Advanced Literacies in the content areas

Kristina Love

Australian Catholic University

Overview

1. The concept of ‘Advanced Literacies’

2. Working with advanced literacies in Australia

3. Future challenges

1. Literacy: some premises

A major responsibility of all teachers, regardless of the subjects they teach, is to develop their students’ skills in handling literacy, both in reading and in writing.

Proficiency in reading will help develop proficiency in writing, and vice versa

Carefully structured oral interactions also help build literacy

Literacies: insights from research

Modern literacy is very diverse and complex, often requiring images, diagrams and graphs to be read and interpreted, alongside words.

The nature of literacy changes fundamentally from Year 1 to Year 12, and the foundations laid in the early years are not sufficient to support the complex literacy demands of the later years of schooling

Theoretical insights into advanced literacies

Christie & Stenglin, 2006 Christie & Derewianka 2008 Coffin, 1997, 2010 Fang & Schleppegrell 2008 Schellepgrel & Colombi, 2001

Unsworth, 2006, 2010 Veel, 1997

Year 3 Science The Little pygmy possum is the

smallest in the possum family Its body is 5 to 6:5 centimeters

long and its tail is another 6 centimetres. It weighs around 7 grms. It has a cone shaped head. Its fur is a soft brown colour with a tight grey belly. It has very large rounded eyes. Its big toe, known as a hallax on each foot helps it to climb balanced with its tail which curls and grips branches.

(from Christie & Stenglin, 2006)

Advanced Literacy: Year 7 Science

“The cells that line the nasal cavities have cilia, tiny hairlike extensions that can move together like whips. The whiplike motion of these cilia sweeps mucus into the throat, where it is swallowed”.

Identify potential language challenges.

The cells that line the nasal cavities have cilia, tiny hairlike extensions that can move together like whips. The whiplike motion of these cilia sweeps mucus into the throat, where it is swallowed.

Technical language Long noun groups Re-packaging of noun->

adjective (whiplike) Nominalisation (move ->

motion) Info in first sentence is

compressed and becomes the point of departure for further elaboration in second sentence.

This facilitates scientific reasoning, but challenges readers to ‘unpack’ densely organised information

Advanced literacy: Maths

Relationships between multiple abstractions Area = Length x Width Volume = Area x Height

Congruent (spoken -like) form

Nominalized (written-like) form

• how long something is

• how far across something is

• how far off the ground something is

= length

= width

= height

Nominalisation and abstraction

The demands of increasingly technical and abstract mathematical language accumulate dramatically by high school, when many struggling learners are left behind.

Teachers who can explicitly discuss such language features with their students, and their role in making mathematical meanings, can engage them more deeply with mathematical content (Huang & Normandia, 2008).

See NSW Maths for Literacy paper pg 9.

Scaffolding advanced literacies through talk: Maths

T. What distance do you have to measure?S. The distance.T. Which distance?S. The distance from the vertex.T. Which vertex?S. (pointing) That one.T. Can you be more precise?S. The top left vertex.T. OK. So what do we measure?S. The distance from the top left vertex.

T. Good. To where?S. The outside of the other shape. T. I’m not sure what you mean. Where on the other shape?S. The bottom left hand corner.T. OK. And what do we call that shape?S. The object.T. OK. So the line’s going to …S. The bottom left vertex of the object.T. OK. Put that all together and tell me what you’re measuring, what distance?S. The distance from the top left vertex of the image to the bottom left vertex of the object.

Transcript Robert Veel, 1997

The language of mathematical reasoning

Precision in use of language for locating and measuring

Use of abstract and technical concepts Written-like conventions of the language

preferred over spoken-likeendophoric, not exophoric referencelengthy noun groups.

The challenge of advanced literacies

Primary school cannot prepare readers for the specialised reading in high school egLiterary worksHistorical documentsScientific explanationsMathematical problems

Here, S’s engage with more complex combinations of genres, in new contexts of learning that are further removed from their personal and everyday lives

Increased complexity of generic structure

From recounting history …

Year 10 History “By 1929, American factories were turning out nearly

half of the world’s industrial goods. The rising productivity led to enormous profits. However, this new wealth was not evenly distributed”.

How has information been ‘packaged’ to build from sentence to sentence?

Students can be explicitly taught to identify how information is presented in one sentence, then re-packaged as the point of departure for the next sentence.

… to critiquing history From a text used to teach about the causes of the Boxer

Rebellion in China. “Imperialist powers had been competing to carve

the country into spheres of influence for years, while enforced opium addiction and widespread corruption had reduced most of the populace to abject poverty” (Denny, 2008)

Students must unpack abstract and highly nominalised concepts (bolded).

… and recognise that what are presented as ‘facts’ are often interpretations to be evaluated, as historians make more or less explicit judgements about the people and events in history.

Recognizing ideologyIn evaluating the Boxer text as a commentary on a

period of Chinese history, students must assess the writer’s 21st century post-colonial stance by focusing on his choice of value-laden epithets (‘abject’), verbs (‘carved’ and ‘reduced’) and nouns (‘corruption’).

Students need support in learning to read in these highly specialised ways, drawing attention to how such language operates to construct a particular argument about history

ie learning to be critical historians, able to interrogate various viewpoints.

Learning to interrogateIn evaluating the Boxer text as a commentary on a

period of Chinese history, students must assess the writer’s 21st century post-colonial stance by focusing on his choice of value-laden epithets (‘abject’), verbs (‘carved’ and ‘reduced’) and nouns (‘corruption’).

Students need support in learning to read in these highly specialised ways, drawing attention to how such language operates to construct a particular argument about history

ie learning to be critical historians, able to interrogate various viewpoints.

Interrogating multimodally

Web site on the one child policy in China http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=128&catid=4&subcatid=15

Advanced literacies and multimodal texts

The multi-generic and multi-modal

nature of texts in education LASS Unit 5 Screens 3-6, 11-1

Advanced literacies and image-text relations

New research into image-text relations

Image equals (=) verbal text

Image adds to (+) verbal text

Image elaborates on (x) verbal text

Image contradicts (-) verbal text

Unsworth http://www.pucsp.br/isfc. Proceedings 33rd International Systemic Functional Congress 2006

Image = (clarifies) verbal text

In the verbiage, the information about fly traps is simply “… constructed fly traps from old PET drink containers to catch flies.” The nature of the trap and how it catches flies are clarified by the image.

Image + (extends) Text

In the verbal text, the absorption of evaporated moisture in the air, its movement and eventual precipitation is described without any mention of 'clouds'. It is in the diagram that the formation and transport of clouds and precipitation from them are specified

Image x (elaborates) text

When an image enhances the text by adding causal, temporal or spatial meanings

The cropped colour photograph relates to the bold caption below it by ‘manner/means’

Image - (contradicts) text

Pictorially the levels are allocated equal proportions

Verbal text states that each level is of radically different depth

What is explicitly stated in the verbiage about the relative depths of the different ocean zones, is strongly visually contradicted.

2. Working with advanced literacies

Zammitt: Framework for multiliteracies BUILT, LASS and LASS+ Other curriculum support materials:

focus on Maths NSW materials on Maths Parkin & Hayes article (program with

Indigenous communities)

Zammitt (2006) Framework for multiliteracies

Using the Framework

Evaluate the pedagogy underpinning this TLF site

http://www.thelearningfederation.edu.au/for_teachers/sample_curriculum_content/tm_-_civics_and_citizenship.html

BUILT

BUILT’s structure

Unit 1. Language and Learning

Topic A: Text and Context Topic B: Scaffolding learning

Unit 2. Oral Language and Learning

Topic A: Oral texts in context Topic B: Scaffolding learning through

oral language

Unit 3. Written Language: Writing

Topic A: Written texts in context Topic B: Scaffolding students' writing.

Unit 4. Written Language: Reading

Topic A: Reading in context Topic B: Scaffolding students' reading.

Literacy Across the School Subjects

New film footage of high school teachers

New insights from research on Academic Literacies

Updated technologies

A taste of LASS

Unit 1: interviews with world experts, students and teachers (Gatachi, Screen 20, video 2)

Unit 4 Screen 3 Frogs exercise

Unit 5: multimodal genres

Units 6 & 7: supporting literacy pedagogy

Unit 8: planning around literacy.

LASS Plus (Recounts)

First in a series of 6http://www.eshowca

se.unimelb.edu.au/packages/lass

Other curriculum materials

Focus on Maths NSW materials on

Maths Parkin & Hayes

article (program with Indigenous communities)

3. Challenges

Challenges in Sweden?

Teachers’ attitudes?Resources

development?Others?

References Christie & Stenglin, 2006 Understanding English language and literacy development

http://www.edfac.unimelb.edu.au/knowledgetransfer/downloads/LiteracyPositionPaper.pdf

Christie, F & Derewianka, B (2008) School Discourse. Continuum Press Fang, Z. and Schellepgrell, M. (2008) Reading in the secondary content areas: a

language based pedagogy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Gibbons, P. 2002. Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning: Teaching Second

Language Learners in the Mainstream Classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Kress, G. (2003) Literacy in the New Media Age, Routledge, London and NY. Love K, Pigdon K, Baker G, with Hamston J. (2005) Building Understandings in Literacy

and Teaching (BUILT) CD ROM 3rd Edition, The University of Melbourne, Vic. Love K, Baker G, and Quinn, M. (2008) Literacy Across the School Subjects (LASS) DVD,

The University of Melbourne, Vic. Schellepgrell, M. & C. Colombi Eds (2002) Developing Advanced Literacy in first and

second languages: meaning with power. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Unsworth, L. (2006) E-literature for children: Enhancing digital literacy learning.

Routledge Unsworth, L. (2007) Image/text relations and intersemiosis: Towards multimodal text

description for multiliteracies education. Online publication available at http://www.pucsp.br/isfc.