Literacy Teaching Toolkit 7-10: Technology

... Literacy Teaching Toolkit: Technologies. Lovely to have you here and it's great to be able to talk about the technologies toolkit finally, very exciting. So thanks for joining us. I acknowledge that it's the last week of term and very pleased to see how many of you are turning up in the waiting room to join us for this session. So before we begin, I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which we all come to this session, pay my respects to elders past, present and

emerging. I am beaming to you from Wurundjeri lands today, so I pay my respects to their elders. So we've got - first of all I'll just introduce myself. My name is Narissa Leung and I'm an education consultant here in Victoria and I am a former primary school principal and now I mainly do most of my work in literacy. You can see me on all of the pipes there. I'm @rissl on Twitter and I'm Oz Lit Teacher on Facebook and Instagram and my email address is narissaleung@gmail.com. Just in case you're

wondering, I don't have an eduMail, or education mail, email address. There is a Narissa who works at Bastow. Please don't email her. She does get a few of my emails. So if you do want to get in contact with me, my email address is narissaleung@gmail.com. And there is a photo of me pre COVID when I used to brush my hair every day. Everyone remembers what that's like, right? All right. So tonight the structure is - and if you haven't joined us before, I just thought I'd give you a bit of an intro

duction to the structure. Basically I really believe in what the research says around the importance of talk and I know that we can't talk face to face in this environment, but we do have the option of using the Padlet. So I've put an address on the screen there, tinyurl.com/LitTeachTech, as in literacy teaching technology, and the idea of this Padlet is for you to share any thoughts that you have during this session, any connections, any resources and just to - this is our way of having a conve

rsation because we can't obviously have it face to face. So I've used a quote from Fisher and Frey's book. This is Content-Area Conversations - this is a really good book, actually - and they say, "The academic discourse of the classroom, both oral and written, is the conduit for learning ... Students must be actively engaged in the academic discourse of the classroom if they are to understand the content. "And that's why we have the Padlet because we know that if I just stand here and talk at y

ou for the whole night, you're not going to engage with the content and, you know, really remember it and take it away. So we want as much as possible for you to contribute to the Padlet, so the address is on the screen there for you. Okay, so the understanding goals for tonight - we've got "Participants will: Understand the importance of explicit teaching of disciplinary literacy in the technologies classroom", and I'm going to talk about the different idea about technologies, what does that me

an, "Develop knowledge of a range of effective disciplinary literacy related teaching practices for the technologies classroom" and deepen your knowledge of the range of supporting resources, okay? The success criteria for this - you'll be able to describe reasons why explicit teaching of disciplinary literacy is important and I'm going to define "disciplinary literacy". That is so hard to say really quickly. I'm going to define that, we'll start off by defining that - list a range of practical

literacy related activities for the technologies classroom and then you'll be able to list some of the supporting resources. I can't possibly - I would love to, but I can't possibly teach you everything there is to know about literacy in the technologies classroom tonight. So it's really an introduction and that's why I'm going to direct you to different resources on the Literacy Teaching Toolkit so you can further your own knowledge in this area. So we're going to look at the what and the why o

f disciplinary literacy. We're going to look at the technology toolkit, or the Literacy Teaching Toolkit: Technologies, and have a little bit of a focus on vocabulary and then on writing instruction. So if you want to introduce yourselves in the Padlet, that would be great, I'd love to know why you've come to this session. Are you a literacy leader and you've been tasked with getting other people on board with literacy in your school, or maybe you're a technologies teacher and you're really keen

to find out "how can I strengthen the literacy practice in my classroom". So welcome to both sets of people and welcome if you've been to some of the other sessions too. So we're going to start off with the what and the why of disciplinary literacy and start off by actually defining what are we talking about when we're talking about this disciplinary literacy? So for some of you that might be a really new concept, and that's totally fine because that's exactly what we're going to talk about ton

ight. So I'm going to start with a couple of quotes just to get you in the thinking about what is disciplinary literacy and then we can start to think about what's your role in this in the school. This comes from the toolkit - "Given the distinct ways different academic disciplines use language to make their own meanings, students need to develop differentiated literacy skills and strategies for interacting with the texts of each discipline. "Now, this is important because my provocation - and I

always start these sessions with this same provocation - is particularly in a high school setting the teachers in the other subjects might be thinking well, literacy, isn't that the English teacher's job, why do I need to teach this? So what I want to talk to you about is why isn't this just the role of the English teacher, why does every teacher, particularly in a secondary setting, need to be a teacher of literacy? So here we can look at there's different ways that different disciplines use l

iteracy and that's one of the things that we've got to keep in mind. The second - "It is no longer appropriate to talk about 'literacy across the curriculum'" - and this is a term that used to be used quite a lot, we did have a big push on this for a while, "literacy across the curriculum" - "Instead there is a need to delineate 'curriculum literacies,' specifying the interface between a specific curriculum and its literacies rather than imagining there is a singular literacy that could be sprea

d homogenously across the curriculum. "So what they're talking about here is we're saying that yes literacy is required - you know, reading, writing, speaking and listening, they're required in all of the subjects, but I guess we've got to be a bit more tuned in to the nuances of the types of literacy or how we go about the reading in different curriculum areas because that's not the same. So yes we might use the same skills of decoding understanding across all of the curriculum areas, but in ea

ch curriculum area they have their own little nuances and things that we need to turn the volume up on. So we've got to become aware of what these are and our teaching needs to recognise these differences, okay? So if we have a look at - let's have a look - whole school literacy, and this has been - there has been a big focus on whole school literacy in secondary settings in the past. So yes, we went through a phase and maybe your school is still working on this and it's not to say that that's w

rong, it's absolutely not wrong. There are - general literacy we're talking about things like the comprehension strategies, so questioning, how might questioning look in an English classroom as opposed to a maths classroom as opposed to a technologies classroom. So sometimes we would sit down and we would have a professional development session for all of the teachers in a school and we'd say okay, well, this is what inferring is, this is a comprehension strategy, and now you've just got to thin

k about how this might apply to you in your curriculum area, all right? Writing to learn, that's something that goes across the curriculum. That's still a very valid activity or approach. And then we've got vocabulary instruction. So often you'll see whole high schools, or whole schools, not just high schools, having an approach to vocabulary instruction because we know the effect size of that is so strong. And then the increase of accountable talk. So accountable talk is that deep rich conversa

tion about the curriculum. It's not, you know, more talk in every classroom about what you did on the weekend. It's really focused talk. So these things are still valid, but when we start to talk about the nuances of what's required in each separate subject area, that's when we're talking about disciplinary literacy. So disciplinary literacy is focused on the way that experts in that discipline - how do they think, how do they speak, how do they read, how do they write. Now, we're going to look

at what might this mean for the technologies classroom. Also in disciplinary literacy we're thinking about the specific language features of the texts of that discipline. So we've got to think well, what type of text will our students be exposed to in a technologies classroom? So is it expected that they would be reading narratives? Probably not. Whereas in the English classroom, a lot of our instruction is going to be around narratives. So what are the text types that our students are going to

come across, what are the text types they'll be expected to read and/or to write in the technologies classroom? And that's the one we need to turn up the teaching on, those specific text types. And then we've got our discipline-specific vocabulary. So you know in English our students are going to be exposed to all these types of words and they're going to need to understand these ones. In maths there's a whole other language - you know, science has its own language. Well, what's the language of

technologies, so whether that's design and technologies or whether it's digital technologies. And these are the things that we've got to start to think about when we're talking about disciplinary literacy, we're really talking about the content first and then we're thinking well, what are the literacy skills required to get our students to be able to access that content? Right, so let me move on. "Disciplinary literacy refers to the learner's ability to read, write and speak in ways that are val

ued and used by people in a given discipline. That is, to "think like mathematicians, read like historians and write like scientists. "So as teachers of technology, or design and technology, then you are an expert in your field hopefully, or as close as an expert as you can be. So what we're trying to do is let kids in on the secret about how you go about reading and writing in your field. So probably an example of this for me is when I'm - say I'm a woodwork teacher, which I could be because I

did get 10 out of 10 on the wooden spoon that I made in high school, I'll just put that out there. I don't know whether that qualifies me to be a teacher or not. It's still working to this day I might add. So if I were a woodwork teacher and I were trying to read or I was trying to find out how to make something and I went and read - you know, I found some instructions for how to put a table together, then how do I actually read that as an expert in this field? Do I read it from top to bottom, d

o I read every single word before I put my hands on the wood? Do I look for a specific section? You know, do I skim it and go yeah, I just need the materials section? Or do I sit down, do I just read that section, skip forward, read another section? Do I look at the images first before I start reading the text? So these are all of the little insights that we've got to let our students in on so that it can help them to engage in the same text in the same way as you the expert in your field. So th

is here - in order for us to help our students to think like designers or to read or write like designers, then as teachers we have to develop more metacognition or we need to be more aware of our own thinking when we're engaging in literate practices in our field. So when I am writing a report - you know, when I've designed something and I am writing a report to send it out - I've got to think to myself oh, yeah, what knowledge did I need to write that, or what were the things that I thought ab

out, or how did I know how to structure that, where did I get that information from? And when we develop our metacognition and our awareness of what we're doing as experts in the field, then we can help pass that information on to our students. All right. My husband tried to throw out that wooden spoon the other night. I couldn't believe it. It's still in good shape. Any wonder I got a 10 for it. Now, disciplinary literacy, just a couple of quotes because I think these help us to refine what it

is that we're talking about. Firstly, Timothy Shanahan and Cynthia Shanahan say that disciplinary literacy recognises that literate strategies differ across the disciplines. So that's what we're talking about there. When we're reading a text, for example, in maths, I'm thinking - I'm looking for numbers, that's all I'm looking for. I'm not looking for a nice engaging story. I want the numbers so I can work out what do I have to put in the equation. When I'm reading a text in design and technolog

y, I might be looking for something else, so the strategy that I use is going to be different, okay? We're going to go into that one in a bit more depth in a second. Disciplinary literacy means that literate strategies and discipline-specific content are intertwined. Now, this means - literate strategies and discipline-specific content, this means that it's not a case of oh, my goodness, I've already got all this content I've got to teach and now you want me to teach literacy on top of it. Actua

lly, no, it is that literacy works in service to the content. I have all of this content that I want my students to be able to access and if they don't have the literacy skills to be able to access it, then I've got to build their capacity to use those literacy skills because it's helping them to receive that content and without these literacy skills, they're not going to be able to engage successfully with that content - which flows into the third point, disciplinary literacy enables students t

o develop their content knowledge, skills and understanding to become experts within a discipline. Now, of course not all of our kids are going to go on and be designers or work in the digital technologies field, but we need to give them that opportunity to be able to. We've got to skill them up so at least it becomes an opportunity on their table that they can pick from when they leave school, you know, so that they've got a wider future on offer to them. So really here I've got to think litera

cy isn't separate to the subject, literacy is working in service to the subject. It is going to help me to deliver my content in a more effective manner because the kids are really going to understand what it is that I'm trying to teach them, all right? Now, we're going to go deeper into that top point, recognises that literate strategies differ across the disciplines, I'm going to have a look at what are the differences, but before I do that, I'm just going to introduce you to how the toolkit d

efines technology, okay? Let me have a look. Let's move ahead. So in the Literacy Teaching Toolkit there is a section on literacy in technologies. Well, that's why we're all here. It's been separated into two sections. So one section is literacy in digital technologies, okay? So we're talking about students using computational thinking and information systems to analyse, design and develop digital solutions. So that's the computer sort of strand of technologies, okay? So that's one half of the t

oolkit. The other half of the toolkit we're looking at literacy in design and technologies, which is different to the digital technologies strand. So in the design and technologies students use design thinking and technologies to generate and produce design solutions. So if you're a literacy teacher and you're thinking okay, what's the difference between those two? The left-hand strand we're really talking about the computer version of technologies. In the right-hand strand we're going down to t

hose four sub strands - you know, like engineering, food and fibre, we're talking about materials and technologies. So they're two very different strands all talking about technologies, literacy and technologies. So if we go back to this idea of Shanahan's that literate strategies differ across the disciplines, let's have a look at how do they differ. So if we go back to the provocation - when I said at the start well, isn't literacy the role of the English teacher? Why aren't they teaching all

of this? I've got all my own stuff I have to teach. Let's have a look at what happens or what are the literate demands in the English classroom. So I'm going to start with reading. In English for reading we are expecting our students to be able to find meaning through literary techniques. So our students if they're engaging with the text and the type of text they're probably going to engage in is narrative, a fiction, maybe persuasive as well, but heavily focused on narrative in English for read

ing, so they're going to find meaning through literary techniques. So we're looking at similes, we're looking at alliteration, we're looking at metaphor and we're being able to unpack say the metaphors and try to work out what is the author really on about when they've used this metaphor in this text or in this way. We want our students to be able to identify themes. So if we've engaged in reading a novel, what were the main themes of the text, what were the takeaways for the reader? These thing

s are - I guess they're a bit abstract and I guess there's some element of a grey area, you know. The theme that you take out of the text might be slightly different to the theme I take out of the text depending on my background knowledge and my experiences. Recognising bias of the narrator or of a piece of text, so say if we're reading - well, goodness me, wouldn't this be - isn't this a useful skill at the moment, recognising bias? So if we're reading say, for example, some newspaper articles,

could we recognise the bias of the author of those articles if they were reporting on a current news event or a global pandemic? So that is a really important skill for students to be able to do in English as a part of reading. We want our students to be able to summarise, synthesise and evaluate. The summarising and the synthesising is often about the narrative, though, you know? So what's happened in the story up until now? How has your thinking changed about the characters? How do you think

that character is growing - that type of thing. So it's more focused on the actual text. Making connections - we want our students in our English classrooms to be able to make connections between texts. So I'm reading The Hate U Give, I'm reading this novel right now, and it's really making me think about this other text or it's really making me think about this part of a movie. Or the connections could be to self, so when I'm reading - I was reading Archie Roach's autobiography recently, so I'm

reading that and thinking wow, this really reminds me of this that happened in my life or this person that I know or this experience. So we want our students to make connections. The reason that we want them to make connections is so they can have a deeper understanding, comprehension of the text, yeah? Something we want our kids to do in English is to pay attention to the craft of writing. So that means when we're reading, we're not just reading the text, we're looking at it and thinking wow,

that was a really well-written sentence, I'm going to borrow that, or I'm going to look at that and think how did the writer do that? I was reading a text recently, Azaria, it's a picture story book that is just incredible, definitely useful for the high school, for a high school audience, and the author of that book, Maree Coote, oh my goodness, her sentences were exquisite. It is actually about Azaria Chamberlain. It's the story of what happened to her and the trial that her mum went through,

it's a picture story book, and when I'm reading that I'm absolutely paying attention to the craft of the writing because it is so beautiful and I look at it and I think how could I write like that myself? And we want our students to recognise elements of the stories, of the poems, of the novels, how do they introduce the characters, how do they set the text out, that type of thing. Now, that's a lot of information for an English teacher to be communicating with their students and that's just rea

ding, you know, we haven't looked at writing. If we look at, and for this one I'm going to use digital technologies as an example - if we look at what are literate demands, what are the reading demands in the digital technologies classroom, well - and this isn't a comprehensive list, there's more - we want our students to listen to, read, understand and evaluate mainly informational texts, you know, it would be very uncommon to have a narrative text in the digital technologies classroom. We're r

eally on about information texts and that's a different set - that's a different lot of knowledge, isn't it, than looking at narrative and persuasive writing - not to say that in English you don't look at information texts, but in digital technologies it is absolutely mostly informational texts. We also have to have a heavy focus on the symbols that are in these texts because digital technologies texts are symbol heavy. You know, if I'm reading a text - and when I say "text", that could be a boo

k, it could be a poster, it could be a set of instructions, it could be a YouTube clip on how to create something - it's going to be symbol, icon and key term heavy in the digital technologies. You know, if I'm creating a code, if I'm using a coding program such as scratch, then I've got to be aware of what all of the different symbols might be that I need to know so that I can understand that text. Our students in digital technologies not surprisingly are going to be engaging with lots of diver

se media, so lots of multimodal text. Yes, in English they might engage with multimodal text, they might look at web sites and learn how to research information, but in digital technologies the types of multimodal texts will be different. So again, we go back to our programming example using Scratch, how do you read that page, what do you look at first, what don't you need to look at on that page? So it's very different to reading a multimodal news article, right? We are interpreting diagrams an

d programming images, so we've got to be able to look at the - in English we might be looking at illustrations and trying to extract meaning. Here we've got to be able to look at these diagrams or the programming flow charts and we have to work out how do I interpret this, how can I extract meaning from this when it's just a bunch of lines, you know, some shapes and some words on a page? So it's a really different type of reading. Determine the validity of sources and the quality of evidence - w

ell, that just goes across every subject area. And then for reading, recognise the different elements of information texts, procedural texts. So we're looking at headings, we're looking at glossaries, all of those types of things. So you can see if we were to say, "Well, it's the English teacher's job to teach all this" they've got an enormous list themselves of things they need to focus on and also we've got to think this list that I've provided here for digital technologies, there's another li

st for maths, there's another list for science, there's another list for the arts. So we can't possibly expect our English teacher to be able to teach all of these different areas. But the other thing is the English teacher isn't necessarily an expert in digital technologies, so they don't have that expertise on how do I read the code on this, how do I interpret this flow chart? So the digital technologies teachers, they're the experts in the field and we just need to help build their capacity t

o tap into their metacognition to say, "Yeah, how do I read that, how did I know to read that from top to bottom instead of left to right", you know? So if we have a look now at the writing demands - I mean, that was just reading. For writing we're looking at these and we're thinking well, in writing - English writing - we're usually teaching our students about the process of writing, drafting, revising, editing, you know, we sort of go through that process, which we will go through in design an

d technologies as well, but there's probably a heavier focus on it in English. We are talking about flexibility in using organisation, details, et cetera. So if you think about in an English classroom, particularly if our students are writing a narrative or even indeed a persuasive, the main purpose of that writing is often to engage the reader. So when we're writing in an English classroom, we're really wanting our students to engage their reader. Whereas when we're writing say in a design and

technologies classroom, we're not so concerned with engaging our reader, we're more concerned with informing our reader. So it leads itself to a different style of writing. Yes, if we're writing persuasive in English, we still want to inform our reader, but if we're not doing it in an engaging way, they're going to put our piece of writing down, they're not going to listen to our message. So we've always got a really heavy focus on engagement and that affects our word choice, it affects our voic

e, lots of different things. So we actually - in the English classroom, we try to avoid formulaic writing. We don't want every single student in our class writing a persuasive thing that says, you know, firstly this is my first reason, secondly this is, thirdly, and in conclusion because it turns the reader off if we use that formulaic writing. But if you think about it in design we request formulaic writing. We want things to be written in a specific way and if they're not delivered in that way

, then it can be confusing for us. So it's very different to - where we're saying in English here's the rules and now that you know them, now you can break them to engage the reader, in the technologies classroom we're saying these are the rules and this is what your reader expects, so you need to stick to this format. In English we want to use mentor texts. Now, mentor texts - you want to use those in every subject. Mentor text is simply an example text. You know in the HITS where they say work

ed examples, that's what it is. So it could be something you've written, which I would strongly recommend as being your number one go to. It could be a published text. It could be a student text - you know, they've done something really well, you want to highlight that and show the other students so they can craft off that piece. So these are the skills that we need in the English classroom for writing. Now, if you think about design and technology, so this is the second strand - not digital tec

hnologies, design and technologies - we're thinking most of the writing that our students do in this subject is to describe, explain, analyse, evaluate, maybe compare and contrast. So it's different to engaging their reader. They're doing a lot of composing in bullets, in graphs and in sketches, so there's a lot more drawing and visual writing going on rather than what we're doing in the English classroom. We actually want to praise using a systematic format for their writing because it makes se

nse to the reader. You know, if we're teaching our kids to write a recipe if they're in food technology, then we want - the reader or the user, the chef, whoever it is, they have a formula they expect. They want their materials listed first so they can go and buy them, then they want their instructions on how to put it together. If they're anything like me, they'll start reading the instructions and then realise the thing was supposed to marinate for 10 hours. That was me last night. So there's

a recipe for how to create a recipe and if you stray from it, it might work, but more often than not it won't work. In design and technologies, we seek exactness over craft. So in English writing we really promote craft, which means, you know, we might throw in some alliteration. In the design and technologies classroom we're probably not going to say "get out six silver spoons" because it sounds nice. We want exactness. So we're going to tell the reader exactly what they need, you need two spoo

ns, and then you have to be even more exact, don't you, two tablespoons. So you've got to be exact rather than flowery and pretty and engaging as you would in the English classroom. We have to use precise vocabulary, so we do have to refer to a tablespoon rather than just a spoon, and we've got to learn how to create a coherent information explanation and maybe even a persuasive text if you're trying to convince someone - maybe if you're in the textiles classroom and you want to convince someone

to use a specific fabric over another one because it's more sustainable, then you're going to need to use persuasive writing. So you can see there's an enormous difference in how we use - so yeah we're using reading and writing, so we use those in all subjects, but there's a nuance for digital technologies and for design and technologies and as the expert on what happens in that field, we want to build the skills of the technologies teacher to help our students to develop the skill, the literac

y skills that they need. So I want you to think about if you had to name the most important literacy-related skill that students need in technologies, what would it be? What would you think - say if you're a design and technologies teacher, what's something that you - when you're trying to get the kids to engage with a specific content and they just keep stumbling, what would you think or what would you like the students to know or which literacy skills would you like them to have to be able to

better engage in your content? So I'll be curious to see what your thoughts are. If you had to name the most important literacy-related skill in technology, either strand of technology, what would it be? Interesting. Maybe it's vocabulary, maybe it's actually writing the report say in design and technology, writing up the report, maybe it's interpreting the customer's concerns - don't know, communicating. I'd be interested to see what you've got to say. Now, we can't expect our students to know

how to do all of these skills that I've just listed - and again, it's not a comprehensive list - if we don't step them through the gradual release of responsibility. So this is something that - well, all good teaching is reliant on the gradual release of responsibility. This model here that I'm using, I really like this one. It's Fisher and Frey's model. It's the updated version of Pearson and Gallagher's model. Pearson and Gallagher created it in the 80s and this is the updated version of it. S

o the gradual release of responsibility is really - I think this is the best guide for teachers to evaluate, you know, how are they supporting their students. So basically it starts at the top here where we've got the "I do it". So you might know this as the I do, we do, you do sort of model, except you'll notice that there's a fourth layer in this one, which that's the extra layer that Fisher and Frey added, that's the "You do it together". So in the "I do" - so if we go up to the top, yeah, th

is is - and if you think about any skill that you've learnt, right, so if I think about - let's go back to my successful wooden spoon experience because clearly it meant a lot to me, my 10 out of 10 wooden spoon. So in the first step, in the focus lesson, our teacher, Mr Knight, who I will say did go out with my mum when he was in high school and he did mention that when he was giving me a 10 out of 10, but I really do not think that affected the score, I think it was purely craftsmanship, he sh

owed us what to do. He stood up the front and he said - he got his piece of wood and he said "This is what" - as he was doing it, he said out aloud what he was thinking. So he said, you know, "I'm using this thing" - I've lost all of the technical vocab," I'm going to use this saw to do this and then go out and do this and then I'm going to do this around the side, I'm going to do this ", and so he modelled it for us and he was thinking aloud as he did it. In fact he modelled it one step at a ti

me. So he modelled it, sent us all off and wished us luck I might say - this is in year 7 I think when I was still working out what a hammer was - and then he brought us back and then he'd model the next step for us, always telling us out loud what he was thinking. So then in the second section, guided instruction, so I think of that - that first section, the focus lesson, I think of that's when the teacher is in front of the students, yeah? Then we go into the "we do it" section and I think of

this as when the teacher is beside the student. So this is when he's walking around the room, very quickly worked out who needs extra assistance and who doesn't. I don't think he'd realised at this stage who he was dealing with, whose daughter he was dealing with. So then he would go around and he would help us and he would help us to be successful with whatever he had showed us at the start of the lesson. Now, the next section is collaborative. This is the "you do it together". So he was in fro

nt of us and then he was beside us and then collaborative learning - I think of this as sort of like you're beside them but you're off to the side. So you've got your ears open, you've got your eyes open and you're just sort of taking in data. So you're just saying is this working, are they getting this, I want to listen in to their conversations to work out what do they know, what have they taken on board? This is the last step before we release them off to independence. So the final layer ther

e you can see is the "you do it alone". That's when we've released our students off to independence so they can have a go at this. Now, I think this is absolutely the best model for us to reflect on our teaching because I think when - so I see some of the things that you guys have listed in the chat here. Yes, making connections, it is very important. Someone said it might not be important, but it's very important, making connections, using their prior knowledge, communicating. Okay, so let's ta

ke communicating as an example. I'm sitting here, I'm really frustrated. My kids can't communicate and they need to be able to communicate because they've got to work out what is their customer's design brief - you know, they've got to come up with their design brief for their customer if we're in design and technologies and they're not good at listening, they're not good at working out what information do they need. So I've got to think to myself well, which one of the phases, which one of the

levels on this gradual release of responsibility have I exposed them to? Have I modelled for them, demonstrated for them what I'm expecting of them, and when I demonstrated, was I really explicit, you know, did I actually say what was coming into my head? The first thing I'm thinking about when I'm asking these questions is what information do I need and then I'm thinking about what type of questions could I ask to get that information? So are we really being explicit and have we then stepped ou

r students through that guide - have we given them a little go with us guide on the side or have we gone straight down to independent practice and then realised that actually they're going to need more support than this, I've got to pull myself back up the gradual release of responsibility. So this I think we've really got to think about and it's not just for literacy teaching. This is for all teaching, as demonstrated by Mr Knight's amazing woodworking skills. The important thing to note for th

e gradual release of responsibility is that it doesn't have to be linear, and Fisher and Frey say that in their book. So we don't have to start with demonstration and then go down, down, down to independent practice. However, over a unit our students need to have exposure to all four phases. Now, the reason for this is that last sentence there, because we want our students "to learn deeply, think critically and creatively, and be able to mobilise learning strategies ". I think that's the most im

portant part. We want them to mobilise learning strategies, which means we want them to be able to carry them around and use them whenever they see fit, okay? So that's what we've got to think about with gradual release of responsibility. If we give them exposure to all of those four levels, then they're really going to get into the deep part of learning. So when we think about disciplinary literacy, we've got to think, well, have - when I've got this big long list of things I need my students t

o be able to do in the technologies classroom, have I guided them through the gradual release of responsibility or have I assumed that someone else - ie, the English teacher or the primary school teachers - have taught all of this to the students and they will come to my class knowing all of this? All right? Wow, that was a lot of information. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to - you have a resource pack and I think Laura will have put a link in the chat if you didn't get it, and if you did

n't get it, just have a think about what was new information for you about disciplinary literacy, what questions do you have, and what squared with your thinking, so what's been confirmed for you? Sometimes people view the confirming part as a waste of time. Well, no, if knowledge has been confirmed for you, great, because then your confidence is strengthened in that. So thinking about disciplinary literacy, what's new knowledge for you, what was old knowledge for you and what questions do you h

ave. I'm going to give you 2 minutes to think about that and I'll put my fancy timer on up in the top corner here. Okay, everyone. I know 2 minutes isn't a long time, but it's hopefully just enough time just to think about okay, out of all of that, what was important information for me to take forward and just give yourself a bit of time to sit and reflect. Okay, what I'm going to do now is I'm actually going to step you through the Literacy Teaching Toolkit, the technologies side of it. Before

I do that, I'll just give you an overview. So in the chat it would be great if you could let me know what's your knowledge of the Literacy Teaching Toolkit, have you used it, have you had the opportunity to have a little poke around yet? So let me know. I just read - I read all of your introductions. Lovely to see all of the spread of people that we have and so thrilled to see that we actually have some design and technology wood and VET teachers here and I think Gary is - that might be Gary fro

m Bendigo. Hello, Gary. Okay, so the Literacy Teaching Toolkit, what is it? Well, it's an online resource. It is open 24/7, like not many other things at the moment in Victoria, and the whole idea of this is that we have had an expert group of people pull the research together for effective literacy teaching in primary and secondary school. So they've saved us a lot of work. And they've put a toolkit together for us to help us as teachers to have a clear direction on what does effective literacy

practice look like in schools. So it's all about developing students' content knowledge in each curriculum area - that's the secondary version - and building teachers' knowledge about what the possibilities could be for integrating literacy into the curriculum areas. Now, the what's included - well, it depends which version or which subject or curriculum area that you're looking at in the 7 to 10 version. So you can find expert videos explaining literate practices. And something I'm so excited

about is they're Victorian examples, Australian Victorian - very exciting to have our own state celebrating the great practice within it. So there's also curriculum-specific resources, there's some teaching advice, there's evidence-based literacy, teaching. I love it because they've taken the work away from us. We don't have to worry about, you know, going and doing all the research ourselves. We come here as our first point of reference. Now, the toolkit is separated into primary and secondary

and I would strongly recommend if you're a MYLNS teacher, if you're an EIL, if you're in any role supporting the literacy development of students, do go and have a look at the primary toolkit as well. The primary toolkit is separated by mode. So if you want to know reading, there's a section on reading, teaching, writing, teaching, speaking and listening and so there are some teaching practices in there. So particularly relevant for secondary MYLNS teachers who are trying to bring up those strug

gling readers and writers. Go into the primary toolkit and have a look at some of the teaching practices. The secondary toolkit is separated into curriculum areas, which makes more sense than separating into reading and writing and speaking and listening. So at the moment we have English, maths, science and technologies have been unveiled and we're waiting with bated breath for the humanities, the arts, PE, so those things will come out at some stage. The timeline for everything has changed this

year, not surprisingly, so these are the ones that are available already. If you - and I see that we do have - someone is a maths and science teacher in here. You definitely go and have a look at the maths and sciences resources because there's some really great stuff. Now, just because you're a technologies teacher doesn't mean you shouldn't look at the other curriculum areas. The English curriculum area has some really great resources and there are some links from the technologies back into t

he English one. The maths and science would also be useful particularly for the digital technologies teachers as well. So don't just have a look in one area, go and have a little poke around in all of them. And tonight I'm going to - or we are going to go into literacy in technologies. Now, as I said before, it's been separated into two halves, yeah? So we are going to look at the first half, so this is the digi tech, the computer focussed technologies section. We're going to look at that one fi

rst. I'm not going to take you through every - I'm not going to let you see every single page. I'm just going to give you a tasting plate - not an actual one, which would make sense if it was food technologies but it's not - I'm just going to give you an introduction, okay? Now, on this slide here I've put a big red box around the outside of it so you can see that we've gone back to the start just in case you get lost when we go on our tour, our socially distanced tour. So in each of the toolkit

s - or in each of the curriculum areas for the toolkit there are four sections and they're all laid out exactly the same. So there's always an introduction, developing understanding, communicating understanding, and I just think of this one like it's a nice present - they wrap it all up, put a little bow on the top and that's putting it all together. So introduction, that's pretty self-explanatory. The developing understanding section - if you think about the gradual release of responsibility, s

o at the top of that where the teacher is taking most of the responsibility for the work and for the learning, that's the developing understanding section. This is when our students are taking knowledge in, right? The communicating understanding section is when we've moved down the gradual release. This is when our students are producing, they're sending knowledge back out, okay? So in digital technologies, in the developing understanding, this is when we're starting to learn about coding. Where

as in communicating, that's when we're producing our own. Can you see the difference? And then the last section provides - I really like this one because it provides sort of a suggested - well, not a suggested, a sample unit plan to say this is how the whole thing could work together, this is one example of how this might look. All right, so in the introduction to literacy in digital technologies, the first thing they do on this page is define the difference between literacy in digital technolog

ies and digital literacy, which I think it's a good idea that they've defined it because often people think they're the same thing. So literacy in digital technologies - I think of this as - well, this is the reading and the writing that you need to be able to do to engage in the content, whereas digital literacy - I think of this as being fluent in using technology and they're two different things. So the second one, digital literacy, is being fluent in using technology, something that I've dis

covered that my mum isn't on our weekly Zoom sessions, still not working out how to show something other than her forehead in the Zoom session, we'll get there. Whereas literacy in digital technologies - this is the reading, the writing, you know, all of the literacy skills that we need to engage in the tech. So I see someone in the chat said about an example that they have EAL students and they find the most important literacy skill is navigating different digital platforms. So the literacy ski

lls that you need to navigate platforms is different from actually being fluent with the use of the technology. Now, the other thing that I like about this is that it gives you an idea about what are the literate demands for this area, for digital technologies. So you can see lots of visual representation, diagrams, video. We can't just assume our kids know how to interpret that or indeed create it themselves. Computer codes obviously, being digital technology and images. And then if you look ov

er on the right-hand side, these are some of the techs that our students need to be able to read and produce - very different to the English classroom. So information, eg privacy statement. Well, the privacy statement, the purpose of that is absolutely to inform. It is not to engage. Procedural texts, technical texts, evaluative reports - these aren't things necessarily that our students are going to be taught in an English classroom. In primary school they might look at some of these, but not w

ith the same level of exactness that's required in a digital technologies classroom, okay, particularly if we're talking about coding and we're going to look at algorithms a bit later. So that's the first section. The second section, developing understanding, is when the knowledge is starting to come in. It's separated into three subsections. The first one is explicitly teaching programming vocab and genre structure and I'm going to just do a little bit of a snippet going into the vocab part of

it in a bit more depth later. Jointly constructing input and output tables - so this section here focuses on the really important concept of cause and effect in digital technology. So if you're a digital technologies teacher, you'll understand what I'm talking about, sort of the understanding of the "if then", so if I do this, then this will happen, which I actually think is very useful for real life thinking about that. So they introduce this concept of a cause and effect table and one suggesti

on is to get students to - I think their suggestion was actually to look at a game such as Minecraft and they would look at well, what are the inputs that go into the computer and what does the computer do when it receives that input? So if I press the space button, what is going to happen? My character is going to jump. So if space button is pressed, then character jumps, okay? A lot of the toolkit for technologies is about using different graphic organisers to help students to organise their t

hinking and their learning. So that's just one of the examples there. The third one is about using graphic organisers to understand computer networks. So this is again - it's about how to use different graphic organisers and helping them to organise all of the learning and there's an image, a sample image on the site about what a hardware network might look like, what all the connections might look like, which lots of people who are setting up internet in their houses or changing to NBN would ha

ve been reading over these last few months I dare say. So if we go back to the start, we've looked at introduction and briefly looked at developing the understanding. Now we're going to look at the expressive part, so the work the students are creating as a result of their learning in digital technologies. So firstly they've got some sample work on using flow charts to design algorithms - obviously they've explained what algorithms are first - and then introducing the different images that stude

nts will need to use to create their own algorithm and their flow chart and why that's important. Then looking at how students can examine a problem faced by an end user to rework it to be more inclusive. So the one that they've used, the example they've used is that they have colour blindness, so they have to look at a program and work out what are some solutions, how could they make this program more inclusive to those experiencing colour blindness. Using graphic organisers to evaluate peer-de

signed digital solutions. A lot of evaluation obviously happens in digital technologies because we're constantly looking and seeing well, is that effective, is that an effective solution. So if our students have created a - maybe they've created some code or a website. We need to evaluate to say is that an effective version of the website, does it meet the brief? So in here they've recommended a P-C-Q chart, positives, challenges, and questions, and we instruct the students and think about gradu

al release of responsibility. We don't just hand this out, we have - I model - looking at a website myself, I model how I fill in this chart and how it helps me with my thinking before I ask the students to go off and do it. So too often we're giving the kids this, telling them how to do it, we're not showing them, and then we're expecting them to be able to engage with this content fully. So we've got to pull ourselves back up, that gradual release of responsibility. And then the final section

in that communicating understanding is about recognising layers of meaning. So this looks at - well, it provides a good example of the way teachers can take the learning further to use their interpreting, analysing and evaluation skills in real-life situations, which I really love that they use real life. So in here they've got a really terrific example of students thinking why do I need all these data analysis skills? When am I actually ever going to use this, what's the real-world example, and

the example they've provided in here is an AFL example. It's where they're teaching the students to triangulate the data. I mean, as teachers, we're sick to death of triangulating or hearing about triangulating, but the example here is that there's a real problem, and it was actually legitimately real, there's a link to a newspaper article - after an AFL match, there was overcrowding on the platforms at the train station and so they're getting the students to look at different sources of data t

o work out what might be a solution to prevent this from happening again. So they're actually using a real-world scenario and getting kids to come up with real-world solutions. So it's quite interesting that one. I think it would be an interesting activity for students to engage in. And finally tying it all up, putting a little bow on the top, this is the putting it all together. So here they just provide I guess a sample unit of work to say what this could look like, the whole learning cycle co

uld look like together. So in here the students are required to research a problem and then they have to come up with a digital solution for that problem and it actually steps them through how to create the written report, so what do they need to include in the report at the start of the report and summarising the problem and then how do they present their digital solution. So yes, I actually think that would be very useful for digital technologies teachers to think about and all the way we're c

onstantly thinking about - say for the report how do we expect our students to know how to write the report effectively. So we've got to go gradual release of responsibility and step them through by us modelling, demonstrating first how do we create each of the sections in that report. Okay, you're sitting there thinking when does design and technologies get mentioned? Here is your time to shine. Design and technologies, so this is the engineering systems, this is the food technologies, this is

the woodwork, all of those areas. What's the literacy, you know, what can we be thinking about in here? So again this is separated, you can see, into the same four areas, so intro, developing, communicating and then wrapping it all up. So for the introduction here, again, they tell us what are the literate demands for this subject or this subject area. So they're saying that the students will need to make informed decisions about the reliability of the information, so compare sources, assess the

reliability. Goodness me, that is a life skill at the moment. Tracking changes to information over time. Create written plans that reflect an understanding of the factors impacting design decisions. So there's actually a lot of writing in here and there's a lot of talking a lot of listening and understanding in order to be able to create a design that suits a specific brief. On the right-hand side, design and technology students must access and communicate information from some of these genres.

We think design briefs, persuasive texts, explanatory texts - planning and management documents, how do I read those? You know, what's the best way to interpret those? Graphic representation. Very visual area. As you can see, there is a lot more to woodwork and to sewing than just getting on the tools. There's a lot of literacy required to be successful in these fields. Now, a lots of what happens in design and technologies follows the design thinking process, so I've just pulled this diagram f

rom the Literacy Teaching Toolkit. These are the five stages of the design thinking approach and next to them you can see the literate demands. So in the investigating stage, we're looking at asking questions, conducting research, defining problems. These - oh, we've got a typo in the parameters, but these - go back to the gradual release and think well, how have we built the students' capacity to be able to use each of these literate practices? So when it comes to conducting research, which is

- oh my goodness, that is one of the biggest ones that we just assume our kids know how to do that. Have we explicitly taught them how to conduct research? What does it look like? Where do I start? How do I even use the internet to find appropriate research? So then we go down to generate - we're looking at develop, document and communicating ideas, discussing options. Do our students have the capacity - I think someone put it in the chat about that idea of communication. So have we built their

ability to communicate effectively with each other? Producing, recording findings - what might that look like, what might a good one look like? Evaluating, making judgments, sharing opinions, receiving other people's opinions on your item without getting offended. Providing feedback - providing feedback is another area that we too often assume that our kids just know how to do it, how to give effective feedback. And if you think well, it's pretty crazy to think that our kids have that skill beca

use as teachers, we are constantly working on our ability to provide feedback. It's hard work. It's something that we have to keep working on. You know, it's in the high-impact teaching strategies, we have PD after PD on how to provide effective feedback, but then when it comes to peers giving feedback, we just assume our kids know how to do it. So that's definitely an area that we've actually got to go back and do some explicit teaching on. Reflecting - wow, that's a life skill. And then we get

to the planning and managing stage and resolving conflict and issues - well, that's also a life skill. So actually these - the design and technology, they're carrying a lot of weight here in a lot of life skills. We owe it to these teachers. I think we need to make sure we get this part right. So if we go back to the start, in the second section - so we've done the introduction, so we understand what's happening, and I think the beauty of the previous section, that introduction section, is that

if you're a literacy coach in a school or if you're the literacy leader, you have to get your head around what are the literate demands in each of the different subject areas because I'm going to be working with each of those teachers and I need to understand how I can get in - what's my leg-in to working with them to help build the literacy teaching in that area. So that first page I think is really useful particularly for literacy coaches across the school. Now, in developing understanding, i

t's broken up into three areas, so using model texts to teach genre - I'll see if we've got any time to go into that at the end - using graphic organisers to understand user needs, and jointly deconstructing multimodal representations. That jointly deconstructing I think is really important because it's a way of going back up to the gradual release of responsibility. So rather than just having a look at let's say a video on how to sew a pillowcase together - I don't think I got 10 out of 10 for

the pillowcase, that wasn't my strength, the old pillowcase - how can we - so if we look at that video together as a group, then we need to be able to deconstruct it to say well, what were the strengths of it? So then if I was to create my own video of how to sew a pillowcase together, then I want to make a strong video, so what are the elements of that? So we look at an effective one, we deconstruct it so that we can reconstruct our own one. Okay, if we look at communicating understanding, so w

e're now thinking about the work that our students are producing in design and technologies, then we're looking at using genre guidelines to edit and revise texts. I'm going to take you through what this could look like. We are looking at producing annotated concept sketches and drawings because, as we know, in the design and technologies a lot of it is visual, so when we're asking our students - this is one of the samples from the toolkit. When we're asking our students to create an annotated d

rawing, what does a good one look like? What are the elements that we need to make sure that we're including? So think about the HITS, worked examples, our students - we need to be really explicit about that. So in this example they've asked the students to create a futuristic version of a bedside lamp and get feedback on it and add more annotations. So in that section of the toolkit they're talking about how can we help our students to produce more effective annotated concept sketches instead o

f just assuming that they're going to know how to do it. Joint construction of visual representations - this is that - the example is that they've given a sustainability problem, a real-world problem. It's the Coonong Creek trail. So the students have had to create the visual representation of the Coonong Creek and they've talked about what that would look like. And I just pulled this from the toolkit. They said, "The use of diagrams, images and other visual texts can support students to visuali

se, develop and plan solutions to problems. Traditional written communication does not enable students to develop multimodal communication skills, nor does it support students to explore the potential of technology to solve problems or meet specific needs ", which I think - well, this just for me reiterates why we can't leave this literacy teaching all up to the English teacher because a lot of the work that they're doing in English is going to be about traditional written communication. But we

know, particularly in the technologies, a lot of it is visual, so we've got to have that gradual release of responsibility instruction of visual and all of the different elements that go into visual texts. Oh, and I see someone in the chat has just said that they've used visual diaries with their students. Yes, and the instruction, you know, that explicit instruction that you need to use to help them to be able to get the most out of that. Right. Okay, the last part of this is teaching collabora

tive communication skills and in here they've - and I noticed some of you listed collaboration, or communication, as a literacy issue, which is rightly so because our students need a lot of this - need this skill in spades I guess in the design - well, just in the normal world, but definitely in the design and technologies. So one suggestion or one strategy provided in here is think, ink, pair, share, where the problem is given to the students, they think about it and they - so they think about

it, they write their response down, then they pair up with another person, share their response, and then they share it with someone else. So that's one option for how we can build the collaborative skills. You also want to think about gradual release of responsibility for those students because we can't just assume that they know how to have that collaboration, so let's talk about what does an effective discussion look like. Okay. The final section is putting it all together. So design and tech

nology is putting it all together and in here they've provided an example of the students create a design brief, they have to outline the problem, outline their targeted users, outline the design requirements and it actually shows you what the design brief looks like and steps through, you know, how you might go about teaching each of those steps. So there's some really terrific resources in here. It is very big because there's two different sections - you know, the two different types of techno

logy - but if you go in looking for one at a time, get your head around it, you should, hopefully, have a good understanding of some of the things that are available to you in the toolkit. Okay, I'm going to give you 2 minutes just to do a bit of reflection about what you've learnt about the Literacy Teaching Toolkit, maybe think about the areas that you might want to go into a bit further. I'd better put my timer on. And then we're going to look at some vocabulary and writing briefly. All right

, I've got my timer on for 2 minutes. Okay. I would love to see your questions - if you pop them in the chat, what your questions are about the toolkit, because we have some of the team from the department, the toolkit team. I don't think that's their official name, but they're online. So if you've got any questions, pop it in the chat and hopefully we can get to those. Okay, in the last section tonight I'm just going to dive in to one, maybe two, sections of the toolkit that I want to go over i

n a bit more depth. Now, the first one is vocabulary and the reason I've selected vocabulary is because it's a topic or it's an area of literacy that can go across both design digital technologies and design technologies, and indeed all curriculum areas, and also because the research is so strong on the impact of vocabulary instruction. And I noticed that some of you have commented in the chat about that vocabulary is the area that your students need to work on, so that's why I've selected this

as something that I would like to go a bit deeper on tonight. Okay, so vocabulary instruction - "vocabulary knowledge is content knowledge ". Now, I wanted to put this up here because sometimes people think oh, I'm already teaching all my content and now you want me to teach vocabulary as well. Well, that's a literacy thing, that's not my content. So I just want to clarify. Vocabulary knowledge or time spent in every subject on teaching vocabulary is actually teaching your content. It's not sepa

rate to that. "Research reveals that vocab knowledge is the single best indicator of students' reading ability, comprehension, and familiarity with academic discourse. And because of this, vocab knowledge is one of the best predictors of student success in school. "Well, that is a glowing report for the investment that a teacher makes when they slow down and spend time on explicit vocabulary instruction. Okay, so I grabbed this from the toolkit, the science part of the toolkit, but it's still re

levant to every vocabulary instruction - "argue that methods of teaching vocab that focus on students copying definitions from a textbook is problematic". So when we're talking about vocab instruction, we're not just saying leave 3 minutes at the start of a lesson, get the kids to copy down these definitions because we know that that's not an effective way of getting our kids to really deeply understand the vocabulary required for the topic. The reason for that - definitions in isolation can be

too broad or too narrow, have no direct link to the topic being taught, especially if the word has multiple meanings. Number 2, students may copy definitions absentmindedly - who has those kids? And of course then they've written down the wrong definition. I've had those kids, that's who's had them. And number 3, identifying definitions within a passage of text may lead to incomplete or incorrect definitions. So if we're not just copying definitions off the board, how are we getting our kids to

understand the vocabulary? Well, for this I'm going to bring in Beck and McKeown's three tiers of vocabulary instruction. Now, it doesn't matter which subject area, what year level you're working with, these three tiers remain the same. So firstly, there's tier 1. Now, tier 1 are your everyday words. I say these are the words that we use in everyday conversation, right? So I've put some examples on the side there - word, number, table. These are words that our kids are more than likely going to

come up with in everyday conversation. Tier 2 are more academic words. These are the words that they're more likely to be exposed to in academia, so in school or in reading. So if you think about I've got words like evaluate, justify, analyse, contrast - they don't all have to be verbs, solution - but these are words that you're not always going to hear out in the yard when you're out on yard duty because they're more words that we would use in academia, okay? The third level, tier 3, these are

domain-specific words. So when we're thinking about disciplinary literacy, these are the words that we're thinking what's the vocabulary specific to my discipline? So digital technologies - it has its own language. You know, we're talking about algorithms, we're talking about debugging. When I'm in primary school and I'm talking about debugging, I'm talking about getting nits out of kids' hair. But in high school when I'm in digital technologies talking about debugging, I'm talking about finding

where in the code is the issue that's causing the problem with the software that I've just created or the program that I've just created. A butt joint, a hem, genetically modified - these are all words that are specific to a certain domain and not always likely to be found outside of that domain. Now, tier 2 and tier 3 are the ones that we've got to think about explicit instruction on. If you have a high EAL population, it depends where they're coming from, but sometimes you'll need to do instr

uction in tier 1 words as well. Beck and McKeown's research would suggest that tier 1 words even for new English language learners, they'll become across those, they'll be able to develop their skills in that say in the first 18 months of being immersed in that language in their new country. But tier 2 and 3, if we don't do explicit instruction around these, our students might never come across them and they're really important words to be able to succeed in academia. So let's take justify. If o

ur students don't understand what justify means and we've given them an assessment and it says "justify the reason for this" and our students don't understand what it is they're actually being asked to do, then it's not really a fair test of their actual knowledge on the topic, we're actually testing their vocabulary knowledge instead. So here I've said on the side explicitly teach tier 2 and 3 words and this will allow our students to access and communicate their content knowledge - okay? The o

ther thing about vocab instruction is we don't learn words one at a time. So we often when we're learning one word, we often learn a bunch of other words that come with it. We need to engage in lots of talk. So our students need to roll the words around on their tongue, they need to practise saying them in different situations. So it's not enough for us just to stand at the front and say, "Well, this is the word, I'm going to say it", we need our kids to be repeating them and saying them over an

d over in different contexts. And then if you have a look at the third dot point - oh my goodness, have a look at this - we need on average, we need 12 to 15 exposures to learn that word. Wow, well, how does copying the definition off the board fit in with 12 to 15 exposures? Well, that's your first exposure. Now you've got to provide 11 to 14 more exposures. So we've got to think how are we immersing our students in this vocabulary, how are we making sure they get these exposures so that they c

an add that word to their vocabulary and understand what it means? And how is that they need to read it, they need to hear it, they need to say it, they need to write it. So they've got to be engaging with the words as much as possible. I've put this here, "A myth of vocabulary is that one either knows a word or does not know a word". So Beck and McKeown say actually, that's not true, you don't know it or not know it, there's actually levels of knowing a word. So you can have absolutely no knowl

edge of it all of the way to a rich, decontextualised knowledge. So not only do I know the word in that context, I can put it in a different context - you know, I can play with it, I understand that word. So if you think about the word algorithm, where would you place yourself on this scale? Say no knowledge is 1 all of the way up to rich, decontextualised knowledge is a 5, where would you place your knowledge of the word algorithm, of the meaning for the word algorithm? So thinking hmm, never h

eard of it, or yeah, I've heard of it, I'm not exactly sure what it is, or I know several meanings, I'm just not exactly sure which one to use in the right context. So I sort of think sometimes it's like you know a word but not well enough to use it in a social setting. So sometimes if I'm learning a new word, I'll test it out on my husband, who sometimes is a better audience than other people, sometimes he'll let me know, well, loud and clear that I've used it in the wrong context. Or do you to

tally know - totally understand the word algorithm and feel very confident to use it in all different contexts? So here when we're thinking about vocab instruction, one thing that we can do for our students is we want them to see that their own definitions are changing and shifting. So I've included it in your activity pack. They can write the word down in a table, write their current definition, and then when we do some work on it, then they can come back and update their definition. So for alg

orithm in the toolkit - we're not going to do this because I want to get to the writing. In the toolkit there's a video, a link to a video, and this professor actually explains algorithm in a very clear way. It's a terrific explanation. So after we've watched his explanation of algorithm - and if you're a digital technologies teacher this definition is fantastic for you because he talks about that difference between when our students create a procedural text, the level of information that they n

eed to include versus when they're creating a flow chart, an algorithm flow chart, the level of information they need to include has to be so precise or the code won't work. So we've watched our video, we've talked about algorithms, and then we're going to come back here and update our definition of what we think algorithm means now. Another suggestion is to use a student dictionary. So every time we learn a new word, we can go back and add that to our dictionary. In fact, when I was learning Fr

ench in high school, we used to have one of these and it was a very effective strategy I must say. The final strategy that I'm going to present is the Frayer Model. The Frayer Model is where you put the word in the middle, so in this instance I've used electrical insulator, and then we have our students write a definition, a fact, they can do a drawing or a diagram and then provide an example. So it's just another way of getting multiple exposures to the words. So we're not going to do this for

every single word, we're going to do this for the really important ones, okay? So maybe we have say technical vocab for digital technologies or maybe we look at that tier 2 vocab and we realise in our assessments lots of kids when we were saying analyse, they weren't really understanding what that entailed and what we were asking, so we're going to use that as one of our words. Okay, so that's our very brief light touch on vocabulary. The other thing I just wanted to finish off with is looking a

t writing in the technologies curriculum, in the technologies classroom, both for if you're a literacy teacher supporting a technologies teacher or if you're a technologies teacher yourself and you're thinking, well, how can I build the writing capacity of my students? So I wanted to share this quote from the toolkit, "Genres - or text types - that achieve the same social purpose tend to have similar structural patterns. "So we know that. When we're writing a food recipe, we know that we usually

start with a heading, sometimes there's a little summary. Then we're going to get our materials or, sorry, our ingredients - I need to use the right vocabulary - and then we're going to have our method, okay? So we know that there's generally a specific pattern or a structure to follow. When students understand the structures as well as the purpose of the generic structures, they're better able to produce the text - well, I don't think that's a huge surprise. In design and technologies, if desi

gned products are going to be reproduced - and that's if we're in design and technology and we're creating a design for something and we do want other people to produce it, we want to go viral, then we need to create some procedural steps so that others can recreate whatever it is that we've made. Probably the great example of this is masks at the moment, yeah, face masks. You see all of these procedures being sent out and shared on the internet for how to make the best mask and you make some qu

ick dollars if you can produce some quick ones. So when it comes to genre instruction, so whether we're teaching our kids to write a procedural text - or not just write, sorry, create because they might be making a video or a podcast or whatever it is, we've got to take them through this gradual release. We need to not assume that they will automatically come to us knowing how to write an evaluation report or a procedural text. So we've got to think well, I need to move myself up the gradual rel

ease and I've got to model it to them. They need to see some good ones. And I always say for this if you think about when you write, which a lot of teachers will admit they don't write themselves, one thing - say you're applying for a job, or even a grant for some money, the first thing that we tend to do is say, "Well, have you got some examples for me so I can have a look at them so I know what I'm supposed to be producing here? What does a good one look like? "And then we read them and we thi

nk oh, okay, so they've included this and they've got this and then we have confidence to go off and have a go at writing our own. Well, that's what our kids need. So they need us to provide some examples of successful versions of whatever genre it is. And so if you're a literacy coach working with a technologies teacher, it's really about getting them to understand what are the elements in the genre that they're asking their kids to write in and helping build the technology teacher's understand

ing of those different elements because for them it might be second nature and in fact it is harder for us when we're proficient writers in the field to be able to go back to the start and say, "Oh, yeah, what knowledge would a new writer or someone that's new to this subject need to know to be able to create this?" So how do we do it? Well, we immerse our kids in other examples. So if we're talking about recipes, we're better off and the more effective teaching is not for us to stand up and go,

"Okay, guys, this is the instruction sheet for how to create an effective recipe", we're going to look at some examples and we're going to say, "Well, okay, how did Tony Tan do it in his cookbook, how did Rick Stein do it in his cookbook, what are the common elements here and let's create some guidelines for ourselves to craft from. "So we're using these as mentor texts. If we're looking at multimodal texts, we're going to watch a few different ones, some good ones and some bad ones, and we're

going to say what elements did the good ones have ", you know, what was the language they used, how did they structure it? Did they tell us at the start all of the materials that we needed or did they tell us as we went along? How long did it go for? How did they make it shorter? What did they leave out, what did they show? What was the position of the camera even, what was the lighting like, how did they get clear audio? So we've got to look at these things to create a bit of a recipe or guidel

ines for ourselves to think okay, well, this is how I could then go and create my own piece in that same genre. So on the toolkit there's an example of a woodwork they've got a link to a video Infuse and these are the guidelines that one class has come up with for an effective explanation when creating a video about how to do something in woodwork, right? Clear naming, visual example, list of materials, and I think for this - I've been watching that - what's that guy's name, he's on Facebook and

he's telling people how to cook? Nat. He's starting to sharpen up the way that he does it. So now he produces a visual list of these are all the cooking ingredients that you need because people send him feedback to say stop telling us as you go along, give us a list at the start. So when we've looked at lots of other examples, then we can start to create our own idea and, as the example is on the toolkit, we can start to create our own list of well, this is how to set out a successful one. So w

hen I go to write my own, I'm going to follow that same sort of recipe or those same guidelines, so then I'm effective in that. So if you're a literacy teacher working with the digital technologies people or the technologies teachers, you can help them to construct, to pull apart their text type so they can teach that to their students explicitly. Okay - wow, we're at the end. Here's the - if you're after more resources for disciplinary literacy - unfortunately these texts are all American and t

hey don't recognise digital technologies or design and design thinking as a subject area, but if you're a literacy teacher, these would be useful for you working with the other areas. I am going to leave you with the understanding goals for the session and the success criteria and wish you well. Don't forget the Literacy Teaching Toolkit is 24/7, so you'll be able to go and have a look yourselves at any stage to familiarise yourselves. Bastow also have - on the YouTube channel for Bastow they've

got a video for the English, maths and science part of the toolkits as well, so if you want to catch up on those ones, and you'll be able to skip the first section because I repeated it tonight. So thanks, everyone, for joining us and I'll see you at the next one when I'm talking about humanities, so we'll look forward to that. Enjoy your holidays.