Professional Development Programme 2018-2019:
Enriching and Extending Students’ Learning Experiences through Reading and Writing across the Curriculum at the Secondary Level
Session 1
Dr. Yuen Yi LO
Organized by the INSTEP, Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong and commissioned by the Education Bureau, The Government of the HKSAR
Warm-up self-reflection:
What challenges are your students facing?
Reading challenges Writing challenges
1.
2.
3.
1.
2.
3.
Overview of the 6-hour programme
The overall aims of the programme
Session 1 to 3 will focus on the following issues:
An overview of students’ development of reading and writing skills at Key Stage 3
The role of reading and writing across the curriculum with reference to the school-based MOI plans in secondary schools
How to motivate students to engage in sustained reading and writing activities
Introduction to genres and fiction and non-fiction text types
Understanding the rhetorical structure of different text types
Selecting texts and genres for reading and writing the curriculum
Considerations when designing reading and writing tasks for RaC and WaC
Introducing the Reading-to-Write Cycle: how to connect reading to writing in the curriculum
Demonstrating the process of how to organize and compose texts of different structures using selected information or data
Modelling teacher talk in Reading-to-Write lessons – mentoring strategies to unpack and re-pack difficult texts
Exploring ways to provide quality feedback to help students improve their written work and design follow-up activities to address the problems identified
Session 4 will focus on the following issue(s):
Providing participants with opportunities to design appropriate tasks and activities to help
students develop their skills in selecting, extracting, summarising and interpreting relevant
information, ideas and views from multiple texts of different types, as well as a possible action
plan for them to try out ideas they learnt in the workshop
Professional Development Programme 2018-2019:
“Enriching and Extending Students’ Learning Experiences through Reading and Writing across the Curriculum”
Programme Content
Session Topic
Session 1 (1) Overview of the Programme
(2) Overall framework of designing reading and writing lessons at KS3 (3) Different genres and associated language functions
Session 2 (1) Demonstration #1 (focuses on reading and writing across the curriculum with science subjects)
(2) Debriefing: reflection & discussion
Session 3 (1) Demonstration #2 (focuses on reading and writing across the curriculum on humanities subjects)
(2) Debriefing: reflection & discussion
Session 4 (1) Application: Preparing for the presentations
(2) Mini presentations
Facilitating professional dialogues and reflection in the programme
Examples and demonstrations
Discussions and reflections
Action plans
Sharing and mini-presentations
Let’s start with you…
Task 1
How do you teach reading / writing in your classroom?
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood awhile in thought…….
Responses from your students #1:
Lost…… ?
Responses from your students #2:
Jabberwocky by
Lewis Carroll!?
Task 1
How do you teach reading / writing in your classroom?
What kinds of challenges / problems have you identified?
for students?
for teachers?
How would you describe:
your belief about reading / teaching reading?
your belief about writing / teaching writing?
your teaching of reading / writing skills?
Traditional Views of Reading and Writing
Reading Writing
- input
- receptive skills - comprehension
- output
- production skills
- production
Connection between Reading and Writing Reading
Writing
The same pool of knowledge and skills
connect reading and writing
Pre-reading
Post-reading
A summary of reading
strategies
•Activating prior knowledge and making connections
•Creating concept maps
•Drawing attention to contextual clues (e.g., titles, visuals)
•Questioning
•Pre-teaching key vocabulary
•Predicting keywords/key content
•Reciprocal questioning
•Setting a purpose
•Skimming
•Checking comprehension
•Drawing attention to contextual clues
•Determining importance of a point
•Evaluating different points of view
•Finding and underlining key words/explaining key words
•Guessing meanings of words from context
•Highlighting the rhetorical organization of the text
•Inferring the author’s point of view
•Paraphrasing a key point
•Questioning
•Reading aloud; Thinking aloud
•Reciprocal questioning
•Rereading; Scanning; Skimming
•Summarizing; Synthesizing; Surveying
•Visualizing; Creating concept maps
•Checking comprehension
•Conducting picture walk
•Creating concept maps
•Drawing a conclusion
•Evaluating different points of view
•Highlighting the rhetorical organization of the text
•Inferring the author’s point of view
•Paraphrasing a key point
•Reciprocal questioning
•Rereading, Summarizing, Surveying, Synthesizing
•Reading aloud
•Creating Concept Maps
•Questioning
•Reciprocal questioning
•Surveying
•Thinking aloud
Design Principles of the Programme
A functional view of language in context (Rose, D. 2005)
CONTEXT
TEXT PARAGRAPHS
SENTENCE WORD GROUPS
WORD SYLLABLE
patterns within the sentence
patterns within the text
patterns within the
Understanding the context, curriculum and reading/writing skills
16
Task 2
What are students learning (e.g. reading and writing) in KS2 and KS3?
In groups, can you list the subjects that your students are
learning in KS2 (primary 4-6) and the subjects that they
will be learning in KS3 (secondary 1-3)?
Upper Primary (KS2) Junior Secondary (KS3)
Chinese English Mathematics
Putonghua Music Visual Arts Physical Ed.
General Studies
Science
Technology Education (e.g. design &
technology etc.) PSHE (e.g. Chinese
History, Geography.
History, Life and Society, Religious
Education etc.)
Look at the following extracts of texts. They are all authentic texts from local textbooks.
Can you identify their text-types and subject areas? Can you also identify the key stages?
Are there any similarities or differences among these texts?
What kind of skills or strategies do students need in order to read and write these texts?
Task 3*
What kinds of texts are students
reading/writing in KS2 and KS3?
Text Text-type Subject Area Key Stage 1
2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
Instruction Computer Literacy KS3
KS3 KS3
KS3
KS3
KS3 KS2
KS2
KS2 Personal recount English (textbooks)
Report
(classifying report) Geography
Poem English (readers)
Report
(classifying report) Science Historical recount History
Personal recount English (textbooks)
Narrative English (readers)
Explanation
(cause-and-effect) General Studies
Discussion
Are there any similarities or differences among these texts?
Similarities: Differences:
For example:
-text-types
-Subject areas / topics
For example:
-complexity of language - complexity of
knowledge / cognitive
demand
Discussion
What kind of skills or strategies do students need in order to read/write these texts?
Reading/writing skills or strategies For example:
•Understanding the connection between ideas
•Using connectives to connect ideas
•Identifying pronoun reference
•Guessing meaning of unfamiliar words
•Using a variety of vocabulary and sentence patterns
•Using headings and picture clues to predict text content
•Identifying text type structure
Discussion
Are there any missing links between primary and junior secondary years?
Some possibilities on enhancing students’ language proficiency to meet the language demand in secondary years:
For example:
•Exposure to a wider variety of text-types
•Exposure to a wider range of topics (fiction / non-fiction)
•Exposure to both English for everyday use and Academic English
•Strengthening vocabulary building strategies
Reading/Writing skills for Hong Kong
students
What is a genre-based approach to reading and writing?
In very simple terms, this approach emphasizes genres (i.e.
“text-types”) and the importance of “detailed reading”, which consists of explicit instruction on reading strategies to deconstruct a text, with teachers’ explicit demonstration, scaffolding and explanation of how to decode and infer
meanings from texts.
Just a brief note
A genre is more dynamic than a text type and is always
changing and evolving; however, for our practical purposes
here, we can take genre to mean text type.
What is genre?
“ All the language events , both spoken and written, that we participate in as members of our particular society and culture”
(Gibbons, 2009, p. 108).• Each genre has a specific social purpose, and is used to get something done through language.
• Each genre has a particular structure or overall organisation.
• Each genre has language features that are typical of that genre.
• Understanding of the purpose, organisation and language features of school genres helps teachers recognise where learners need support in
(adapted from Derewianka, B. (1990). Exploring how texts work. Australia: Primary English Teaching Association.)
Then… what is genre (~ “text-type”)?
(Adapted from Rose, D. (2010). Reading to learn: Teacher resource books, book 1, p. 8 . From http://www.readingtolearn.com.au/)
Curriculum Context
e.g. Science, Geography, Economics, English language arts
Text Type
e.g. Procedure in Experiment, Information Report, Short Story
Paragraph / Sentences
Grammar & Rhetorical functions:
e.g., Compare & Contrast;
Defining
Words
Lexical Phrases
Task 4
patterns within the sentence/para patterns within
the text
patterns within the word
Top-down
Bottom-up
A Functional View of Language in
Context (Rose, 2005)
Advantages of a genre-based approach to the teaching of reading and writing?
It offers us a systematic and meaningful way to teach reading and writing.
In particular, we can highlight:
What is the subject matter?
e.g. “water cycle” in science,
e.g. A fable in English language arts
Who are involved in the interaction?
e.g. an expert informing an expert-to-be about a science concept (in textbooks)
e.g. Fable: adults telling children a story with a moral lesson for them to learn
What are the structure and language features?
e.g. “water cycle”: introducing/defining water cycle explanation in
Task 5*
Let’s try what we have learnt so far with the following text
Mini-teaching demo
Preservatives
Preservatives are additives that help maintain freshness and quality.
They protect food from spoilage caused by mold,
bacteria, and yeast; and from flavor and color changes due to exposure to oxygen.
By law, manufacturers must list all preservatives used
together with the amounts on the ingredients part of
the label. We often find the names of sodium nitrate
and sodium benzoate on the food product labels.
Task 5 Genre-based approach -
“Preservatives ”
Curriculum Context
Text type
Paragraph / sentence patterns
Words / lexical phrases
General Studies
“Information Report” (descriptive report )
Defining sentences / Descriptive sentences
words related to “preservatives” (e.g. preservative,
Its primary purpose is to provide a description of one type of things:
preservatives.
How useful is this
to our students' learning?
Different text-types written for
Different Purposes and a Different Audience
Exposure Automaticity
‘massive amounts of repetitive experience’
develop automaticity
(Segalowitz, 1991, p. 23)
and systematic
^
The Genre-based Approach to Reading and Writing Across the
Curriculum
How to apply the genre-based approach in English and Reading/Writing across the Curriculum?
“I’m just an ENGLISH teacher, I don’t know much about information text types…”
“I know nothing about
Science / Maths. / History etc, etc…”
“My students are not
in an EMI class…”
How to apply the genre-based approach in English and Reading/Writing across the Curriculum?
We can start small, and with something that we are familiar with (or maybe are doing very well already!).
Can you guess?
How to apply the genre-based approach in English and Reading/Writing across the Curriculum?
• To promote English reading/writing in English and across different KLAs, information texts are very good resources for the English classroom.
• You can make good use of this opportunity and
become more aware of the importance of teaching information texts with an explicit emphasis on
understanding the features of academic genres (or text types) and detailed reading strategies.
This could work in all school contexts, including those schools/
classes where content subjects are taught in Chinese
• Everyday English is different from academic English
– E.g., Everyday text-types are different from academic text- types
Reading for everyday life and reading for school
subjects: different kinds, different purposes, different ways
• Differences
– Contexts
– Text-types
– Academic functions
– Sentence patterns &
vocabulary
• Similarity
– Both are important to the language and
cognitive development of our students
It is vital to help our students to develop skills and
strategies to tackle everyday texts and academic
e.g. Theme-based reading & writing
Asking students to read some simple subject- related readers
Teachers could introduce subject-related
concepts, key vocabulary, and even text types
Interesting texts as a “transition” from general English to formal academic texts
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THEME:
Text-types in language subjects
Text-types in content subjects
Integrated Science: Electric current
Information report
(compositional) Autobiography
I am an electron. I have a negative charge. I am found whizzing around the nucleus of an atom. My path is relatively circular around the nucleus, but I am not the best at keeping a perfect path. I also define how much volume or space an atom
Connecting reading & writing of different text types
Some common text-types in language and content subjects
Text types commonly found
in language subjects Text types commonly found in content subjects
• Poem
• Story
• News article
• Essay
• Recipe
• Argumentative essay
• Letter to the editor
• Advertisement
• Proposal
• Information report
• Laboratory report
• Essay
• Historical recount
• Manuals
• Explanations on sequence and process
• Explanations on cause and effect
• Discussion
• Argumentative essay
What does Detailed Reading do?
Supporting learners to read short paragraphs of text, sentence-by-sentence, by guiding them to identify groups of words in each sentence, and
discussing their meanings
Enabling learners to:
read challenging texts with detailed comprehension
recognise the language choices that writers make
use the content of factual texts to write texts of their own
use the language resources of accomplished writers in their own writing
Enabling teachers to:
meet the language and content goals of their curricula
support all students to learn at the same level
Understanding “connecting reading and writing” through demos & discussion
2 demonstrations
Demo #1 in session 2, focusing on reading and writing across the
curriculum with science subjects
Demo #2 in session 3, focusing on reading and writing across the curriculum with humanities
subjects
Importance of reminding our students…
Using reading and writing strategies:
Pros and cons of the strategies
Limitations
Creativity
Limitation of genre-based pedagogy
Genre-based pedagogy and other methodologies
*Disclaimer
The material developers and facilitators do not own the copyrights of the text excerpts shown. The respective
copyrights are owned by the respective publishers credited
in the materials.
Texts for Task 3
Text 1: “Inserting animation” in “Computer and Information Technology: Computer Literacy Course for Junior Secondary, Basic Modules, 2A” (pp. 182-183). Hong Kong: Longman Hong Kong Education. (2007)
Text 2: “Hello, Hong Kong!” in “Developing Skills Freeway, 1A” (p. 80). Hong Kong: Aristo Educational Press Ltd. (2007)
Text 3: “How is land used in the urban areas of Hong Kong?” in “Exploring Geography, 1A, Second Edition”
(pp. 40-41). Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. (2007)
Text 4: “Five Little Chickens” in “Fancy Food Work”, My Pals are Here: Reading Ladder, Primary 5 (pp. 2-3).
Hong Kong: Educational Publishing House Ltd. (2005)
Text 5: “A New Life is Born” in Mastering Science, 1A (p. 134). Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. (2010)
Text 6: “The Fertile Crescent” in World History Express, 1A, second edition (pp. 80-81). Hong Kong: Ling Kee Publishing Co. (2010)
Text 7: “Come to My Party” in My Pals are Here! English for Hong Kong, 4A (pp. 16-17). Hong Kong:
Educational Publishing House Ltd. (2005)
Text 8: “A murder mystery” in Thematic Anthology, Set A, Book 1 (pp. 132-133). Hong Kong: Oxford University Press (China) Ltd. (2009)
