The Project Group Teaching Practice with Pre-service Literacy Teacher Trainees

1. The ProjectGroup Teaching Practice with Pre-service Literacy Teacher Trainees Overall Aim and Key Objectives The project aims to support literacy trainees to develop as teachers through: • Support with planning and preparation to teach • Support for development of subject knowledge and pedagogy • Detailed feedback on teaching from tutors and peers • Support in developing evaluation skills • Support in developing collaborative working with colleagues

2. Course Structure

3. First Literacy Training Class Block Subject knowledge embedded: text types analysis and features of text types reading strategies (skimming and scanning) scaffolding (pre-reading activities, writing frames etc) sentence types

4. Second Literacy Training Class Block Subject knowledge embedded: history of English and morphology spelling strategies (rules, patterns, mnemonics etc) personal language histories writing process tenses

5. Rationale for lesson plan • Learners wrote draft personal language histories previous week • need to pick up on these and • encourage learners to complete the • process • need to feed back to learners on • their writing • Learners doing regular spelling practice • need to keep this going • Last training class • need some kind of review • can’t start new topic • have read and written personal • narrative – good to do something • different • needs to be ‘fun’ creative and • encourage collaboration • Two trainees teaching • one hour each = limited time • need to give trainees • strategies for marking and • teaching proof-reading • good to give trainees • experience of teaching • another text type

7. First Trainee Teacher’s Lesson Plan Extract from trainee teacher’s more detailed lesson plan sent back to tutor for comment Extract from draft lesson plan emailed to trainee teacher before lesson 10 – 10.10 Spellcheck 10.10 – 10.25 Team game Choose spelling from list? Use words we have been reading over last few weeks? Could use mini whiteboards? 10.25 – 10.30 What is proof-reading? What do we look for? Why do we do it? Q & A 10.30 – 10.45 Demo brief marking scheme on board Give egs of symbol using sentences from their work Whole group exercise asking what is wrong and how to correct

8. Examples of First Trainee Teacher’s Materials spelling quiz marked text for correcting My langagehistrysp I am T born in the Philippines, whitchspis in Southeast Asia P It had more than 7000 islands and 170 langages, but the main one is Tagalog whitchsp was the farstsp langage I learnt.

9. Written feedback / commentary

10. Examples of Comments Made in Group Feedback Self-evaluation and Peer Feedback Self evaluation/response to feedback “I think I had been concerned about the game and what I was expected to deliver. I was satisfied by the overall delivery. I managed to do everything I had planned to, which to me is important because it is one of the goals I am working towards.” I found that the game was too easy for the students. They agreed very quickly on the right answer. I was glad about the feedback at the end of the session; it seemed to me that the students had found this interesting as well. It was visibly useful as D. had reflected on what he had been doing and what needed to be improved and how to go aboutit.” Peer feedback “You gave J. good support given when he came in 10 minutes before the end!” “Your class management – you made sure that J and K spoke first during the feedback before D. did.” “J. found it hard to find a relevant answer to one of your questions. It took her a long time to think and answer (wrongly), and this waiting period was a bit excruciating;  maybe this could have been avoided or handled differently.” “I was surprised and really pleased at how J got involved in the activity when in previous sessions he’d always held back and been a bit detached.” “Itwas a bit of revelation about how to get him more involved.” “You really paid attention to individuals’ needs.”

11. Whole Group Evaluation of the Training Classes

12. This resource has been produced as a result of a grant awarded by LSIS. The grant was made available through the Skills for Life Support Programme in 2010. The resource has been developed by practitioners. The contents should not be compared with commercially produced resources, although in many cases it may have comparable or better learning outcomes.