Scaffolding Adolescent Literacy

Description

This course provides middle years teachers with practical classroom strategies that focus on reading improvement and enabling students to successfully access complex texts across different learning areas.

Scaffolding Adolescent Literacy is a full day of Professional Development  covering 3  key literacy areas. Participants receive the Scaffolding Adolescent Literacy workbook filled with practical classroom activities covering the following topics: 

1. Reading Comprehension. The first part of the day focuses on enabling students to develop meta-cognition, that is, a deeper understanding of the reading process. Teachers will acquire practical activities to teach and improve reading comprehension for their students. These activities also assist students to improve their skills in summarising and paraphrasing text.

2. Building Vocabulary. Research tells us that vocabulary knowledge is a good predictor of comprehension ability. This workshop assists teachers to support students in building their academic and subject specific vocabulary through practical, interactive classroom strategies.

3. Speaking & Listening. The third aspect of the course equips teachers with effective tools and ideas to strengthen listening skills and engage their students in rich classroom dialogue, a key factor for improvement in student learning. These activities are interactive and social so adolescents find them engaging and energising.

More Information

Presenters

Christopher Witt (AISWA Staff)

Literacy Consultant

Christopher Witt joined AISWA in 2009. Prior to that he was a Consultant at STEPS Professional Development.  At STEPS, Chris developed a literacy resource for secondary teachers: Tactical Teaching Reading. It included materials and professional learning courses and had great success nationally and internationally, helping many secondary teachers to successfully support literacy across their curriculum area.

After teaching for 25 years, Chris worked in various advisory and consultancy roles in curriculum improvement. He has been at AISWA for ten years as a Literacy Consultant providing support for teachers and schools in professional learning and literacy improvement initiatives. This includes Sharp Reading, First Steps and Primary Connections. Key PL programs developed by Chris at AISWA include Scaffolding Adolescent Literacy and Programming and Assessment in English (P-10).