We should all agree that everyone deserves a high quality education

View fullsize

We all seem to agree that everyone deserves a high quality education; however, I anticipate that there would some disagreement as to what a quality education might consist of.

To be educated is to be equipped with certain knowledge, skills and attributes to navigate/shape/explore/question/participate in one's world, whatever that world is or will be.

Education involves doing, imagining, connecting, collaborating, understanding, accomplishing, discovering, becoming and more.

For a child in a refugee camp or - worse - a detention camp, he or she may become proficient in the skills that are taught within the confines of a cramped classroom or in the shade of a tree, but is this child receiving an education? Is the child discovering the mysteries of physics, the art of the humanities, the conundrums of civic society, the collected wisdom and more. Whilst I do not want to devalue the valiant efforts of educators in the camps (something with which I am all too familiar), I dream of greater opportunities for this child, wherever his or her path may lead.

What does an education mean to you? How is an education denied a life denied?

Change is technically simple and socially complex

I think I have driven myself mad on the topic of literacy. I do not exaggerate. The opening statement is not meant to be a rhetorical device. I mean, I just completed a sizeable pile of notes, diagram and essays which all centre around the following two questions:

• What is the sequence of skills developed across the stages of literacy development? and
• How do we as policy makers, teachers, parents, and community members arrange the right instruction at the right time with the right resources so learners are developing toward rich, diverse literacy practices?

I've also recently finished an online course with eminent literacy academic Catherine Snow, which was inspiring and insightful as well as being challenging for all participants.

So ... every diagram, lesson, assessment and lecture that I view, read or write appears to help resolve the above questions from me, yet at the same time these resolutions do not immediately impact on the lives of learners that I have in the forefront of my mind: the refugee children and indigenous children which I regularly have come into contact with. What we require are daily activities of challenging learning with high support that are based on a keen understanding of the learner’s developmental trajectory. 

However, this is easier said than done. As I once read (Spark, 2003), “change is technically simple and socially complex”. Doesn’t that hit the proverbial nail on the head!

So I need to remind myself of something I wrote in the essay entitled Never forget language and literacy are learned with steady guidance from others. In that essay, I told myself that there are no silver bullets, there are no quick fixes and there are no jumping the queue when it comes to the gradual development of strong language, literacy and learning practices. A learner requires instruction that is based on quality teaching with quality resources in quality spaces through quality relationships with a clear understanding of the learner’s needs. Easy! Right?

There is a certain degree of pressure to gain skills in a timely manner. And learners benefit from the time and enabling environments to gain a command of the salient features of language to build confidence in certain familiar uses of language, literacy and also numeracy before being faced with more advanced forms, content and uses. Learning language and literacy are technical achievements. Sure! Right?

But at the same time, Stanley Cavell reminds us that this learning is initially grounded in the compulsion to know and to communicate. First, he stated, ”[we] forget that we learn language and learn the world together” (Cavell, 1969, pg 19). Second, he stated “the pupil must want to go on alone in taking language to the world, and that what is said must be worth saying [and writing], have a point (warning, informing, amusing, promising, questioning, chastising, counting, insisting, beseeching, and so on) … If it is part of teaching to undertake to validate these measures of interest, then it would be quite as if teaching must, as it were, undertake to show a reason for speaking [writing and reading] at all.” (Cavell, 2005, pg 115)

So … these budding learners need to become skilled, practiced, knowledgable, capable, curious, trusting and confident regardless of their age. This goal is technically simple and socially complex. Or as Donaldo Macedo (2001) wrote, “reading specialists … who have made technical advancement in the field of reading … [must] make linkages between their self-contained technical reading methods and the social and political realities that generate unacceptably high failure reading rates among certain groups of students.” (pg xiii)

There are no quick fixes. There are no easy solutions. What is the way forward from here?

References

Cavell, S. (1969). Must We Mean What We Say?. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Cavell, S. (2005). Philosophy the day after tomorrow. In Philosophy the day after tomorrow (pp. 111 – 131). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.

Macedo, D. (2001) Foreword. In P. Freire, Pedagogy of freedom: ethics, democracy and civic courage (pp. xi - xxxii). Maryland’s: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Sparks, D. (2003). Interview with Michael Fullan: Change agent. Journal of Staff Development, 24(1), 55-58.

Fostering Reading Comprehension ... and Dispelling a Few Myths at the Same Time

How can one explain the expression, transmit one’s comprehension? Ask yourself: How does one lead anyone to the comprehension of a poem or of a theme? The answer to this tells us how meaning is explained here. Let’s simplify language to the declarative statement that has the capacity to convey unambiguously. (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, #533)

Reading is not reading if it does not lead to comprehension. Otherwise, it would be known as “word calling”. With that premise, I launch into a brief entry about reading comprehension. It is not comprehensive. Nor is it very technical. Instead, it is a few, common ideas that have been hanging around my head for some time. To help organise my thoughts, I have set out to dispel a few myths that I have heard expressed from time to time:

• Myth #1: Once one solves issues of decoding and the reader is fluent, then comprehension should take care of itself.
• Answer #1: Whilst automaticity and fluency does facilitate meaningful comprehension,  learners need ample practice and instruction in order to process, interpret, and respond to the information presented in a texts.  Developing readers also need to build a diverse portfolio of knowledge, interests, reading experiences and vocabulary to make sense of what is read.

• Myth #2: You cannot teach comprehension, because you cannot teach thinking. Someone either understands something or he doesn’t.
• Answer #2: Cannot teach someone to think? You have got to be kidding! We teach people to think all the time. We direct people’s attention to significant details. We encourage individuals to imagine. We ask people to draw connections between observations and concepts being learned. We present pictures to people so that we can persuade and inform. Of course we can teach comprehension. 

• Myth #3: Comprehension is a singular skill that one completes by oneself.
• Answer #3: To comprehend requires the orchestration of a wide range of skills, whether this involves visualisation, summation, interpretation, comparison, application, etc. Over time, learners are taught to deploy a range of techniques in order to focus on what they read and to make sense of what they read. All of these techniques may not have been made explicit, but this does not mean that they do not exist, that they should not be taught and that they do not become more complex over time.

• Myth #4: Reading comprehension is a general skill. If one is a good reader, then one can read and understand just about everything.
• Answer #4: No! It may appear that a good reader can read anything (as long as the reader can control his or her reading diet). Most of us can’t necessarily choose our reading diet. The ability to read a novel is different than the ability to read legislation or philosophy or a science textbook or a government policy or an electricity bill. Furthermore, our ability to comprehend a given text will be impacted by our background knowledge, our experiences, our context, our educational experiences, our language and our motivation. A physicist might devour Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman. For the novice, is it so easy? Perhaps not.

We become better readers by reading, discussing, re-reading and thinking reflectively and critically. In the context of books, we explore new words, new knowledge, new ideas, new perspectives and more. What we read and how we read are things that change across the lifespan. Please enjoy what you read and explore!

Perennial Themes Can Be Found in the Books for the Youngest of Readers

There is the old phrase, “everything I needed to know I learnt in kindergarten.” I think this also applies to the themes that weave amongst the earliest books encountered at a young age. Aren’t the vivid animal stories captured in engaging picture books the mere precursors to the worlds of Kipling which could be the precursor to Thoreau’s Walden, which might inspire one to leap into the polemics of Michael Pollan and beyond? Might the story of friendship in Mac The Apple pave the way for The Bridge to Terabithia and Harry Potter and - the more complicated - Great Gatsby? 

We run the risk of treating themes and topic areas as secondary in the earliest encounters with story. This would be a mistake.

Ensuring Equity in Opportunity to Learn

The following are elements that contribute to equality in the opportunity to learn. In an equitable system, all students would have access to:

• Engaged time;
• Quality teaching, resources and environments;
• Safe environments which students are free from harm and discrimination and that their basic needs are met;
• The material, cultural and economic means to achieve;
• Opportunities to practice and to extend practices;
• High expectations that are shared between the school and the home contexts;
• Suitable collaboration between the home and school contexts as well as with the broader community context;
• Schools and communities which are sensitive to the linguistic and cultural diversity of the student population, particularly when a minority of learners come to classrooms with a home language that is not used as the language of instruction;
• Instruction which is suitable to the learners’ stages of development, and learners have been given strategic skills that help them engage in the current and subsequent stages of learning;
• Learning environment which facilitate high challenge/high support instruction so that diverse students can make suitable and competitive progress;
• Special accommodations that have been made to meet the specific learning needs of all students;
• Content which is engaging, relevant, purposeful and that will build on prior knowledge and that will be consistent with current ways of knowing and be applicable to everyday problem-solving.
• An education that responds to individual affinities/talents so learners are able to capitalise on these interests and learning trajectories;
• Effective support in managing transitions between schooling/learning contexts;.
• Every opportunity to achieve, so that children's resilience is being developed and their motivation is fostered;
• Institutions and society that seek to minimise and mitigate the impacts of social and economic disadvantage; and
• People and institutions who keep “a finger on the pulse” of all students at all times. Progress is monitored, opportunities are made available, and extra support is facilitated, where required.

A Mantra For All (Literacy) Teachers

"[Engaged reading] is a merger of motivation and thoughtfulness. Engaged readers seek to understand … [They] are mastery oriented and teachers create contexts for engagement when they provide prominent knowledge goals; real-world connections to reading; and meaningful choices about what, when and how to read.” (Guthrie, 2001)

As literacy teachers, we know that literacy development requires the strengthening of word recognition skills, building of vocabulary; guided reading; guided writing; the shaping of discourse (or oral language); the development of knowledge; the establishment of practices and the fostering of literate identities. This occurs in multiple contexts with others for various purposes across time through coherent and developmental instruction, passionate and visionary teachers, quality materials and resources, and a deep respect for the learners’ cultures, contexts and experiences. We want students to learn, be and become through teaching that is developmentally sensitive, culturally appropriate and aspirational in environments which are safe, secure and free from discrimination and inequity.

We must ensure that there is quality instruction at all levels using quality resources in quality environments through quality relationships with quality opportunities that are carried out in a supportive form of life in that complex stream of living.

In relation to the practicalities of language and literacy development, we encourage instructors, tutors and parents to use simple language to describe best practice. In the end, the best teacher should:

1. talk regularly with learners about things for both their oral language development and their knowledge development; 
2. read to learners, read with learners, and help learners read on their own;
3. write for learners (shared & interactive writing), write with learners (joint construction), and help learners write on their own; 
4. help learners understand phonics, letters, words, and grammar;
5. help them learn about the world and about themselves; and
6. help learners be active in ways that the use language and literacy as tools for understanding, expression and action (Pinnell & Fountas, 1997).

REFRENCES

• Guthrie, J. T. (2001). Contexts for Engagement and Motivation in Reading. Reading Online, 4(8). Retrieved from http://www.readingonline.org/articles/handbook/guthrie/
• Pinnell, G. S., & Fountas, I. C. (1997). Help America Read: A Handbook for Volunteers. Portsmouth: Heinemann.

Some Rough Notes on Certain Elements Contributing to Literacy Learning

 

The following are types of focal learning areas:

1. Word study (including early language and beginning vocabulary development)
2. Vocabulary development
3. Early composition (creating sentences, usually based on some stimulus)
4. Reading practice (for fluency with some comprehension)
5. Reading practice to deploy strategies
6. Close comprehensive reading (and responding)
7. Reading to respond (focus on text type)
8. Writing workshops (with portfolio development and mini-lessons)
9. Writing for a purpose (to real audiences)
10. Facilitating oral language
11. Emphasising oral language in learning
12. Developing skills in specific spoken discourses, genres, contexts and/or registers
13. Academic/disciplinary literacies
14. Anchored learning (instruction)
15. Functional literacy

There following skills areas are developed within and across the above sequences:

• language skills;
• literacy skills;
• knowledge development;
• learning skills (how do I learn? how/why do I remember something? how do I defer gratification?, how do I maintain focus?);
• social and emotional qualities (including trust, confidence and self-concept);
• schemas, routines, habits and practices;
• independence and resilience;
• interests, identities, expertise and careers;
• acumen and awareness of talents/specialisation
• deliberation, familiarity and situated cognition (how to attack and solve problems in context? how do I deploy this strategy in context? and to what effect?);
• critical thinking; and
• cultural and political awareness

We must be mindful of:

• time allocated to learning;
• the richness of the learning spaces/resources;
• the organisation of learning; 
• the appropriateness and challenging nature of the content;
• the available of material conditions and opportunities to practice; and
• issue affecting trust, power and access.

Considering Teaching Techniques in Each of the Main Areas of Literacy Instruction

Continuing on from the previous journal entry, the following presents key “activities” that contribute to the development of the core areas of language & literacy development. The activities are mentioned but not defined. An elaboration of the teaching and learning practices will be presented in the future.

ORAL LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT - Language Comprehension - The Beginnings of Literacy

1. Identifying target language

2. Modelling & emphasising the target

3. Interpreting & recasting expressions

4. Extending contributions

5. Utilising pause-prompt-praise

6. Using cues/prompts (visual/tactile/etc)

7. Facilitating barrier activities

8. Employing oral cloze procedures

9. Providing choices and other opportunities to extend language

10. Utilising links to first language for English language learners

11. Overall ... shaping discourse

PHONEMIC AWARENESS - Analysing Known Language - Becoming "Word Aware"

1. Clapping syllables (PA)

2. Multi-sensory phonemic awareness / puppet play (PA)

3. Elkonin boxes / sound sticks (PA)

4. Picture sorting / picture blending / picture segmenting (PA)

5. Onset & rime identification (PA)

6. Phoneme isolation & phoneme blending (PA)

7. Phoneme deletion (PA)

8. Phoneme journals / phoneme walls / picture walls

9. Utilising links to first language for English language learners

PHONICS/SPELLING SEQUENCE - Codifying Language

1. Alphabet books / alphabet walls

2. Multi-sensory handwriting practice

3. Picture sorting / picture blending / picture segmenting (PA)

4. Elkonin boxes / sound sticks / Say-It-And-Move-It (PA)

5. Spelling journals / phoneme walls / rule records

6. Word sorts (closed / open) (timed / untimed)

7. Word scrambles

8. Word ladders

9. Word hunts (identifying sounds in texts)

10. Make a word (morphological analysis)

11. Use the Words You Know

12. High frequency words / sight words

13. Invented spelling / tracking spelling skills

14. Games (e.g. memory, bingo, board games)

15. Utilising links to first language for English language learners

VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT - Having Something to Talk With

1. Incidental learning (see Oral Language Development)

2. Learning from read alouds (see Read Alouds)

3. Personal glossaries / word banks / word walls

4. Word maps / four square maps / power maps

5. Semantic maps (and other brainstorming techniques)

6. Graphic organisers (hanging diagrams, flow charts, Venn diagrams, etc)

7. Clines, timelines and scales

8. Semantic feature analysis

9. Word analysis / morphological analysis

10. Analysis of dictionary definitions and thesaurus entries

11. Games (e.g. memory, bingo, board games)

12. Cloze procedures 

13. Possible sentences / use in context / extended discussions

14. Utilising links to first language for English language learners

READ ALOUDS - Encountering Literacy in Rich, Meaningful Ways

1. (Where possible) Link Read-Alouds that take advantage of prior knowledge and shared experiences 

2. (Where possible) Utilise links to first language for English language learners

3. Read alouds should be a vehicle to (a) address comprehension-related instructions and support vocabulary, (b) target code-related instruction, (c) support oral language and early writing (e.g. path rough story extensions), and (d) be a catalyst to create a supportive book-reading environment. (Zucker & Landry, 2010)

4. (For meaningful reading) Link read aloud questions to the QARS Techniques (Raphael & Au, 2005)

5. (For meaningful reading) Include read aloud questions that prompt readers to summarise, paraphrase, clarify, identify, interpret, predict, and express opinions (Palinesar, 1987)

6. (For picture books) take advantage of vivid, engaging "picture walks" to build a rich platform for shared, guided reading.

7. Focus on bringing the text to life, exploring rich vocabulary (see vocabulary section), engaging in interpretive questioning, and encouraging enthusiastic shared reading.

8. Encourage post-reading comprehension and composition activities, such as summarisng, retelling, analysing, appropriating, representing and/or responding to the text.

9. Encouraging post-reading word and vocabulary studies.

LANGUAGE EXPERIENCES - Encountering Language & Literacy in Rich, Meaningful Ways

1. Facilitating a rich, meaningful experience;

2. Emphasising target language in context (see Oral Language Development)

3. Documenting experience thoroughly and vividly

4. Revisiting the experience in a jointly constructed recount

5. Display / reinforce vocabulary through word walls, class glossaries, and similar / further activities (see Vocabulary Development)

6. Use written recount as a tool for fluency and revision

7. Expand written genres to include relevant formal genres (e.g. procedural texts)

8. Use shared experience as a launch pad to expand knowledge by reading related material

9. Utilising links to first language and cultural practices for English language learners

FLUENCY - The oft-neglected skills that helps learners move toward independence

1. Practice, practice, practice with texts that are 95% to 98% decodable

2. Use visual and other cues/prompts to assist decoding

3. Use a Vocabulary Assessment Scale to assess unknown words in a text

4. Pre-teach relevant vocabulary to assist with decoding words in context

5. Use running records to document common errors

6. Using word hunts as a pre- or post-reading reading activity

7. Utilising links to first language for English language learners

8. Partner reading

9. Choral reading / echo reading / lead reading / whisper reading

10. Readers' Theatre / performance-based reading

11. Fluency practice with think alouds (for comprehension monitoring)

12. Tape-assisted reading / recording reading to tape

13. Always include brief comprehension questions so attention to meaning is maintained.

COMPREHENSION - Deep, Thoughtful Work

1. Remember that "An engaged reader is one who is motivated, knowledgeable, strategic and socially interactive. The engaged reader is viewed as motivated to read for diverse purposes, an active knowledge constructor, an effective user of cognitive strategies and a participant in social interactions.  (Rueda et al., 2001). 

2. Refer to techniques mentioned in the Read Aloud schedule.

3. Utilise links to first language for English language learners.

4. Utilise elements of the Reading-to-Learn Cycle, including Preparing for Reading, Joint Pre-Writing, Individual Pre-Writing, Detailed Reading, Joint Reconstruction, Individual Reconstruction, and Responding to the Teach (Rose & Martin, 2012)

5. Encourage collaborative teaching g techniques, such as Reciprocal Teaching, Jigsaw Teaching, Book Circle, Reading Workshops, Directed Thinking, and Literature Discussion Circles.

6. Foster the range of comprehension skills: Planning & Goal Setting, Tapping into Prior Knowledge, Asking Questions, Making Predictions, Visualising, Making Connections, Forming (initial) Interpretations, Identifying Main Ideas, Identifying Cause and Effect, Organising Information, Adopting a Perspective (Point of View), Reflecting on Cognitive Processing, Revising Perspective, Seeking Evidence to Justify Viewpoint, Analysing Text Closely, Analysing Style, Taking Stock of Knowledge, Relating the Text to Experience, Evaluating Practice and  Forming criticisms (Olson, 2007)

7. Provide specific scaffolding to encourage disciplinary reading and/or concept formation (Goldman, 2012)

COMPOSITION - Diverse, Explorative Work

1. Utilising links to first language for English language learners

2. Emulating the themes of modelling, joint construction, guided construction, independent practice, and reflective practice.

3. Understanding the diversity of purposes (e.g. describing, recounting, narrating, analysing, explaining, etc), and apprenticing learners into competence at the sentence, paragraph, textual and pragmatic levels.

4. Understanding that any act of composition involve (a) building the field/content of the message, (b) deconstruction the mode of communication, (c) deconstructing the situation/context/audience of communication, and (d) cycling through joint construction, guided construction, independent practice, conferencing, publishing and reflecting. (Martin, 1999)

5. Understanding the writing/composing is multifaceted skills that requires time and guidance.

6. Understanding that writing is a social practice that involves goal-orientated action to purposefully participate in an activity system (or community of practice).

7. Using Writing Workshops and Writing Portfolios approaches can provide learners with opportunities to practice in a range of genres.

8. It is also important to see how experience in writing can be a vehicle for deeper reading ... and visa versa.

9. Recognise that a written task is always an ill-structured task, since a written tasks always requires one to interpret and deliberate over content, context, purpose and audience.

10. Overall ... shaping discourse.

REPRESENTING & REMEMBERING KNOWLEDGE - Isn't this what education is for?

1. Remember that “our knowledge forms an enormous system. And only within this system has a particular bit the value we give it.” (Wittgenstein, 1969)

2. Using graphic organisers and progressive brainstorming as tools for representing knowledge.

3. Organise and categorise information through information grids.

4. Make explicit the disciplinary questions that guide inquiry in important semiotic domains.

5. Provide learners with ample opportunities to retrieve and apply important knowledge and concepts (e.g. pause-prompt-praise)

6. Provide “message abundance”. In other words, reinforce knowledge in a range of media and contexts. Learner should be able access knowledge through a rich reservoir of experience.

7. Foster interests and budding expertise, which is particularly important as children transition into adolescence (Alexander, 2005)

8. Deepen knowledge by adding to a learners' expertise and by providing opportunities for learners to render, process, represent, and extend their knowledge in many, diverse ways.

That's it for us today. In the next entry, we will provide recommended readings in each of the above areas. And - in the future - we will provide examples of integrated teaching and learning. Please explore and enjoy!

---

References
Alexander, P. A. (2005). The Path to Competence: A Lifespan Developmental Perspective on Reading. Journal of Literacy Research, 37(4), 413–436.

Goldman, S. R. (2012). Adolescent literacy: learning and understanding content. The Future of Children, 22(2), 89–116. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23057133

Martin, J. (1999). Mentoring semeogenesis: “Genre-based” literacy pedagogy. In F. Christie (Ed.), Pedagogy and the shaping of consciousness (pp. 123 – 155). London: Cassell.

Olson, C. B., & Land, R. (2007). A cognitive strategies approach to reading and writing instruction for English language learners in secondary school. Research in the Teaching of English, 41(3), 269–303. Retrieved from <Go to ISI>://WOS:000244438000003

Palinesar, A. S. (1987). Reciprocal Teaching. Instructor, 96(2), 5 – 60.

Raphael, T. E., & Au, K. H. (2005). QAR: Enhancing Comprehension and Test Taking Across Grades and Content Areas. The Reading Teacher, 59(3), 206–221. doi:10.1598/RT.59.3.1

Rose, D., & Martin, J. R. (2012). Reading to Learn. In Learning to Write/Read to Learn: Genre, Knowledge and Pedagogy in the Sydney School (pp. 133–234). Sheffield: Equinox Publishing.

Rueda, R., MacGillivray, L., Monzo, L., and Arzubiaga, A. (2001). “Engaged Reading: A multilevel approach to considering sociocultural factors with diverse learners”, CIERA Report #1-012, University of Michigan: Centre for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement (CIERA).

Wittgenstein, L. (1969). On Certainty. (G. E. M. Anscombe & G. H. von Wright, Eds.). New York: Harper Torchbooks.

Zucker, T. A. & Landry, S. H. (2010). Improving the quality of preschool read-alouds: professional development and coaching that targets book-reading practices. In McKenna, M., Walpole, S. & Conradi, K. (Eds), Promoting early reading: research, resources and best practices. New York: The Guilford Press.

An Ode to the Sentence: A Vehicle to Express Thought

It might sound a bit pompous, but we do like the elegance of the Commanding Sentences quotes/notes on this site. Also, we’d like to say that the notes section is a part of the site that probably does not get as much attention as it deserves. In fact, the collected quotes/notes is where everything started in the first place.  

In relation to Commanding Sentences, Wittgenstein exudes a respect for the sentence (or proposition), particularly in his early work. There is a respect for the ability of a sentence to capture, express and shape meaning. In fact, there is also a respect for the time and care that one takes to reconstruct experiences and ideas for re-examination. 

“PI 280: Someone paints a picture in order to show how he imagines a theatre scene. And now I say: “This picture has a double function: it informs others, as pictures or words inform — but for one who gives the information it is a representation (or piece of information?) of another kind: for him it is the picture of his image.”

However, the time necessary to attend to our words can be lacking in the stream of language and living. Even though we speak regularly and often, it is important to draw a distinction between sentences and proposition. We speak lots of sentences, but not every sentence proposes a state of affairs worthy of reflection.

“TLP 3.141: A proposition is not a blend of words. — (Just as a theme of music is not a blend of notes.) A proposition is articulate.”

There is something admirable about the time one takes to arrange  sentences in such a way that they represent the inter-relationships amongst ideas, events, actors, and more. 

If you have the chance, please visit the Commanding Sentences notes/quote section. To help guide you, the following represents the logical sequence of the categorised quotes:

• Introduction: We start with the recognition that a sentence has the capacity to “communicates a situation to us”;
• Picture Theory: That in a proposition “a situation is, as it were, constructed by way of experiment”;
• Decoding/Projecting/Processing: However, a proposition stands in need of decoding and processing, since “a sentence is given [to] me in code together with the key”;
• Reasoning: Every sensical sentence expresses a sense but it is up to us to determine “its truth or falsity” and to decipher its purpose/intention;
• Making Meaning: It is up to use to determine the meaning of a sentence, and “some sentences have to be read several times to be understood”;
• Discussing & Discourse: To understand a sentence, we must also appeal to the conversation it is part of, because if you are to “understand anything in language, you must understand what the dialogue is, and you must see how understanding grows as the dialogue grow.”
• Linguistic & Intellectual Turns: We come to develop a rich set of grammatical forms that allow us to make intellectual moves, since a “discipline in form is a discipline in thought” (also see Building knowledge through discussion); and
• Action: We apply these sentences to get things done, since “*speaking* of language is part of an activity, or of a life-form”. Therefore, “reading and writing in any domain … are not just ways of decoding print, they are also caught up with and in social practices.”

I welcome you to explore and enjoy!

Structuring the rhythms of practice: the foundations for learning

Photo by Allison Joyce/Getty Images News / Getty Images

We are pleased to announce that a new page has been added to the Teaching Folder. The Establishing Meaningful Practices page seeks to "get to the rough ground" and emphasise the importance of establishing effective practices in home, school and community environments, which are based on quality teaching principles. We are interested in contrasting what may appear as sporadic, isolated activities with those activities that are carefully arranged and which contribute to the development of meaningful literacy skills.

A practice “is something people do, not just once, but on a regular basis. But it is more than just a disposition to behave in a certain way; the identity of a practice depends on not only on what people do, but also on the significance of those actions and the surroundings in which they occur.” (Stern, 2004, pg 166). For some reason, people pray, brush their teeth, complete their tax, hike in National Parks, long for the next dance, etc. Each “activity” is part of - let’s says - religious practices, hygienic practices, economic practices, artistic practices, social practices and more. Each practice is much more than the sum of its parts. For instance, the combination of prayer, worship, scripture, and stewardship amounts to more than a collection of disparate activities. They amount to a form of life, and they rely upon resources, other participants, a sense of attachment, cultural artefacts, instruction (or initiation) and more. Likewise, literacy involves the orchestrations of many experiences which culminate in the fostering of the literate practitioner. Time and space must be carved out in the great hurly burly of life so that the practice can grow, flourish and evolve.

So ... how do we make certain activities part and parcel of the practices of home, school, the community, etc? What are the material and social conditions that make this happen? What role do adults and peers play in establishing the conditions of a practice? Is it realistic that all budding "apprentices" will have access to "teachers" (including parents) with sufficient expertise and wherewithal? Overall, how does something become a practice and, through practice, how does the learner's engagement with the world change?

Please click here to explore the Establishing (Literacy) Practices page in the Teaching Folder.