Literacy and numeracy demands in lesson plans - Assignment Example

?TEACHING STUDY OF SOCIETIES AND ENVIRONMENT IN S1 LEVEL AMONG ESL College: Numeracy learning outcomes The following are the learning outcome for the numeracy demands over the next four weeks Attaining numeracy skills gives the students the ability to select form known numbers, data concepts, measurement and special information and use them to the mathematical demand and day to day activities. The following are the learning outcome for numeracy demands Be able to measure distances on the map using the scale provided Student should be able to locate places of interest using the map direction and scale Students should be able to read the compass direction of a place and pinpoint some of the resources found in Victoria Students should be able to locate various human environments, spread of settlement, population, towns and cities and land use in Australia. Students should be able to know why environments change The students will be able to identity a grid and read its location Literacy learning outcomes Literacy skills help the learner understand the aspects of language and how to employ these aspects in managing school work and social life. Literacy skills are developed through writing, speaking, listening, viewing and reading. Literacy shapes the way students view themselves in relation to their environment. Students should be able to find information on the maps and share it Students should be able to describe the accurate location of places on the map Student should be able and become familiar to tourist maps Students should be able to answer the question asked in the text book and share and check the response with the others Should be able to present their conduct group discussion and share the knowledge in class Justification of the numeracy demand Numeracy demands are present in every sector of our society and essential in carrying out day to day activities in life. Lowe and McDonough (1997) have previously stated that Mathematics is not an inhuman activity but an active part in human life. People invented numeracy so that they can effectively use it in going about daily activities. However, most students dehumanize the numeracy skills and insist that the subject is hard and unrelated to daily activities. Teaching numeracy skills among ESL and SOSE learners will socialize them towards believing that numeracy skills are important and can be imbedded in their school and social life (Kemp & Hogan, 1999). Numeracy skills is not all about solving mathematical problem but being in a position to effectively sue them as required in normal life instances. According to Fin (1991), the interest of understanding how the school curriculum of the Post-compulsory Education and Training affected Australia’s economy began in the 1990’s. To investigate into the matter a commission was formed by the government to articulate the links among the sectors of schooling, training work and higher education. The results of the review indicated that numeracy cuts across all disciplines and that that it is relevant to the Australian economy in diverse ways. To be able to perform well in their overall aggregate mark, students need to have high level of numeracy skills. Numeracy is used in class in learning other subjects such as physical education, geography, English among others. If a students skills in numeracy are not proficient the chances of performing well in other disciplines is relatively low (Barin, 1990). The student’s numeracy skills are essential in helping them figure out different places on the map. In this case, most of the S1 learners among the foreigners are not conversant with the directions and places around Australia. To help them familiarize with the new environment, the use of compass direction plays a central role. Learning how to find out direction through the use of a compass makes their life in a foreign land safe and easier. Lack of this skill may slower down the rate settling in Australia thus affecting all other social interactions. This skills also comes in handy for their families especially the parents who may be lacking the numeracy knowledge. Learning how to calculate the distance on a geographical map accurately is a basic skill that every member of the society should be having. Any individual who is has acquired the will be able to approximate the distance from one place to the other. For example a student with numeracy skill with the ability to accurately measure the distance between two spot on a map will be in a position to approximate the distance between his home and the school or the playing ground and the classroom. For one to understand why the environment changes, students should be able to understand elements like temperature changes, rainfall patterns and humidity levels. Understanding the weather patterns not only involves calculating the means and trend changes but, it requires on to allow the relationship between human behavior and such changes in climatic conditions. This is only possible if the student is well equipped in numeracy skills. Numeracy skills will require one to learn the mathematics in the situation they are in, for example why the weather patterns in the locality is the way it is or why a given scale is the most appropriate for a topographical tourist map. Apart from that, the student will also need to understand how mathematics has shaped the given situation and vise versa. Furthermore, the students will understand strategic skills that are required to handle the situation they are in. For example, as ESL learners, they will need to value the importance of practicing English speaking in groups compared to doing it alone. In relation to the allocation and distribution of resources in Victoria and their environment or even in their households, through numeracy the students will find answers as to why the situation is the way it is or what they are supposed to do to change it (Boaler,1993). Numeracy demands are present in any particular discipline, in ESL/SOSE, the students need to question the percentages or number given in the text, they need to know if there other texts are showing different information on the same mater, need to inquire on how the data was collected and within a span of how long has the data been collected to arrive at that particular conclusion. There is a considerable demand of numeracy skills in ESL/SOSE lessons, without this skill students may not be able to understand the relationship between the environment, their social life and the economic activities in their locality. They will not be in position to figure out how the weather pattern is calculated and how they keep changing from one period to the other. Besides, lack of numeracy skill will result to poor results in other subjects because numeracy cuts along all the subjects that are taught at school. Justification of literacy skills Literacy just like numeracy has been identified by the Queensland School Curriculum council as a priority of the P to 10 curriculums. According to the National Literacy Goal, “every child leaving primary school should be able to numerate, read, write, and spell at an appropriate level (Cumming et al, 1998). Literacy cuts along all the subjects with in the curriculum. Literacy is needed as part of a life skill; it is the driving force towards an individual’s socialization process and problem solving in day to day activities and in school life (Hull & Schultz, 2001). Literacy is a social practice of reading and writing in a wide range of contexts. It is integrated with viewing, critical thinking, speaking and listening involved in the specific contexts. Through this, it can be seen that literacy is not an independent variable; it is inseparable from practices and effects relating to a given context. Literacy from the wider part of running a home, completing an assignment, leading a congregation, teaching a class and entertaining oneself among others. Thus literacy cannot be neutral; it is integrated in the values, beliefs and customs surrounding an individual or a group’s behavior in relation to a given context. Literacy is inherently bound up with the ways of being in the world “Literacy therefore cannot be neutral', since as a social practice it necessarily integrates the values and beliefs that individuals and groups have about the world with the influence of these on the purposes, behaviours, actions and social interactions required to be and to get things done in a culture” (Ludwing, 2000 p.38). There is high demand for literacy in ESL/SOSE classes. First of all, it is needed for code breaking in the English lessons. Literacy skills will enable the students to decode and encode both written and spoken texts during the lessons. For example, they can use body language in giving the direction of a place on a tourists map or can use appropriate technical terms learned during the class in defining the relationship between the environment and the human activities going on around them (Kerkham & Comber, 2007). Numeracy will also be helpful in comprehending and composing the written and spoken texts in class activities, at home and outside the class. For example the students will be able to describe the distinguishing environmental characteristics of various places around Victoria and share the description with the class mates in an elaborate manner. The students will also require literacy skills to compare the human activities around their school and this relationship to the prevailing climatic conditions, in reading the maps, literacy will enable the students to describe the position of a place on a map accurately. Literacy is essential in using the text that is learn in class in cultural and social functions. For example ,the students will be able to use text in coming up with a presentation to make on how their behavior affects the environment, the right use of text will increase the level of understanding among the audience and will enable the students relate the context learn in class to activities outside the classroom (Freebody & Gunn, 1995). The students need literacy skill to analyse the texts that they come across. In calculating the distance between the various spots on the maps, the students are likely to come up with different answers. To understand how the differences come about, the students should be able to analyse the texts and relate it to the different level of perception among their colleges. They will require analysing text as perceived differently by different categories of people, for example the reason as to why the environment change may differ between the student and their parents or older people in the society because of the generation differences (Kerkham & Comber, 2007). Lack of numeracy skills or education, can be very detrimental in the students life. They will be unable to derive meaning from what they learn and situations presented to them in life, they will not be a position of analyzing the texts presented to them and share it with others. Education and life in general generate its important from the art of sharing, if this aspect is missing in an individual or among a group then life becomes motionless and static. The cross cutting influence of literacy in all areas and subjects implies that a student without this skill will likely not perform well n other areas. Thus for a successful educational life, career and social life, literacy is vial component of achieving the desired success (Lo Bianco & Freebody, 1997). Teaching the Numeracy Demands Numeracy demand: Students should be able to locate various human environments, spread of settlement, population, towns and cities and land use in Australia. The teacher’s knowledge on teaching numeracy and the classroom culture are the major factors in influencing effective learning and teaching (Thompson et al. 2005). According to him, a teacher should have high expectation from all the students and should set challenging roles for each of them. The teacher needs to monitor the student’s progress and provide feedback to the student over the same, they should also integrate content knowledge and teaching skills and make a connection that will enable the student enjoy the lessons. The teacher needs to enjoy the classes to motivate and encourage his or her students (Thompson et al, 2005). According to Shulman (1987), the three basic contents required by a teacher in teaching numeracy are content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge. The teacher requires to have a proper and organized way of presenting the mathematical knowledge they posses to effectively conduct the classes. For the students to locate and read a grid, the teacher should first of all define what a grid is , allow the student to identify them on the maps after which the concept of reading grid squares will be impacted on the students. The pedagogy strategy to use in teaching numeracy will be working as individual and later as groups and assessing the understanding of the student’s thorough question and giving tests. According to Fennema and Romberg (1999), cognitive guided instruction in which the teacher relies on the student’s knowledge on the topic to develop a discussion plays an important role in numeracy teaching. It is essential for the teacher to have all the required resources to successfully teach the students numeracy skills. In this case, the resources required include the map, rulers, writing material, text books and newspaper articles. After successfully locating various human environments, spread of settlement, population, towns and cities and land use in Australia, the teacher will involve the students in a number of activities. Students will be grouped in a group of three or four each where they will be allocated with subtopics to research on. Using the newspapers and journals, each group will find any information in regard to human environments, settlement patterns, the population growth and land use. First of all to come up with the information, the students will need to collaborate among themselves before they can present it to the rest of class. The students will select one article in a journal and newspaper regarding their topic and come up with the following details. They will look for reason why the given pattern has been developed in the article, which research process was sued to come up with the results, if the results are validated and the effect of the publication to the public and to the education sector. The students will pick a few more articles on the same topic and compare the data represented here in. They will also take note on the methods of data presentation used, such as graphs, tables, pie charts, measures of central tendency used among others. The main aim of this exercise will be to discover the importance of numeracy skills in understanding the environment and human activities (Wills, 1992). During the exercise the use of technology will also be incorporated. The society is constantly changing as new technologies invention take centre stage. Students should be able to apply the technology in learning numeracy. One lesson will be used to teach the students how the can find information on the environment and human activities in Australia and their country of origin. If the teacher has an iPad , using it to illustrate how students can best sue technology in learning more about their environment will be very effective and captivating for the students. After the first week, students should be able to relate the population patterns, weather patters, and distribution of wealth and settlement patterns with human activities. They should be in a position to collect and analyse the data collected during the exercise. The teachers will asses the student understanding through a written essay on life application of the various data discussed by the students (Lawrence, 1989). Teaching Literacy Demand: Literacy demand: Students should be able to describe the accurate location of places on the map using the compass direction Literacy involves reading and writing in different contexts involving speaking, listening, viewing and critical thinking. This implies that literacy demand needs a set of interrelated knowledge and skills that are required for one to operate in any society. For the teacher to successfully teach his or her students the interrelated capabilities an in-depth view of literacy in both the curriculum and pedagogy dimensions should be developed simultaneously. According to Green 1999, these dimensions include the cultural, the critical and operational. When the three dimensions are used, a teacher will be in a position to tell whether the text is appropriate or inappropriate or accurate or inaccurate in a given setting, or social and cultural context. It also give s the teacher to make use of texts and technologies to fulfill the purposes in the school, work and every day life contexts. The critical dimension revolves around human practices and meaning of the set systems, before fully participating in an event, human beings should first of all be socialized to such an event. In this context, the student should first of all be informed by learning ESL/SOSE is beneficial to their life at that moment and in future and how thy can use the acquired knowledge to contribute the society around them. After this it will be easy to conduct the class at any given time (Bigum et al., 1998, p. 17). The cultural dimension will incorporate other genres in the use and analyzing of text, it involves the use of books, journals, the internet, complex goals, and traditional sources in teaching literacy. The teacher will also incorporate the critical aspect of literacy where the societal constructed nature of human practices will be included According to Lo Bianco and Freebody (1997), Australian policy makers in the sector of education came up with a number policies that care effective towards teaching literacy in shoos. To effectively teach literacy skills in ESL/SOSE, some of the most relevant policies that will be incorporated include; personal growth approach, skill based learning and cultural heritage learning. The resources required for this exercise will include, maps, news papers, writing material and pairs of compasses. To describe the accurate location of places on the map using the compass direction, the students will carry out the coding practice. This will be done by identifying the codes used on the topographical or tourist maps at hand. They will pronounce them accurately the fright format, and loudly read the grid numbers of the rest of the class in sequence. The students will use the various grid reading selected in pointing out the direction of selected spots on the map. The teacher will ask the grid reading on some of the conspicuous areas on the map (Kemp & Hogan, 1999). The students will then point out the important of reading grids o a pa and learning how to tell the directions. Some of the students will give examples of how at one time in life they gave someone a direction to a place they were unfamiliar with. Lastly the student will analyse the text to understand why the specific grid number were sued, the person behind the invention of the compass and how maps help them in day to day activities. During the entire session, the student will be talking, presenting, viewing and reading the necessary information (Cumming, WyattSmith, Ryan, Doig, 1998, p. 155). By the end of the week, the students will be able to give how to give direction to a stranger, they will learn how to risk for a direction incase they are lost, how to read compass and grids on them and how to use the compass. They will be able to understand the important of using maps in current world and how the people used to learn of direction before the discovery of maps or pairs of compasses. Reflection on Lesson preparation One of the challenges I encountered when preparing the lessons for teaching literacy and numeracy skills includes how the curriculum would handle students of different capabilities. According to the National Numeracy Review Report, some Secondary Schools in Australia practice Ability Grouping which results to higher performance in numeracy skills. However, I find this approach leads to the segregation of the poor performing students. This in turn leads to the demoralizing of the poor students who might end up performing worse. Thus searching for better way of dealing with the different capability of students gave me some tension. I have not yet come up with the best strategy to use without affecting the performing of wither group, well performing and weak students (Boaler, 1993). When planning of the lesson, I did not have ample time in allocating all the activities enough time for the students to fully comprehend. For example, sharing of the knowledge learnt through group work requires approximately 20 minutes for each group. However, because the lesson plans have a limited amount of period allocated to them, I had to reduce the presentation to five minutes for each group .This in turn would not give the students ample time to express themselves .On the same not, the fact hat some students level of English speaking had not yet picked up, some students may take quite a long time to express their points. This in turn reduces the opportunity for all the students to participate in class. I think that the school principle, teachers and educators should work together in re- examine the curriculum and time allocation. This will ensure that the learning outcomes fulfilled by the end of the lessons (Westwood, 2004). Constraint in financial resources does not give the students an opportunity to conduct field research. Because of the financial constraints, I have to reconsider what to include in the lesson activities, leaving out most of the outdoor activities. Restricting most of the lesson plans to indoor related activities, denies the students an opportunity to practically carry our some of the elements that would improve their understanding of the relevance of numeracy. For example, if the students were in a position to travel to another place for a field excursion that involves data collection and interaction with participants on the groups, this would give them a better view of incorporating numeracy and literacy not only in education but also in real life situation. When planning for the lessons, I had to constantly look for ways of motivation the students to devote themselves in the class activities. During my previous classes, I have noticed that a few of the students lack motivation due to a number of factors. For example lack of interest in the topics being taught, emotional disturbances and family problems. To make the students attain the lesson objectives, coming up with ways of making the lesson interesting and capturing the full attention is required. This is one of the areas I found challenging, because I could not think of fresh thoughts on ways to motivate all the students in class (Westwood, 2004). The present curriculum has been in place for a very long time, with fast changing societal trends and technological changes, there is need to adopt new approached to teaching literacy and numeracy . When preparing for the lessons, I felt that some of the approaches used were overtaken with time, and the students would not fully comprehend the relevance of some activities in the current day and time. The Education sector should keep reviewing the school curriculum regular intervals so that elements like technological and societal changes may be taken into consideration (Kerkham & Comber, 2007). Last but not least, I lacked motivation when preparing the lessons. One of the reasons is the work load that I am supposed to handle. In addition, the school authorities sometimes fails to give a teacher full support when required. Lack of teamwork and collaboration from the administration, the heavy work load with minimal motivation and insufficient time to conduct all the planned for activities contributed to the tensions I encountered during the preparation of the lessons. In conclusion, it is worthwhile to note the literacy and numeracy skill are both essential in helping the student relate to normal life situation and achieve academic goals. The Australian government should continuously invest into developing new policies that promote the leaning of numeracy and literacy skill that will act as the driving force for social coherence, economic development and political maturity. The success of an individual is highly determined by their literacy and numeracy demands because they cut across all the aspects of life (Kemp & Hogan, 1999). References Barin, L, (1990) 'Numeracy: What has it got to do with literacy?'. Literacy Broadsheet 28, February. Boaler, J. (1993). The role of contexts in the mathematics classroom: Do they make mathematics more 'real7 For the Leam1TlgoJMathemat1cs, 13 (21. 12-17. Bigum, C., Durrant, C., Green. B., Honan, E., Lankshear, C. Morgan, W., Murray, J., Cumrning, J., Wyatt-Smith, C., Ryan, J. and Doig, S (1998). The Literacy-Curriculum Interface. Canberra: DEETYA Fennema, E & Romberg, TA (1999), Mathematics classrooms that promote understanding, Lawrence Erlbaum, NJ: Mahwah. Freebody, P. Ludwig, C., & Gunn, S. (1995) Everyday literacy practices in and out of schools in low soda-economic urban communities. Brisbane: Centre for Literacy Education Research, Griffith University. Green, B. (1999) The New Literacy Challenge? Literacy Learning: Secondary Thoughts, Vol. 7, No 1. Victoria: Australian Literacy Educators' Association. Hull, G., & Schultz, K. (2001). Literacy and learning out of school: A review of theory and research. Review of Educational Research, 71(4), 575–611 Kerkham, L., & Comber, B. (2007). Literacy, places and identity: The complexity of teaching environmental communications [Special issue]. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy,30(2), 134–148 Kemp. M. & Hogan, J. (1999). 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Available at: http://www.acer.edu.au/research_projects/ GoodStart.html Westwood, P 2004, Learning and learning difficulties, Australian Council for Educational Research, Camberwell, Victoria Willis, S. (ed.). (1990) Being Numerate: What Counts? Australian Council for Educational Research, Melbourne. WIllis. S. (1992). Being numerate: Whose right? Who's left? Literacy and Numeracy Exchange, Autumn. Read More