Friday, March 15, 2019

LTrend - Inquiry Question 3

Explain why you judge this to be the most important and catalytic issue of learning for this group of learners this year (In chemistry, a catalytic substance one  which increases the speed of a chemical reaction).

I think that increasing the reading comprehension ability of these ELLs in my inquiry group is the most important and catalystic issue of learning for them this year. Here are my reasons why:

Literacy Learning Progression refers to reading (and writing) as interactive tools, “that students use to engage with all the learning areas of the New Zealand Curriculum.” That means these learners need to do more than just to read (and write). They need to use their reading (and writing) to meet the demands of the NZ curriculum. These demands are integrated to all teaching and learning activities which develop their key competencies as well as all knowledge and skills in all learning areas. Without knowledge or confidence in their use of these interactive tools or lack thereof, these ELLs will be hindered from all effective learning, starting from language learning to all learning across all curriculum learning areas. Their core learning therefore in secondary school will be hampered.

From experience, I feel this is one main reason why some ELLs fail to achieve, frustrated to learn, or even sustain themselves in formal learning. They lack the knowledge and skills in using these interactive tools for their own benefit. Some content teachers do not even feel they were trained or equipped with knowledge and skills on how to help these learners use these interactive tools in their subject areas. They end up not being able to teach or reach those ELLs in their subject areas, and consequently these ELLs are unable to learn or achieve any in those learning areas.

The complexity in all aspects of learning increases as these ELLs move up through the school system. The literary texts they read (and write) in English classes become more complex in information presented and so as the language structures and features used. Likewise, in other content-based subjects the subject matter become more abstract, specialised, and technical. These year 10 ELLs are already well below the expected curriculum level (level 4) which they should be reading (and writing) at, by approximately two or more curriculum levels. This means the disparity or gap will get bigger and wider if no urgent intervention is taken now or this year to start bridging this gap. It will be much harder when they reach year 11 next year to do NCEA in all learning areas while they are still struggling to read basic texts with simple layout and the help of illustrations. The New Zealand curriculum states, "All learning areas (with the possible exception of languages) require students to receive, process, and present ideas or information using the English language as a medium." If they are more able to receive information through the receptive language skills of reading (and listening), then they will be better able in their processing and presenting language skills.

Finally, I really feel that it is very important and catalytic for the learning of ELLs in my inquiry group this year to focus teaching and learning on various constructs or domains of reading comprehension - such as decoding, fluency, word or vocabulary knowledge acquisition, and reading comprehension strategies. The learners should be exposed more to a variety of unfamiliar text types with increasing levels of difficulties and subject-related content. These are all valued learning outcomes in teaching reading comprehension and should be catalytic in the teaching of ELLs in my inquiry group this year. 


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