We’d love it if you stopped by and had a read through the new content for Collection 3 of the new NZCALNE on PathwaysAwarua.
You’ll find a plain-English introduction to the Learning Progressions. This includes a demonstration of how to map the big picture literacy and numeracy demands of your programme, as well as specific samples of your teaching materials.
You’ll need to register as a new tertiary educator, or just log in if you already have an account. Look for the NZCALNE (Voc) pathway.
From here we can move on to the fourth section in the NZCALNE and how to teach better. Up next you’re going to use your knowledge of the literacy and numeracy demands to lay out some broad strategies for embedding literacy and numeracy into your training.
And once you’ve got your strategies in place we can move on to the super practical parts of this course:
First, though, have a think about your answers to the questions below.
The questions aren’t assessed, so you don’t have to hand in your answers. But talking about what you think with someone, particularly a colleague who already knows how to use the Learning Progressions, will help you engage with this more deeply.
We are going to be working with the Read with Understanding strand. Now… let’s go through it slowly. If you are already an experienced mapper, please skip ahead to the assessment task.
1. Print out the Read with Understanding strand.
Make sure you have the Read with Understanding strand in front of you so you can refer to the details for each step.
It looks like this, but it will have descriptions of skills and knowledge in all of the steps. You can Download the Read with Understanding Strand Chart if you need to.
Read with Understanding
2. Choose a specific sample reading text or task from your teaching programme.
Choose some kind of teaching material that your learners have to work with, not NZQA unit standard descriptions.
Here are some examples of samples that you could choose:
3. Have clear reasons for choosing the sample
In the assessment template, you’ll need to say why you chose the sample. There are lots of reasons. Here are some:
4. Start your mapping with the Vocabulary progression
In a nutshell, what you’re going to do at every stage is refer to the Strand charts and then shade in your own chart down to the relevant step.
We’re going to practice with the vocabulary progression. This is the easiest place to start.
For most training that has a technical aspect, like trades or employment focused training, it’s safe to start at around step 4/5 for reading. Look at the description for vocabulary at step 4/5.
You’ll see the following:
“… a reading vocabulary that includes some general academic
words and some specialised words”.
| Vocabulary | Most adults will be able to |
| Koru / step 1 | have a reading vocabulary of everyday words, signs and symbols. |
| Koru / step 2 | have a reading vocabulary of everyday words that includes some compound words. |
| Koru / step 3 | have a reading vocabulary of everyday words and some less common words, acronyms and abbreviations. |
| Koru / step 4 – 5 | have a reading vocabulary that includes some general academic words and some specialised words. |
| Koru / step 6 | have a large reading vocabulary that includes general academic words and specialised words and terms. |
5. Use what you know about your own subject
At this point, you need to use your own knowledge of your training material or work to decide whether this applies. In other words:
If your answer was no, then you need to drop back to step 3 and see if that fits better. Step 3 for vocabulary means there are no academic words and no specialised or technical words.
If you answered yes, then you should push ahead to step 6 and see if the answer is still yes to the description there.
Step 6 applies to vocabulary where you expect your learners to be working with a large bank of academic and specialised or technical words.
If you work in trades, your material is probably at least at steps 4/5 or 6 for vocabulary.
If you have a lot of technical jargon to deal with then go with step 6. If there’s just a bit, but it’s not too much then go with steps 4/5, which is a combined step.
If you’re not sure about what step, this process works well if you do it together with a colleague who knows what you know about what you teach or train.
6. Map the demands on paper first
If you’re working on paper, get a highlighter and shade down from the top until you’ve included the highest step that you identified for vocabulary. You’ll end up with something like this:
This is mapping. Above, we’ve mapped the vocabulary demands for reading at steps 4 / 5.
You can download a chart and worksheet here for mapping your own reading sample. It’s exactly the same as section 3.3 of your assessment task. Print this out and you can use it as a rough draft and for notes.
7. Map your reading sample against the rest of the progressions in the strand.
Once you’ve mapped vocabulary, you can move on to Decoding and then other progressions. The system is the same. For each relevant progression:
If a progression is not relevant you can skip it. But make sure you have a reason for this as your tutor or assessor may ask you.
There is also some subjective judgement involved. But also, you are the expert here. You know your own content. In the case of vocabulary, it’s easy… If you see technical jargon, you can’t map it at step 3. It has to be above this.
Also, many of the skills and knowledge required at steps 1 and 2 is very developmental. For trades and most courses, you’re going to be mapping at step 3 and above.
In fact, if you are a trades tutor, you may find that much of your course is at step 5 and 6.
When you’ve mapped all of the relevant reading progressions for your sample, you might end up with something like this:
This is mapping in visual terms. From here you need to be able to talk about your results and what they mean.
When you complete the assessment task, you’ll need to answer a series of questions to show that you know what you’ve just done.
These questions are in the assessment template and in the worksheet if you download it. They’re also here below:
In the template, there are prompts to help you answer the questions. Feel free to ignore them if you like. But they are there to help you get started writing your answers and guide you in the right direction.
If you can map a sample reading text and answer the questions above, you can move onto the next module. Keep your sample handy, though. You’ll need to scan it and upload it when you submit your finished assessment task.
In the last two modules, you learned how to map your teaching programme to the strands and progressions of the Learning Progressions.
Next, we’ll be looking at how you map some specific samples of your teaching materials or other content to the progressions and steps of the Learning Progressions.
In the modules that follow, you’ll learn how to map specific demands for a sample of:
This will carry you through the rest of Assessment 3. By now you might have already downloaded the assessment template and made a start.
If you haven’t we’d encourage you to skip ahead and download the template. This means you can dip in and out of these modules as you need to.
We also suggest that you work your way through each module that follows but also refer back the material for reference or clarification.
If you are not an ESOL teacher – someone who teaches refugees and migrants with little or no English – you can skip this section.
But if you are an ESOL teacher, and you teach a course that is funded by the TEC you might want to read on.
One thing to remember is that there are lots of ESOL teachers involved in teaching literacy and numeracy. And most find themselves having to complete the NZCALNE (Voc) literacy and numeracy professional development at some stage.
To complete the qualification, one of the things that you have to do is demonstrate that you know how to identify and map the context-specific literacy and numeracy demands of your course.
This means that there are a couple of things to think about.
First of all, “context-specific” means your ESOL context for your purposes. We’re not trying to get you to look at a different context than the one you’re already looking at.
So, relax…! We know that ESOL tutors don’t teach welding or hairdressing.
Literacy demands are straightforward for TESOL. They include aspects of reading, writing, listening and speaking.
However, the some specific 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.
Here’s another example.
All the best with mapping the demands of your ESOL programme and context. If you get stuck, get in touch with us assess@alec.ac.nz
Let’s pause here again. Here’s what you need to do next:
This task is not assessed, but it will help with the first part of your assessment.
Again, make sure that you keep your notes. You’ll need them for when you write up your answers in the assessment.
Make sure you keep your notes as you’ll want to refer to them when you write up your answers to the first part of Assessment 3.
In your assessment template, in section 3.2 you’ll need to identify the top two overall numeracy skill demands for your teaching.
Don’t forget that at this stage we are just interested in the strands and progressions that are relevant – in broad terms – to your teaching programme.
You’ll need to answer the following questions:
If you’ve done enough thinking about this and you want to skip ahead to the assessment module and get started on section 3.2 you can. Just make sure you download and save the assessment template. Then come back to here when you’re ready for the next stage.
Like last time, if you want a bit more time to think about this, you can download the questions and some prompts as a worksheet here. The questions are the same as in your assessment template in section 3.2. The worksheet looks like the image below.
Make sure you keep your notes as you’ll want to refer to them when you write up your answers to the first part of Assessment 3.
In your assessment template, in section 3.1 you’ll need to identify the top two overall literacy skill demands for your teaching. Remember, at this stage, we are just interested in the strands and progressions that are relevant in broad terms to your teaching programme.
You’ll also need to answer the following questions:
If you’ve done enough thinking about this and you want to skip ahead to the assessment module and get started on section 3.1 you can. Just download the assessment template and go for it. Then come back to here and carry on with the next stage.
If you want a bit more time to think about it, you can download the questions and some prompts as a worksheet here. The questions are the same as in your assessment template in section 3.1.
