Literacy Professional Learning Resource – Teaching Strategies

Literacy to Learn: Getting students knowledge ready for literacy learning

Literacy to Learn 2B- Transcript

Voiceover: Paraphrasing sentences that are taken from the text can also assist students to link their existing knowledge with the text. In the following scenarios we will see Effie and Lillian have their students paraphrase the title of a text and suggest in various ways the ideas that might arise in it.

Teacher: Picture the title, who can tell me what it is first of all? What’s the title of the story?

Student: Windfall

Teacher: Windfall. What does the word ‘windfall’ remind you of?

Student: When the wind changes and anything can happen.

Teacher: Excellent. The wind is changing, anything can happen.

Student: The wind blows a leaf off a tree.

Teacher: Yes, so the leaf is blown off a tree.

Student: Something that you don’t expect.

Teacher: Why don’t you expect it?

Student: Because if a tree was falling, then you don’t expect it falling.

Teacher: Before we add any extra information, I want to know what you know already.

Teacher: The Black Death. Okay, let’s start with just the simple word ‘black’. Give me any other words that you can use instead of the word black. Go

Student: Dark

Teacher: Dark

Student: Frightening

Teacher: Frightening

Student: Sinister

Teacher: Sinister