Science and Technology Lessons with Literacy Tasks -We do and You do

These lessons represent an major shift and suggest a considerable amouint of 'buy in'by staff of the need to include literacy tasks in all lessons. A physical comparison was made between texts and worksheets taken off the internt and lessons created to address the learning needs of our students.

Science and Technology Lesson Enhancement Workshop

This is the bottom line. How do we get students to actually read a text in class. Find a disciplinary text, chunk it, add a vocabulary exercise, a survey question, a scan and predict task, keyword highlighing and a summary or exit strategy. See Bilboa as a basic example.

TOD literacy Issues

I've used this document in the passed. It highlighs the feaures of struggling readers and compares this with more competent readers. When we teach a text we must endeavour to help students improve their comprehension skills by the explicit teaching of those skills. There is also, a non-fictiction summary marking rubric. Students tend to get very compeditive with themselves (and with there peers) when their grads are below par. 'Why am I still on Level 3, Sir, and she is on Level 4?'

Teacher Only Day Science and Technology Departments

Teachers read one of the acdemic readings, completed an Exit Ticket and then feedback to the rest of the department. This was followed by working in pairs to develop a vocabulary strategy or a reading task. Examples to follow.

AsTTle Writing Review Year 9 and 10 Term 4 2024

I asked teachers to complete a review of the asttle marking process. This simple analysis of student work is designed to encourage teacher planning for 2025.
I asked for the pluses and gaps so teachers could decide on areas they must focus on next year. One teacher has already shown me how she is focusing on 'Other Punctuation' beyond the basic stops and caps. This is an attempt to move her students from Level 4 to Level 5 or even 6. It's also worth mentioning, that one of the marking panel leaders for the corequisite writing exam, said recently, when it comes to the mechanics, if a candidate uses capitals and full stops, that's a tick.
Anecdotally, several of the students sitting the writing test put their hands up and asked, "Sir, what is the 'body' of the thing (essay)?" Teachers usually have their favourite writing frame but perhaps the use of TEXAS framework may need to be a department policy in 2025.
There are many strands on which teachers may choose to develop for 2025 but my recommendation involves the teaching of the language features of explanation writing, functional grammar and cohesion through the use of synonyms, repetition and the use of pronouns.
As we plan for the rollout of the foundation units, the link between the asttle Writing and and the Corequisite writing assessment becomes more acute.