Last Friday, we had a Manaiakalani Teacher Only Day with a focus on literacy. We had a fantastic keynote presentation by Dr Rae Si'ilata. During the day, we also went to 3 workshops run by teachers in our schools. I took a workshop on my inquiry from last year, where I researched, used and adapted Peter Worley's Concept Box Framework into my teaching to support development of critical thinking.
Here are the slides from my workshop:
The challenge: There is a disparity between the level of oral language and vocabulary which the year 5-6 extension children use and the level of language and vocabulary they can read and recognise in written texts.
I asked the children in my year 5 & 6 extension class about their reading habits using this google form:
The challenge: There is a disparity between the level of oral language and vocabulary which the year 5-6 extension children use and the level of language and vocabulary they can read and recognise in written texts.
These children are all reading above their chronological age, so are good readers. As a result, I have hypothesised that using their strong reading as a medium, I will be able to support their development of oral language when participating in discussions around texts. I will do this using roles formed around the 10 language functions as explained in Teaching Pragmatic Language Awareness as an Integral Aspect of Reading and Language Arts Instruction (Monica Gordon Pershey).
The 10 Language Functions (Halliday, 1973; Smith, 1977) explain why the language is being used. They are:
- Instrumental
- Regulatory
- Interactional
- Personal
- Imaginative
- Heuristic
- Informative
- Divertive
- Authoritative/contractual
- Perpetuation
I have used the text, Teaching Pragmatic Language Awareness as an Integral Aspect of Reading and Language Arts Instruction (Monica Gordon Pershey) to make up these support cards and am in the process of making them more child-friendly using this text on thoughtco and this text on eltguide.
