Assignment1 ECL310 NaomiMathew 212198847

ECL310 Assignment 1

Middle Years Learner Profile and Plan.

Your student name: Naomi Mathew

Introduction

This assignment focuses on the reading and writing capabilities of Eleanor who is in grade 6 and

Meg who is in grade 5. They were assessed on their reading and writing of a PROBE test, their

comprehension answers based on the reading of the text, their On Demand performance reports,

their planning of a persuasive task, their draft persuasive writing piece, their revised and edited

persuasive piece as well as a recording of Eleanor and Meg listening to and speaking about their

interests and multi-literate practices.

Learner Profiles

Based on the assessment results, Eleanor and Meg’s strengths and areas of need have been listed in

the table below. These strengths and areas of need indicated in the table below would suggest that

Eleanor and Meg would both benefit from writing tasks that focus on appropriate sentence

structuring which would also include choosing the correct punctuation and vocabulary. As an added

benefit, a task such as the one mentioned previously would also allow for the practice in spelling. A

suitable reading task for Eleanor and Meg would be one that promotes the skills involved in

effective and accurate reading as well as the decoding of texts.

Student One: Eleanor skill evidence Link to AusVELS

Strengths Reading: Eleanor shows the ability to explain and decode information that is implied in the text.

When answering the comprehension questions for the text, Beans, Eleanor stated that the special drink Cortes was given was a “peace offering” which she deduced from the fact that Cortes came to invade the Aztec empire and a “short time later”, he was meeting with the Aztec leader. Seeing as how the drink was reserved for the “wealthy and powerful”,

Reading and viewing Level 5:Students “analyse and explain…implied information…and explain their own responses to them.”

Deakin University, Unit ECL310

Eleanor understood that Cortes’ invasion was probably a successful one, hence the “peace offering” or special drink. (See Appendix 1a)

Writing: Eleanor understands the appropriate writing conventions to formulate a proper sentence.

For example, she wrote “Our school looks horrendous!” to emphasis her point.(See Appendix 2a)

Writing Level 5:“When writing, they demonstrate understanding of grammar, select specific vocabulary and use accurate spelling and punctuation, editing their work to provide structure and meaning.”

Areas of Need Reading: Eleanor has difficulty with locating information directly stated in the text.

When answering Question 3 in Beans comprehension, Eleanor states that Columbus “probably” talked about the beans however in the text, it states that “[n]othing more was heard about the beans”. (See Appendix 1a)

Reading and viewing Level 5:Students “analyse and explain literal…information…and explain their own responses to them.”

Writing:Eleanor needs practice in using language features that evoke meaning and are appropriate to the type of text.

Eleanor uses language features such as rhetorical questions but does not fully understand how to use them for full impact. For example, she begins her final paragraph in the body of her persuasive piece with “How are we meant to get what we want if no one asks us about what we want?” (See Appendix 2b)

Writing Level 5.5:Students “[choose] and [experiment] with…language features”

Student Two: Meg skill evidence Link to AusVELS

Strengths Reading: Meg is able to infer and evaluate information indirectly stated in the text and make connections with the information stated.

When answering Question 4 of the PROBE comprehension questions, Meg correctly evaluated that the bird was called Captain Hook because “it looked like

Reading and Viewing Level 4:Students “describeliteral and implied meaning connecting ideas in different texts”


a…parrot that would be in books and movies on Captain Hook’s shoulder.” (See Appendix 1b)

Writing: Ability to formulate appropriate structure and ideas for the type of text created, in this case, a persuasive piece.

For example, in Meg’s first draft of her persuasive piece, Meg starts her first body paragraph with “My first argument is…” and she continues to write in a similar manner for her second and third paragraph. This demonstrates her understanding of appropriate text structure for a persuasive piece. (See Appendix 3)

Writing Level 3.5:Students “create…persuasive texts for a widening range of audiences demonstrating increasing control over text structures”

Areas of Need Reading: Meg struggles to support her interpretations from the actual information given in the text.

Meg struggled to use the text to support her interpretations. For example, when answering Question 3 of the PROBE comprehension task, Meg can recall that the other kids expected the parrot to talk. She tried skimming over the text to support her answer and justified it with the fact that “it couldn’t talk” but did not reference the part in the text where it directly states “to our disappointment, it couldn’t speak’. (See Appendix 1b)

Reading and viewing Level 4:Students “describe literal…meaning”

Writing: Meg struggles with sentence structure, punctuation, grammar and spelling

For example, in Meg’s re-draft of her persuasive text, she writes “Are tethers mad or like buying crap cose were in grade four for cring out loud!” (See Appendix 4)

Writing Level 3:Students “demonstrate understanding of grammar and choose vocabulary and punctuation appropriate to the purpose and context of their writing”


Mini-Lessons ReadingLesson Focus:

Eleanor will specifically focus on the flow of the narrative so that she focuses on decoding the

meaning of the narrative as a whole which relates to AUSVELS standard from Level 5: “Navigate and

read texts for specific purposes applying appropriate text processing strategies, for example

predicting and confirming, monitoring meaning, skimming and scanning (ACELY1702)”. Meg will

focus on monitoring meaning of the text and cross checking so that she is constantly evaluating

what is written and if that makes sense which relates to the AUSVELS standard from Level 4: “Use

comprehension strategies to build literal and inferred meaning to expand content knowledge,

integrating and linking ideas and analysing and evaluating texts (ACELY1692)”.

Resources:

Eleanor and Meg will each have access to a copy of Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer as well as one iPad

each which they will use for recording purposes. They will also need a piece of paper and a pen.

Introduction:

For the introduction, Meg and Eleanor will be encouraged to write down their predictions for the

novel based on the visuals and written text inside (apart from the actual narrative) or on the cover

of the book which will set the context for what the narrative is about.

Elaboration:

As Meg and Eleanor are required to focus on the meaning of the texts and using reading strategies

to understand the narrative as a whole, the teacher will use modelled reading in the first part of the

lesson while Meg and Eleanor confirm or change their predictions. The teacher will model good

reading strategies such as checking if the words make sense in context when a mistake is made,

monitoring reading by asking questions and rereading when a sentence does not make sense.

Furthermore, the teacher will practice accurate and fluent reading.

Practice:


For practice, Meg and Eleanor will be required to record themselves reading using the iPad. While

reading, they are to practice appropriate strategies such as rereading, checking for cohesion when a

sentence does not make sense, asking questions when a part of the story does not make sense. If

there is a part of the story which Meg and Eleanor do struggle with and cannot understand after

using their reading strategies, they can write it down on a piece of paper and discuss it with their

peer first before discussing it with the teacher. Ongoing assessment of reading strategies will occur

while Meg and Eleanor are reading to determine how effectively they are using their reading

strategies.

Review:

For the review, students will read over the parts of the text that they had trouble with and try to

apply the newly learned strategies to help themselves. The teacher will enter in a discussion of the

strategies that worked for them which did not previously. Once they have finished reading the text,

the teacher will use Read and Retell as an assessment strategy to gauge how the strategies have

helped with the students’ understanding of the text.

Writing

Lesson Focus:

Eleanor will focus on creating meaning through her writing by concentrating on including

appropriate language features which relates to AUSVELS standard from Level 6: “Plan, draft and

publish imaginative, informative and persuasive texts, choosing and experimenting with text

structures, language features, images and digital resources appropriate to purpose and audience

(ACELY1714)”. Meg will focus on her grammar and punctuation by recognising how the correct

word and sentence looks and sounds like which relates to AUSVELS standard Level 3: “Reread and

edit texts for meaning, appropriate structure, grammatical choices and punctuation (ACELY1683)”

Resources:

Eleanor and Meg will have access to one copy of Artemis Fowl Eoin Colfer and a laptop each. The

teacher needs to have a page from Artemis Fowl printed out, a copy of a dictionary and a

thesaurus.

Introduction:


The teacher will demonstrate writing a paragraph with appropriate structure, punctuation and

language features to model for Meg and Eleanor what an interesting and grammatically correct

paragraph looks like. This will draw Meg and Eleanor’s attention to appropriate sentence structure

and language features that have been included and allow them to visually recognise what the

sentence should look like

Elaboration:

The teacher and students will take part in guided writing using the printed out page from Artemis

Fowl. The teacher will cut up the words on the page into sentences, highlighting the appropriate

sentence structure, punctuation and use of words. It will also draw attention to the language that

has been used in a fantasy novel. Words that are unknown will be looked up in a dictionary and

clarified.

Practice:

Meg and Eleanor will use the printed out page from Artemis Fowl which has now been cut up into

words, phrases and punctuation marks. The words, phrases and punctuation marks from each

sentence will be jumbled up and Meg and Eleanor have to put them back into an appropriate form.

Meg and Eleanor can use their strategies they used in reading which were rereading and asking

whether it makes sense to help them confidently create sentences. This will demonstrate their

understanding of appropriate sentence structure which will give the teacher a clear way to assess

Meg and Eleanor.

Review:

In the review section, Meg and Eleanor will use their laptops to draft an imaginative piece which

would be an alternative ending to the text Artemis Fowl. Meg will use her knowledge from the

guided writing session to focus on sentence structure and punctuation as well as using a dictionary

to help her with spelling. Eleanor will use knowledge of the book Artemis Fowl to decide which

language features would be appropriate in an imaginative piece and a thesaurus to help guide her

vocabulary choice. Meg and Eleanor will also read out their short endings and the teacher will take

note of the sentence structure, punctuation and language features apparent in both pieces of

writing and their reading capabilities.


Rationale: The focus for the writing mini lesson was on appropriate sentence structure and language form for

a certain type of writing piece which in this case, was imaginative. The reason for this is because

both Meg and Eleanor struggled with creating proper sentences with correct grammar and

punctuation in their final drafts of their persuasive pieces. An example of this can be seen when

Meg “Are tethers mad or like buying crap cose were in grade four for cring out loud!” (See

Appendix 4) in her persuasive piece. It was clear that Meg needed additional practice with sentence

structuring, punctuation and visually recognising if the statement or phrase looks appropriate as

knowing that will encourage her to check her work. The focus of the mini lesson was also on

appropriate language features. As well as focusing on sentence structure, it was noticed that

Eleanor was attempting to use language features appropriate to a persuasive piece such as

rhetorical questions and exaggeration as evidenced in her persuasive piece. However, I felt that her

writing piece was quite good in all other aspects and that she was ready to experiment more with

language features to improve her writing a bit more.

For the reading and writing mini lessons, I chose to use modelled reading and guided writing

respectively. I chose modelled or shared reading because I believe that there are so many different

factors that contribute to a fluent reader such as speed, expression, pronunciation and so on. As

such, modelled reading provides Meg and Eleanor with an audial and visual example of how to

achieve each of those components. Meg and Eleanor’s primary area for improvement in reading

would be their ability to decode meaning in the text and to recognise when an error has been

made. Modelled reading allows the teacher to demonstrate strategies needed to solve their issue

such as rereading and so on. Modelled reading also gives students the chance to think critically

about the text as well as allowing them to access texts at a greater reading level than they are at

(Winch et al. 2010, p. 152). This was especially useful because Eleanor is at a higher reading level

than Meg and modelled reading allows the teacher to guide Meg through a text at a higher level

than she is at as well as giving them the opportunity to understand what is being read without

having to focus on their reading skills. Similarly, I chose guided writing because it involves more

input from Meg and Eleanor and allowed them to work with the teacher to understand proper

sentence structure and language features used in the type of text studied. Both Meg and Eleanor

showed some sort of lacking in sentence structuring in their persuasive pieces while Eleanor could

be challenged with use of language features and as such, it is important to go over the foundations

of creating a type of text with the students.


For the reading mini-lesson, the fantasy and adventure book, Artemis Fowl was chosen as that is

something of interest for Meg and Eleanor and it was also used in the writing lesson as they are

already familiar with the text. The introduction activity for reading was chosen because it allows

Meg and Eleanor to understand that meaning is placed everywhere and that decoding a text

requires you to decode visuals, written text and other forms of writing. The modelled reading was

chosen to demonstrate appropriate reading skills and strategies and as such would give Meg and

Eleanor the tools needed for their independent work. The independent work was chosen because it

allowed Meg and Eleanor to apply their strategies and skills but also allowed them to listen back to

themselves reading so that they might be able to pick up on possible improvement areas and

patterns in reading that they might have. This is done so that if they cannot understand why they

struggle to read a certain part or understand it, the teacher and their peer may go over it with them

to help them learn. The independent and modelled reading activities were also chosen because

they “can support and scaffold learners…[and] target and differentiate their instruction” (Winch et

al. 2010, p. 150) which is a particularly effective form of learning. Similarly to the reading activities,

the writing activities were also chosen because they were allowed for scaffolded learning. Each of

the tasks in the writing lesson slowly gives the students control over their writing. According to

Winch et al. (2010), the teacher and the students should participate in the joint construction of the

text which involves the discussion and sorting of the type of texts appropriate for a certain genre as

well as the discussion and contribution about how the text should be structured before the

students start their independent writing. This is to ensure that the teacher guides the students in

the right direction while allowing them to participate more. The independent activity for the writing

lesson was chosen because it allows the students demonstrate their understanding in a creative

way. It was also purposefully completed on a laptop so that they could check their spelling and

sentence structure as they complete it.

A number of assessment strategies have been chosen for the reading and writing lessons which

include Read and Retell, ongoing observational assessment as well as using the reading of Meg and

Eleanor’s final imaginative piece for writing and reading. The ongoing assessment is done while the

student’s do their independent assessment and is important to have in a lesson because it allows

teachers to monitor progress in work and if any adjustments need to be made to their teaching

(Winch et al. 2010, p. 136). The Read and Retell assessment “provides information about

comprehension, sequencing of ideas and writing skills” (Department of Education, Science and

Training 2002) which provides the information required to assess Meg and Eleanor’s decoding of


meaning in the text. Meg and Eleanor’s final draft of their imaginative piece will be used as an

assessment of their reading and writing which could be particularly effective as Winch et al. (2010)

states that a good practice to have in literacy is to link reading and writing tasks. This is due to the

fact that written text and verbal speech are closely linked and can help to consolidate learning.

References


Winch, G., Johnston, R., March, P., Ljungdahl, L. & Holliday, M. (2010), Literacy Reading, Writing and Children’s Literature (4th edition), Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, Victoria.

Department of Education, Science and Training 2002, Read and Retell, Department of Education, Science and Training, retrieved 9th August 2014, <http://www.myread.org/monitoring_read.htm>

Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority 2013, pp. 9-14, Standards and progression point examples, Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, retrieved 8th August 2014, <http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/auscurric/progressionpoints/AusVELS-EnglishProgressionPoints-2013.pdf>

Appendices


Appendix 1a: Eleanor answers PROBE questions Beans notes

-no prior knowledge of Christopher Columbus but does have knowledge on chocolate

-Question 1 (inferential): correct

-Question 2(inferential): correct

-Question 3(evaluation): states that Columbus probably talked about it because he was surprised about how protective they were of it. It was actually noted that ‘nothing more was heard about the beans’ so it is more likely that he didn’t talk about beans that were insignificant that he didn’t know about. Incorrect.

-Question 4(evaluation): recognises that they were a form of currency and therefore that must have made Mayans protective of them. Correct.

-Question 5(inferential): Eleanor mentions that it was due to overpopulation but that is not mentioned anywhere. Probably an educated guess which relates to her prior knowledge ie. Why English came to Australia. Incorrect.

-Question 6(vocabulary): correct

-Question 7(evaluation): Eleanor states that it was a peace offering. Evaluated from the fact that Cortes came to invade and soon after was meeting with the Aztec leader. Special drink is said to be ‘reserved for the powerful’. Eleanor states that it was peace offering because it was reserved for wealthy people-not powerful. Correct. On the right path.

-Question 8(reorganisation): correct ‘there wasn’t many’ equals rare.

-Question 9(inferential): correct. Gave right reasoning.

-Question 10(inferential): mixes up information provided. Columbus saw the Mayans with the beans. Cortes discovered it when he attacked the Aztec empire. Incorrect.

Inference: 3/5 Evaluation: 2/3 Vocabulary: 1/1 Reorganisation: 1/1 Total: 7/10

Appendix 1b: Meg answers PROBE questions Parrots notes


-Question 1 (evaluation): incorrect. Stated that Larry would not be able to teach the bird but it could’ve been that Larry was too opinionated.

-Question 2 (vocabulary): correct. On the right track to stating that feathers was plumage. Meg’s focus was perhaps on the quantity of feathers but she still knew that it was feathers.

-Question 3 (inference): correct. Meg states that the other kids were disappointed which is true but cannot recall exactly why she thinks that. Eventually she does reference, in a small way, the bit of the story that talks about the bird not being able to talk.

-Question 4 (evaluation): correct. Meg made the connection that Captain Hook is a pirate’s name and that the parrot looked like a bird that would sit on a pirate’s shoulder which was mentioned in the story.

-Question 5 (evaluation): correct. Gordon was the owner.

-Question 6 (reorganisation): incorrect. Unable to recall the number of times and guesses 5.

-Question 7 (inference): correct. Bird would get a reward/treat in the form of the food and therefore encourage it to talk.

-Question 8 (inference): correct. “No…coz it said they gave up”

-Question 9 (evaluation): correct. Parrot heard “no Larry” many times and learnt it that way.

-Question 10 (reorganisation): correct.

Inference: 3/3 Vocabulary: 1/1 Evaluation: 3/4 Reorganisation: 1/2 Total: 8/10

Appendix 2a: Eleanor persuasive piece re-draft page 1


Appendix 2b: Eleanor persuasive re-draft page 2


Appendix 3: Meg persuasive piece 1 st draft


Appendix 4: Meg persuasive piece re-draft


Assignment1 ECL310 NaomiMathew 212198847

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