‘reporting’ module covers:
- background information that is relevant to reporting progress and achievement for English language learners in primary schools
- key ideas about reporting progress and achievement to parents
- specific ideas for leading the professional learning and development of others. Why not work through these modules with a colleague or syndicate?
Conference for Facilitators of Professional Learning and Development
Last week literacy, numeracy and ESOL facilitators from all over New Zealand had an opportunity for professional learning and development in Auckland. A key theme of the conference was the need for teachers to accelerate student learning, especially those students who are Well Below and Below expected curriculum levels. Sometimes this group of students will include English language learners.
One of the keynote addresses was from Pauline Gibbons from the University of Technology, Sydney. Many ESOL teachers know Pauline's work very well. From 'Learning to Learn in a Second Language' (1991) to 'Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning' (2002) and more recently 'English Learners, Academic Literacy, and Thinking' (2009), Pauline's down-to-earth approach and practical teaching ideas have been a treasure for mainstream and ESOL teachers in New Zealand schools. In her talk she reiterated the need for classrooms to be places with 'high challenge' but with 'high levels of support'. Through the year our online discussion will consider what high challenge/high support looks like in primary classrooms.
Kind regards,
Gaylene Price
Facilitator: Primary ESOL community
Secondary ESOL.
Kia ora and welcome from Breda Matthews
This month has included discussions on reading including graded reading programmes and texts and speed reading courses, and assessment, including initial diagnostic assessment , unit standards assessment and special assessment conditions and course planning. We have also shared links to Ministry of Education resources, teaching strategies, greetings in different languages and our own resources.
Updates and news
- Schools will have received the ESOL News Update for February but these can also be located online.
- ESOL Professional Learning Clusters will be getting under way for 2011. If you don’t know where your local cluster is or want to start a cluster in your area, contact daniel.haddock@minedu.govt.nz .
- The following Ministry of Education page contains a very useful Powerpoint that identifies all of the key Ministry ESOL resources. This Powerpoint is regularly updated.
- ESOL teachers may want to look at the National Standards Illustrations which they will find useful when making judgements against cohort for ESOL/AF funding.
Resources
- LEARNZ provides free, interactive experiences for students which are supported with excellent teacher resources. Their current newsletter outlines what is available on LEARNZ including their virtual field trips on the Canterbury Earthquakes and Marine Reserves . The latter will be particularly useful to those of you using the Our Changing World NCEA ESOL unit standards assessment resources.
- The United Nations Cyberschool Bus offers numerous resources and interactive quizzes and games for use in mainstream classes or whichcould be adapted to ELLs needs. The Gallery provides stories and pictures from around the world.
- Language Line has now added Filipino to the list of 41 languages that it provides translation services for. Language Line is a telephone interpreting service which offers free interpreting and is managed by the Office of Ethnic Affairs.
Events
The Chinese Lantern Festival will be celebrated in Christchurch on 26th and 27th February and In Auckland on 18th – 20th February. There are multicultural festivals in Blenheim on the 26th February and In Tauranga in March and Korean Day will be held on Auckland’s North Shore also in March. Palmerston North will host a Festival of Cultures on March 25th to 26th.
Kind regards,
Breda Matthews
Facilitator: Secondary ESOL community
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