Literacy in General:
Broad Areas of Learning
Three Broad Areas of Learning reflect Saskatchewan’s Goals of Education. K-12 English language arts contributes to the Goals of Education through helping students achieve knowledge, skills, and attitudes related to the following:
1) Lifelong Learners:
Students who are engaged in constructing and applying English language arts knowledge naturally build a positive disposition towards learning. Throughout their study of English language arts, students gain understandings, skills, and strategies to become more competent and confident language users.
2) Sense of Self, Community, and Place:
To learn English language arts, students need not only to use the English language but also to interact with each other. Through the English language arts, students learn about themselves, others, and the world. The students use language to define who they are and to explore who they might become. They use language to interact and to respond effectively with others and to build community.
3) Engaged Citizens:
In the English language arts, students learn how language enables them to make a difference in their personal, family, and community lives. Language gives them a sense of agency and an ability to make a difference in their community and the world in which they live. (Source: https://curriculum.gov.sk.ca/webapps/moe-curriculum-BBLEARN/index.jsp?view=teaching&lang=en&subj=english_language_arts&level=20)
Cross-curricular Competencies
The Cross-curricular Competencies are four interrelated areas containing understandings, values, skills, and processes which are considered important for learning in all areas of study. These competencies are reflective of the Common Essential Learnings and are intended to be addressed in each area of study at each grade level.
1) Developing Thinking
Learners construct knowledge to make sense of the world around them. They develop understanding by building on what is already known. This key competency concerns the ability to make sense of information, experiences, and ideas through thinking contextually, critically, and creatively. The philosophy of learning in English language arts is inquiry-based, and students use their language and thinking skills to explore a range of topics, issues, and themes.
2) Developing Identity and Interdependence
The ability to act autonomously in an interdependent world requires an awareness of the natural environment, of social and cultural expectations, and of the possibilities for individual and group accomplishments. It assumes the possession of a positive self-concept and the ability to live in harmony with others and with the natural and constructed worlds. Achieving this competency requires understanding, valuing, and caring for oneself; understanding, valuing, and respecting human diversity and human rights and responsibilities; and understanding and valuing social and environmental interdependence and sustainability. English language arts requires students to explore ideas and issues of identity, social responsibility, diversity, sustainability, and personal agency.
3) Developing Literacies
Literacies provide many ways, including the use of various language systems and media, to interpret the world and express understanding of it. Literacies involve the evolution of interrelated skills, strategies, and understandings that facilitate an individual’s ability to participate fully and equitably in a variety of roles and contexts – school, home, and local and global communities. To achieve this competency requires developing skills, strategies, and understandings related to various literacies in order to explore and interpret the world and communicate meaning. English language arts requires students to use different literacies, including language literacy, effectively and contextually to represent ideas and understanding
in multiple, flexible ways.
4) Developing Social Responsibility
Social responsibility is how people positively contribute to their physical, social, and cultural environments. It requires the ability to participate with others in accomplishing shared or common goals. This competency is achieved through using moral reasoning processes, engaging in communitarian thinking and dialogue, and taking action to contribute to learners’ physical, social, and cultural environments. In English language arts, students explore their social responsibility and work toward common goals to improve the lives of others and the natural and constructed worlds.
1) Inquiry Education: This approach begins with open-ended questions. Students learn by responding to these questions through reading, research, discussion, and problem solving, facilitated and supported by their teachers. (Lattimer pg.17)
2) Project Based Learning: Students are challenged to design a project such as a physical model, visual presentation, or digital representation that demonstrates their understanding of the subject under investigation and presents an original response to an authentic audience. (pg.18)
3) Linked Learning: Linked Learning is a whole-school model that insists that all students regardless of background or previous achievement, need to be prepared for success in college, career, and community life. (pg.18)
Reading for Learning:
1) Discipline-Driven Reading: The reading done in schools needs to reflect reading in real life. People in the world read to get answers to real problems. Different professions approach texts in different ways such as skimming or reading in depth. It is important that students are able to use all methods when reading (pg.31)
2) Complex texts: look at different types of print besides the textbook such. Challenge students to read more complex texts. This can be useful if the teacher uses scaffolding to guide the student in their reading. (pg.32)
3) Embedded and Responsive Strategy Instruction: Use short mini-lessons to build background knowledge or model reading practices appropriate for the area of study. Using conferences, observations, and informal assessments will help the teacher get an idea of how the students are making out. (pg.32)
4) Practice, Practice, Practice: Give students the chance to practice on a wide variety of texts. Allow time in class for students to read and respond to texts appropriate to their area of study. (pg.32)
Writing For Real:
Discipline-Based writing: Have students write in a manor that is common within their discipline. (pg.60)
Authentice Purpose and audience: Have students write responses to real questions. Have students share their work with classmates, or members of the community, validating their writing. (pg.60)
Collaboration and communication: Provide opportunities for students to work together with their classmates in all stages of writing. Show students how important collaboration is by making them responsible for their contributions to the team. (pg,60)
Writing is thinking: Be flexible when the students are writing so they can adapt to meet the needs of their content. Show students strategies authors use when writing and have them consider how they would use them in their own writing. (pg.60)
Metacognition: Make sure students reflect on their own learning process so they can use the tools they have learned when asked to write in the future. (pg.60)
Practice, practice, practice: Give students multiple opportunities to write using a range of different structures in their discipline. Show students the value of writing and ensure that they are getting the support that they need. (pg.60)
Authentic Listening and Speaking:
The need for effective oral communication: In order for students to be successful in their areas of learning, they need to have effective formal and informal communication skills. They need to be able to speak and listen effectively in different situations. (pg.79)
Authentic Discipline-Focused Inquiry: Structure learning around open-ended or essential questions. Engage students in collaborative problem solving that provides reasons to talk with each other. (pg.88)
Teacher as Facilitator: Encourage student-to-student discussion where students respond to each other. Avoid giving students the answer, step in only to help students dig deeper in their answers. Set students up for success by intentionally teaching both the content knowledge and the speaking and listening skills needed prior to discussion. (pg.88)
Structured Instruction and Support: Provide models and instruction around listening strategies, presentation skills and use of academic vocabulary. Teach students to adapt their use of language, structure, and tone for varying formats and contexts. Use self-assessment and peer evaluation to guide assessment. (pg.88)
Practice, Practice, Practice: Provide regular opportunities for students to speak and listen in the classroom. Vary communication structures. (pg.88)
Literacy in the Shop
After looking through the textbook, these are methods and practices that will be the most useful when helping students becoming strong learners of literacy. I have also found a few things that will aid the students in literacy learning in the shop. There are games and websites that will provide a plethora of knowledge to students and teachers alike.
1) http://www.rulergame.net/
This site would be an awesome way for the students to develop the ability to read a measuring tape quickly and accurately. Ability to read a measuring tape arguably one of the first fundamental skills students will learn in the shop, and it is a skill that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. This game will aid in developing the skills.
2) http://workshopcompanion.com/index.htm
This site will aid teachers with developing knowledge over a broad selection of woodworking literacy. It provides tips and tricks along with instructional videos. It also has sections for tool maintenance which is something that as shop teachers we will have to deal with regularly, as tools break regularly.
3) http://www.esdc.gc.ca/en/essential_skills/tools/welder_fs.page
This website will be for a welding unit. It is a Government of Canada document that will prepare students for what to expect in the welding field. Trade classes such as welding and construction are geared toward preparing students for life in that trade so this will be a helpful tool especially for teachers. Helping them planning lessons that will benefit the students.
4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqM7ekLfSmA&list=PL4B8173887CB4CD24
This video channel on YouTube would be extremely helpful to show the kids in a classroom. Larry Haun is an experienced carpenter and in his videos he goes through the entire of framing houses from layout to putting up the roof. The videos have humor in them so they would be useful to keeping students attention.
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