Literacy Professional Learning Resource – Teaching Strategies

Literacy to Learn: Getting students knowledge ready for literacy learning

Literacy to Learn 4 - Transcript

Teacher: We know that student’s vocabulary knowledge has a major impact on how well they can understand the text that they’re going to be reading. There are various aspects of teaching this. We want the students to be able to pronounce, read and spell the words particularly the key words in the text, accurately.

We’ll also be teaching some particular vocabulary units explicitly. We’ll also be teaching the students how to work out the meanings of unfamiliar words that they encounter in the text. Often when students are reading factual texts or text in which they’re required to learn, when they come to unfamiliar words, they don’t know what to do and sometimes they’ll cease the comprehension process.

If we teach students how to use their ‘meaning making motors’ they can gradually build up the repertoire of key vocabulary units. And so while they’re learning how to comprehend unfamiliar words, they’re also building their knowledge of the specific subject area.

Students reading text about the solar system, for example, will learn literacy strategies in terms of working out the meanings of new words like ‘revolution’ and ‘orbit’, and they’ll also be adding to their knowledge of that subject area. So a focus on vocabulary not only teaches students a key aspect of literacy, but it’s also adding to their knowledge of the subject area that they’re specifically learning about.