The Culture of Schooling
Teaching literacy skills throughout grades K-12 is crucial for academic success. Literacy forms the foundation of all learning. By prioritizing literacy education throughout K-12, educators contribute significantly to the holistic development of students, preparing them for the challenges and opportunities they will encounter in their academic journeys and beyond.
Unit 1
Tomorrow's teachers
Inspirations for Teaching Literacy
There are several ways I include or plan to include literacy-based instructional practices within middle and high school Design Technology (DT) courses:
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Incorporating reading a variety of material (research findings, articles, slides, textbooks) related to DT curriculum for a relevant grade level and writing design briefs, reports, reflection, contributing to study guides. Having students practice reading, interpreting, discussing and writing on DT will not only help them reach the objectives of the lessons but also contribute significantly to literacy skills.
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Using discipline-specific vocabulary: Explicitly teach and reinforce the use of design technology-specific vocabulary, such as terms related to materials, tools, processes, and design principles. Encourage students to understand and use these terms in their class discussions and written work.
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Teaching design thinking process: Introducing the design thinking process (empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test) or the equivalent IB Design cycle and have students apply it to their design projects. This helps students enhance the 21st century skills including critical thinking and problem-solving.
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Utilizing multimodal output of their works including oral presenations: by asking students to present their design projects using a combination of visual aids (e.g., CAD models, prototypes, diagrams) and oral explanations would develop their public speaking skills and expressing ideas. These are very meaningful skills they can apply in the future in various fields while helping them develop strong communication skills.
The above activities, and not only, in addition to providing immediate feedback, as well as encouraging peer feedback; designing interdisciplinary projects keeping literacy in mind will help students succeed in DT class as well as in other disciplines.
Teaching Digital Citizenship
1. Why is it important to teach digital citizenship to students?
It’s crucial to teach digital citizenship to students nowadays to ensure their safety and digital literacy as well as netiquette, to support rsponsible online behavior, to let them be aware of possible negative consequences of not following the proper civic enagement while online. Students need to be aware, or metacognitive of their online interaction (of the intention, purpose, outcomes) and we as teachers need to support and develop their critical thinking and evaluation for their successful online engagements.
it’s important to include digital wellness, preparedness, and overal understanding of wellbeing in their curriculum to equip them with the proper mindset. In my case, as a design technology educator and past engineer and data scientist, I work a lot with technollogy and implementing all the above mentioned aspects when planning the yearly units/lessons. For example, in our “Digital citizenship” unit for grade 6 I plan a project for students to create their online portfolio (website), where besides including their information (CV and works/projects) they would need to upload information about digital netiquette. Grade 7, for a similar unit, will work witgh iMovie - creating videos of their understanding and role play of social engineering and cyber attacks and waysw to prevent them. The videos will be used to educate the school community about these issues.
2. How would you teach students what plagiarism is and how to avoid it?
Plagiarism is taking credit to someone else’s works and ideas, which can be done on purpose, or failing to (properly) cite sources. There are several ways to avoid plagiarism, according to the lesson resource videos, including using original ideas, properly citing the source even if it’s your own works (to avoid self-plagiarism), being able to properly paraphrase someone else’s words, or put these words in quotation marks, if using them directly from the source. Whenever in doubt - ask for help from someone who knows (teacher, librarian, media specialist, etc.)
It’s important to note that there are various citation styles and formats. From my own experience, when I was publishing my research from my Master’s program, I was using IEEE citation style - and there are specific rules to know for in-text citation or references depending on the type of work and the purpose whether it’s going to be published in a journal, book, or conference paper, for example.
The way I teach these concepts to my students: i explain the meaning and importance of following citation rules and the possible consequences (i.e., if practicing plagiarism in university - one can be expelled from university and not being considered to be admitted for other programs, etc. ) Reading citation guides available online for a considered citation style. Use resources such as purdue owl, automatic ciattion generators, etc.
Unit 2: Student Diversity and Literacy
What is language development?
Language development is a process of acquiring the skills/abilities to perceive, comprehend, and output language in oral or written form [1]. The crucial key components of language development include: phonological (being able to perceive and manipulate sounds), lexical (vocabulary and word meaning), grammatical (rules and structures of a language), and pragmatic development (appropriatness in a social contexts; following norms, adjusting according to a purpose and a social situation). Language development starts in infancy. The factors that influence language development include and not limited to child's cognitive abilities, culture/context and exposure to language, and any developmental delays or disorders.
How does language development impact reading comprehension?
Language development significantly impacts reading comprehension abilities. Students with better vocabulary knowledge can make sense of the information they are reading: they better understand the meaning, and it takes less time for them to comprehend the concepts they read.
Grammatical knowledge makes it easier to parse the meaning of the complex sentences and further extract the meaning.
Phonological knowledge and awareness helps in decoding skills - translating sounds and phonemes into meaningful language.
Pragmatic knowledge allows understanding how language is used in various contexts and social situations - children can understand overal meaning and the purpose while reading.
Verbal reasoning is also connected to strong language development and associated with inference-making skills. This helps students to go beyond the literal meaning of the text and make connections, draw conclusions, understand tenses and generate inferences.
Background knowledge that is acquired with ealrier experiences also helps support comrehension when students encounter new information in text [2].
How do differences in languages impact literacy development?
Fifty studies of literacy developmemnt in bilingual children were analyzed [3] and it was concluded that differences between languages can have an impact on the literacy development. Research suggests that bi-or-multilinguism impacts children’s ultimate acquisition of literacy via the beneficial effects of bi- or multi- lingualism overall: advanced literacy boosts the development of phonological and phonemic awareness and metacognitive abilities. Thus, literacy can be considered as an advantage in terms of maintaining bi-multi-lingual acquisition in general and developing writing skills in particular.
Some of the differences in languages that may influence literacy development are orthographic differences (variation of the writing system across languages), morphological complexity, linguistic distance and transparency, directionality of written language (e.g., left-to-right), and availability of resources. The mentioned differences can help (or hinder) recognition and comprehension skills, reading and spelling, make connections between letters and sounds, etc [3].
How do you assess your student’s literacy levels?
During my clinical practice, some of the formative assignments that in addition to checking students’ understanding of current topic was also assessing students’ literacy. These assignments are: diagnostic open-end questionairre, or oral questions - tests the ability in students to express/communicate their ideas; written study guides to assess their specific to the subject vocabulary usage. Summative reports would also help me see their comprehension level, language knowledge, their abilities to paraphrase, to cite sources and so on.
How can you differentiate instruction to meet diverse literacy needs?
It’s very important to differentiate, accommodate and adjust lessons and activities based on various cognitive, physical, social and emotional needs. My entire grade that I was teaching during clinical practice are ELLs. This is an example how I differentiated lessons to meet their needs:
Allowing to use translation tools on their laptops; allowing more time when asking questions (when they work in groups/pairs/independently) or other relevant formative tasks; allowing to always ask questions - if something isn’t clear.
Visual support: images and videos are provided when introducing new concepts.
Students are expected to come after classes, if they need additional explanation.
Reference:
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Aguilar-Mediavilla, E., Pérez-Pereira, M., Serrat-Sellabona, E., & Adrover-Roig, D. (2022). Introduction to Language Development in Children: Description to Detect and Prevent Language Difficulties. Children (Basel, Switzerland), 9(3), 412.
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Anderson, V., & Roit, M. (1996). Linking reading comprehension instruction to language development for language-minority students. The Elementary School Journal, 96(3), 295-309.
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Oshchepkova, E. S., Kartushina, N. A., & Razmakhnina, K. O. (2023). Bilingualism and Development of Literacy in Children: A Systematic Review. Psychology in Russia : state of the art, 16(1), 3–25.
Unit 3: Diverse Student Population
Providing accommodations and using assistive technology benefits struggling students and enhances access to learning.
Reference:
Interview with Cohort peers:
Bekshentayeva, K., Hough, T., & Van Hoorn, T., (2024, June 26). Interview [What are the signs of a struggling student?..]. Moreland University: TeachNow, Module 2, Unit 3, Online, Zoom Virtual Class.
Assessing Student learning | Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning | Northern Illinois University. (n.d.). Northern Illinois University. https://www.niu.edu/citl/resources/guides/assessing-student-learning.shtml
Bryant, D. P., Bryant, B. R., & Smith, D. D. (2019). Teaching students with special needs in inclusive classrooms. Sage Publications.
Carlson, J. (2022, October 24). 63 Supports for English language Learners - The Ultimate List. Kid-Inspired Classroom. https://kid-inspired.com/supports-for-ells/#BN-8be051575ed0f7bf
How teachers can help students with special needs navigate distance learning. (n.d.). Greater Good. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_teachers_can_help_students_with_special_needs_navigate_distance_learning
Nordengren, C. (2024, January 7). 10 ways to meet the learning needs of all students. Teach. Learn. Grow. https://www.nwea.org/blog/2023/10-ways-to-meet-the-learning-needs-of-all-students/
Thomas, L. (2019, April 26). 7 Smart, fast ways to do formative assessment. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/article/7-smart-fast-ways-do-formative-assessment/
Tower. (2024, April 17). Identifying special education needs in English language learners. Continental Educational Publisher. https://www.continentalpress.com/blog/special-education-english-language-learners/
What are some signs of learning disabilities? (2018, September 11). https://www.nichd.nih.gov/. https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/learning/conditioninfo/signs
Zhu, W., & Flaitz, J. (2005). Using Focus Group Methodology to Understand International Students' Academic Language Needs: A Comparison of Perspectives. Tesl-Ej, 8(4), n4.