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Using Interactive Approaches to Teaching Literacy, Language and Numeracy

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Aim

• To enable you to extend your range of group and interactive teaching techniques to support your learners’ literacy, language and numeracy skills development.

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By the end of the session you will have:

• gained an understanding of some approaches to differentiation and how to use them effectively

• created ideas for interactive group activities and effective questioning techniques to use in embedded sessions

continued…

Outcomes

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Outcomes continued

• developed a plan for an interactive activity for learners in an embedded session

• received feedback that will enable you to use interactive approaches effectively.

 

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What is active learning and why does it work?

“We learn by doing. Research shows that active learning is much better recalled, enjoyed and understood. Active methods require us to ‘make our own meaning’, that is, develop our own conceptualisations of what we are learning. During this process we physically make neural connections in our brain, the process we call learning. Passive methods such as listening do not require us to make these neural connections or conceptualisations.”

(Petty, 2004)

National Training Laboratories, Maine.

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Listening

Practice by doing

Teaching others, immediate use of learning

Discussion group

Demonstration

Audio-visual

Reading

5%

10%

20%

30%

50%

75%

90%

Teaching methods and effective

learning

Learning retention

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Characteristics of effective active learning

• Challenging goals• Active learning towards these goals• Feedback on the extent to which these goals have

been met• Constructivist teaching methods

Petty 2004 8

Constructivism

Links that create understanding

New learning

Existing concepts, knowledge and

experience

Bloom 1956 9

Bloom’s Taxonomy

Evaluation Harder

Synthesis

Analysis

Application

Comprehension

Knowledge Easier

Developmental tasks e.g.

• Give strengths and weaknesses

• Give arguments for and against

• Suggest improvements

• Design a poster

Mastery tasks for example:• ‘Apply’• ‘State’• ‘Define’• ‘Explain’

Support materials for C&G 9282. Initial Certificate

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Surface and deep learning

Q1. What did Ted do last Saturday?

Q2. What can you say about the mun and the firz?

Q3. Do you need to understand the text to answer low-level questions?

Q4. How effective were the mun’s actions?

Q5. Why should culping be encouraged?

Mun falls out of flee.

On Saturdays Ted goes culping. Last Saturday he took God with him. The mun clizzed and the firz shad. When they arrived, Ted sulted God.

God said, “Thank Spult,” then sulted Ted. Eventually they culped until the mun fell out of the flee.

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Surface and deep learning

80% of 12 year olds can correctly divide 225 by 15. But only 40% can solve the problem:

 

If a gardener has 225 bulbs to place equally in 15 flower beds, how many bulbs would be in each bed?

 

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Differentiation

“Differentiation is… the process of identifying, with each learner, the most effective strategies for achieving agreed targets.”

(Weston, 1992)

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Using Bloom’s Taxonomy to help differentiate and to achieve deep learning

a. Everyone can learn more but motivation and rate of achievement varies.

b. Teachers and instructional style make the difference. Consider:• task, outcome, time allowed• different learning preferences• individual targets• feedback.

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Getting interactivity into direct instruction

Direct instruction is a teacher-centred activity.

The challenge is to intersperse input with learner interaction and feedback.

Common characteristics of poor practice:• there is no practice for learners• there is no feedback• some learners opt out• some learners have poor concentration.

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Getting interactivity into direct instruction

Which questioning strategy works best?

Consider:• participation rate• teacher’s feedback• learner’s feedback• learner comfort• thinking time.

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Reciprocal teaching…

a. is an interactive, group activity using discussion and explanation

b. teaches reading comprehension sub-skills

c. makes reading strategies explicit:• questioning• summarising• clarifying• predicting.

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Decisions, decisions

Matching

Match: question and answerproblem and solutiontechnical word and meaningparts and their function.

Constructivism A theory of learning stressing the role of personal meaning-making

Y = 4x - 7 x = (y + 7)

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Decisions, decisions

Grouping

Group: agree, disagree, don’t know;

sometimes true, always true, never true

Classify items.

Put some spurious cards in too!

tree

rat pen

flute

love

write

blue

run

sit

talk

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Decisions, decisions

Ranking and sequencing

Rank by time, order or by a ‘continuum’, for example.• Put the cards in time order.• Rank actions to create a database query.• Rank by least and most: effective, important, useful, serious, and

so on.

1/4 2/3 21/2

Turn off electricity

Check ABC

Ring 999