Language Support Program

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Module 4.3 Teaching strategies: the Middle Years

Module 4.3 allows you to build on the knowledge and skills you acquired in Module 4.1 about the relevance of principles of teaching and learning to the learning environment, and how teaching strategies for students, including those with language difficulties, can be linked to the curriculum. Module 4.2 describes specific teaching strategies and activities for the Early Years.

Note: Teachers of the Middle Years may benefit from reading the sections ‘Activities for ICPAL–Ideas’, ‘Activities for ICPAL–Conventions’, and ‘Activities for ICPAL–Purposes’ for the Early Years (Module 4.2). A number of these can be adapted for students of Years 5–8 with language difficulties.

 

 

Resources

Other reference material

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Glossary

Ability to Learn – The AL in the ICPAL language framework: necessary skills and their prerequisites for the acquisition of oral language.

Conventions – The C in the ICPAL language framework: rules governing the sounds, words, sentences and genres of language.

English Developmental Continuum P–10 – Evidence based indicators of progress, linked to powerful teaching strategies and aligned to the progression points and the standards for the English Domain of the Victorian Essential Learning Standards.

expressive language – The production of a message through speaking and/or gestures or writing. Also known as expression, or language production.

ICPAL language framework – Ideas, Conventions, Purposes and Ability to Learn in both the expressive and receptive areas of (oral) language.

Ideas – The I in the ICPAL language framework: meanings of words, sentences, discourse and topics of language.

Indicators of Progress – Points on the learning continuum that highlight critical understandings required by students in order to progress through curriculum standards.

Purposes – The P in the ICPAL language framework: use of oral language within social interaction; pragmatics.

Receptive language – Ability to understand a message conveyed by another person via expressive language. Also known as language comprehension.

 

Timing

60 minutes

 

Going further

60 minutes

During the Middle Years of Schooling, particularly in secondary schools where a student will encounter many teachers, a Language Support Program should include training and support for teachers across different disciplines and domains:

Integrating the teaching of literacy across different fields of knowledge is an important part of effective literacy teaching. Pressley (2002), and Hall and Harding (2003), emphasise the need for strong connections across the curriculum so that literacy is also an integral part of other content areas.

Literacy teaching and learning are not discrete pursuits. They are undertaken for a purpose, which is to make explicit to both teachers and students when literacy is integrated into other curriculum areas and when connections are made between school and out of school literacy practices. (Czislowski-McKenna et al. 2006) [4].

Professional learning activities

  • Locate, gather and interpret resources

Source Czislowski-McKenna et al. 2006 (on literary teaching and learning), and read about how it describes the role of all teachers as teachers of oral language. If you are an LSP coordinator, develop easily readable information for staff about the role of all teachers as teachers of language. If you are a teacher, read what the paper has to say about oral language teaching.

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