Illustrations of Literacy Practice
Drawing on a Repertoire of Literacy Strategies
These videos, known as illustrations of practice, demonstrate pedagogy and practice in the classroom. Filmed across a range of year levels, they demonstrate how teachers can draw on a repertoire of literacy strategies to improve student outcomes.
When viewing the illustrations of practice, teachers are encouraged to identify the pedagogical practices of the teachers involved that could apply to their own contexts. Teachers can work individually, participate in small groups or as a whole staff, to reflect on the discussion prompts.
The matrix gives details of the skills demonstrated within each Illustration of Literacy Practice. It may be helpful in identifying which Illustration may best suit your purpose. The illustrations are quite lengthy, as such transcripts have been provided to assist viewers to discern the relevant specific sections.
Years 3-4
Collaborative Writing in Years 3-4: Teaching and Learning Using a Mentor Text
Within this illustration of practice the teacher begins by tuning in to previous learning experiences where students were scaffolded into recognizing that authors make very deliberate language choices to create and convey meaning in their writing. Using a sentence from the mentor text, the structure used by the author is identified and explored – then used as a template / framework for students to collaboratively create their own sentence. During independent writing, the teacher supports student understanding by providing targeted feedback based on the intended learning outcomes and individual student work.
Discussion prompts
How do you provide specific feedback to guide students to deeper understanding?
As this teacher shifts into using a guided writing approach she scaffolds and supports the children to be metacognitive about their word choices. What does this look like in your practice?
How might we encourage students to transfer the learning gained by examining the language choices and structures in mentor texts, to their own independent writing?
Small Group Reading in Years 3-4
This teacher demonstrates the Interactive Read-Aloud strategy. In this session the teacher models reading the text, occasionally and selectively pausing for conversation and to identify key vocabulary. Students think about, talk about, and respond to the text to actively process the language, ideas, and meaning of the text.
Discussion prompts
In what ways do you provide a context for learning how to talk about texts with others?
How do you use small group reading sessions to expand the language knowledge and vocabulary of the students?
How else might you use text-based discussions to help the students to construct meaning and make connections beyond the text?
One-on-one Reading Conference in Years 3-4
This illustration demonstrates a reading conference between a teacher and a student, which draws upon the principles of dialogic teaching. Dialogic talk is talk that achieves common understandings through structured, cumulative questioning and discussion. It is talk which enhances learning (Alexander, 2008). Research has demonstrated that the use of dialogue as a pedagogical tool develops reasoning, helps students to collectively and individually solve problems, and construct new ideas (Littleton and Mercer, 2013). This discussion is based around a text independently selected by the student which reflects their learning needs and reading interests. Conducting a reading conference allowed the teacher to monitor the student's reading, and provided formative data about their progress and meaning making; including their level of reflection and engagement.
Discussion prompts
How do you identify the specific learning needs of students across the full range of abilities in your classroom?
What process do you use to select and evaluate content and resources that target literacy needs of student groups across the range of abilities in your class?
What opportunities do you provide for students to share their thoughts about what they have read, set goals for future reading and receive feedback from the teacher?
Years 5-6
Whole Group Reading in Year 5-6
In this illustration of Literacy practice the teacher uses a shared reading text to explicitly teach strategies for finding and interpreting context clues to help determine the meaning of unfamiliar words. The teacher models a number of techniques including using definitions, synonyms, antonyms and examples.
Discussion prompts
In what ways are the English curriculum outcomes communicated with your students? How do they know what their next steps in learning are?
How does this teacher highlight key ideas to the students? How does the teacher link back to the learning objective? What questioning techniques do you use to support learning intentions and engagement?
How do you make the link between reading and writing explicit to your students? What is the value of highlighting this reciprocity?
Small Group Reading in Years 5-6
This teacher demonstrates how working with smaller groups can benefit and extend students who are ready to progress to more complex understandings. Focusing on the explicit teaching of vocabulary, the teacher supports students to understand both the meaning and the contextualized use of new vocabulary so they can confidently use it as part of their own repertoire.
Discussion prompts
What strategies does the teacher use to check for student understanding throughout the lesson?
How can you integrate simple strategies for differentiation throughout your literacy teaching?
What evidence did you see of students building on their prior learning?