If you are a TESOL teacher, but you teach a course that is funded by the TEC you might find yourself having to complete the NCALNE (Voc) literacy and numeracy professional development.
And one of the things that you’ll have to do is demonstrate that you know how to identify and map the context-specific literacy and numeracy demands of your course.
What does this mean?
This means that you’re up to the third assessment in our course.
It also means that there are a couple of things to think about. First of all, context-specific means your ESOL context for our purposes. Next, to use an analogy from sports, it means you’ve answered this question with regards to your learners:
- How high do they have to jump?
To meet the requirements you need to prove that you’ve looked at the demands for both literacy and numeracy. The literacy demands are straightforward for TESOL. They include reading, writing, listening and speaking.
The numeracy demands might have you scratching your head.
But ESOL teachers do discuss and teach things that we can identify as numeracy. Here are some examples.
- In an “Everyday life in NZ” course you might discuss how to tell the time or how to read a bus timetable or schedule of some kind. Reading maps; giving, receiving and following directions; navigation tasks are all numeracy.
- In a workplace ESOL environment, it’s possibly even easier. Many workplaces require staff to undertake tasks involving measurement or do calculations. If you are a workplace ESOL tutor, you’ll already be aware of the numeracy demands.
- Other tasks could include looking at payslips or relevant financial material, or dosages for medication including for children.
Any of these tasks will be more or less demanding depending on what’s required by your context. This is what we want to see when you submit your evidence.
Here’s another example.
- In an academic preparation course, you might look at how you interpret data in a graph or table and then write this down in words. The demands here might relate to achieving an IELTS band 5 for writing with an attached set of descriptors.
All the best with mapping the demands of your ESOL course and context. If you get stuck, get in touch with us assess@alec.ac.nz
