Teaching Language through Thinking in Science Project

1. Teaching Language through Thinking in Science Project

2. Project team • Matt Dickenson, LG&T, matt.dickenson@londongt.org • Ian Warwick, LG&T, ian.warwick@londongt.org • Manny Vazquez, Hounslow Language Service, manny.vazquez@hounslow.gov.uk • Pat O’Brien, Independent Consultant, ttc31@aol.com • Helen Wilson, Oxford Brookes University, h.wilson@brookes.ac.uk

3. Building on the REAL Project • National project to improve quality of gifted and talented education in England • Positive model for inclusion – realising equality of access and achievement for disadvantaged and under-represented learners • Engaging with 50 local education authorities and 1,500 schools • Transforming approaches to gifted education www.realproject.org.uk

4. The REAL toolkit www.realproject.org.uk

5. DVDProgrammes • New arrivals. All new arrivals can be assessed as potentially gifted and talented • Advanced learners. High challenge for G&T pupils who are learning EAL. Developing linguistic and cultural capital • Pupils, parents and communities. The voice of communities and their attitudes to G&T. Recognising culturally specific gifts, talents and capital • Mentoring. Positive models of mentoring learners from BME backgrounds

6. Core values for an inclusive G&T strategy • All learners are entitled to be stretched and challenged – high challenge, low threshold learning (making high challenge accessible, not exclusive) • The most effective G&T provision is rooted in good teaching and learning within the classroom (not outside it) • G&T is expertise in a development stage – knowledge, skills and experience for the future (it is not about the past) • Classroom G&T should focus on developing positive learning behaviours in all learners (not just the identified gifted and talented)

7. Academic literacy Developing a working understanding for science

8. What is academic literacy? the ability of a person to use speaking, listening and thinking to learn what they need to learn and to communicate that to others in a form which demonstrates their learning Melzer

9. What is academic literacy? • learning as well as communication • depends on what student is being prepared for… • reflects what educators recognise as the intellectual and practical abilities of their successful students • involves positive learning behaviours, subject skills, task commitment; past, current and potential achievement • involves all four skills – speaking, listening, reading and writing, but is normally heavily weighted in favour of writing and formal communication

10. Academic writing • is difficult (should be cognitively demanding) • tends to have an argument • conforms to certain rules which vary from one context to another, e.g. genre - formal vs. informal, everyday vs. specialist • involves repeated interaction, e.g. drafting and redrafting • takes time to develop

11. Academic writing and talk require students to: • adopt an ‘other voice’ – this can be third person academic, specific role or position in argument, etc. • exercise control over register, vocabulary etc • operate within specific boundaries whilst demonstrating critical skill • develop an library of effective strategies to meet the demands of different contexts