Unit rationale, description and aim
Literacy concepts provide important insights into the planning, structuring and sequencing of learning programs, the use of teaching strategies and the selection of resources.
In this unit participants will examine the range of literacies needed for humanities, mathematics and science content areas. The unit will extend participants’ knowledge of the technical vocabulary, linguistic forms and structures of different curriculum areas and the role of language in learning. They will consider the requirement of spoken, written, visual, symbolic, graphic and multimodal texts and the interconnectedness of learning in content areas. This knowledge will offer a resource for teachers to enhance the development of literacy and learning within all curriculum areas.
The aim of this unit is to assist pre-service teachers to examine the range of literacies and language learning required for different curriculum areas in secondary school subjects and the way these literacies need to be developed for learners from diverse language and cultural backgrounds.
Campus offering
No unit offerings are currently available for this unit.Learning outcomes
To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.
Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.
Explore the graduate capabilities.
Demonstrate an understanding of the skills and con...
Learning Outcome 01
Critically evaluate classroom practice in the teac...
Learning Outcome 02
Use relevant meta-language in identifying the lite...
Learning Outcome 03
Design and integrate tasks in a unit of work which...
Learning Outcome 04
Design and critique units of work which incorporat...
Learning Outcome 05
Design teaching strategies which incorporate liter...
Learning Outcome 06
Content
Topics will include:
- The nature of literacy and language and their role in learning in the different areas of the curriculum
- Language as a social process, meta-language and numeracy in context
- Constructions of literacy in relevant state, territory and national curriculum and support documents from upper primary level through to secondary level
- The structure of different types of spoken, written, visual, graphic and multimodal texts
- Concepts of multiliteracies and frameworks for developing units of work around multiliteracies understandings
- Introduction to the systems of grammar at both sentence and discourse level, and the corresponding terminology
- Pedagogical and curriculum frameworks for the infusion of multimodal texts into secondary teaching
- Technologies for the development of multimodal texts
- A range of strategies used for the explicit teaching of literacy
- The relationship between linguistics and knowledge building, for example Maton’s “semantic waves” and Martin’s “power trio” as pedagogical frameworks
- Task design, construction and critical evaluation of resources used in the teaching of literacy
Assessment strategy and rationale
A range of assessment procedures will be used to meet the unit learning outcomes and develop graduate attributes consistent with University assessment requirements.
Minimum Achievement Standards
In order to pass this unit, pre-service teachers are required to submit all pieces of assessment and obtain an overall passing grade for the entire unit.
The total assessment tasks will amount to the equivalent of 5, 500 words.
Overview of assessments
Assessment Task 1: Rationale for the teaching of...
Assessment Task 1: Rationale for the teaching of literacy in a learning area other than English with reference to the curriculum documents and the literature.
20%
Assessment Task 2: Construction of an exemplar m...
Assessment Task 2: Construction of an exemplar multimodal text, related to a particular learning area with reference to the curriculum documents.
40%
Assessment Task 3: The design of a unit of work ...
Assessment Task 3: The design of a unit of work which explicitly values literacies concepts, in a particular learning area with reference to the curriculum documents.
40%
Learning and teaching strategy and rationale
Pre-service teachers will be involved in a variety of teaching-learning strategies to progress and demonstrate their understandings in this unit. Participants will be involved in a variety of teaching-learning strategies to support learning, including: online materials, readings, discussion forums and assignment preparation. The unit delivery will consist of a digital core with the expectation of students working with these materials for a minimum of two hours or equivalent each week. In addition, a two hour workshop/tutorial may be held once every two weeks (i.e., 4 times a semester or equivalent) in online mode.
This is a 10-credit point unit and has been designed to ensure that the time needed to complete the required volume of learning to the requisite standard is approximately 150 hours in total across the semester (or equivalent in intensive mode).
AUSTRALIAN PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS FOR TEACHERS - GRADUATE LEVEL
On successful completion of this unit, pre-service teachers should be able to: