The Language Support Program Professional Learning Guide
The Professional Learning Guide was developed by drawing together the learnings within the regional professional development programs. It aims to provide teachers, coordinators and schools with:
- an understanding of development of oral language and its linguistic structures and features
- identification procedures based on observation of classroom language behaviour through which children and young people with language difficulties may be identified
- an oral language observational profile enabling the identification of specific areas of difficulty
- teaching strategies that directly address the difficulties identified through the screening process and that can be implemented within the classroom
- advice about the implementation of the Language Support Program in a school.
While the Language Support Program is primarily designed to meet the needs of coordinators and teachers of children in the Early Years and the Middle Years, there are opportunities included in the learning modules for teachers of students with language disorders and language difficulties in secondary schools to learn about and use the principles of language support.
Principles underpinning the Professional Learning Guide
The Language Support Program is based on, and assumes that all teachers are aware of principles underpinning literacy development. These principles apply to all stages of schooling: the Early Years, the Middle Years, and the Later Years. The principles are sometimes described as the ‘Eight areas of literacy knowledge’:
- building awareness of oral language to support literacy
- awareness that texts are written for a range of purposes
- word meaning and vocabulary knowledge
- orthographic and morphemic knowledge
- reading aloud to achieve fluency and phrasing
- literal, critical, inferential and creative comprehension outcomes
- recognising and using the forms, linguistic structures and features of written texts
- the use of metacognitive and self-management strategies.
(Munro, 2005) [17]
These areas of literacy knowledge require all teachers, coordinators, and language aides to be aware of the concepts underpinning each area as well as teaching and learning strategies that can be used to support them.
The Professional Learning Guide has been developed to reinforce the knowledge and successful use of these principles.