Posted: May 15th, 2023

ASSESSMENT 2
Weighting: 50% Due Date: 01 June 2023
Purpose and Context
As young learners move into the middle primary years, they progress from
learning to read and write, to reading and writing for learning. It is
important for teachers to develop a flexible and balanced repertoire of
practices that engage students in purposeful reading and writing. This task
focuses on the macro and micro elements of English curriculum planning,
with an emphasis on reading and writing.
This task involves the application of the Explicit Teaching Framework, Four
Resources Model, explicit differentiation and the Gradual Release of
Responsibility Model in planning for curriculum and assessment, with a
focus on using appropriate pedagogies when planning for, and reporting
on, effective learning for students with diverse learning needs in the
middle primary English classroom.
Connection to the Australian
Professional Standards for Teachers
• APST 1.5 Differentiate teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full range of abilities:
Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of strategies for differentiating teaching to meet the specific learning needs
of students across the full range of abilities.
• APST 2.1 Content and teaching strategies of the teaching areas: Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the
concepts, substance and structure of the content and teaching strategies of the teaching area.
• APST 2.2 Content selection and organisation: Organise content into an effective learning and teaching sequence.
• APST 2.3 Curriculum assessment and reporting: Use curriculum, assessment and reporting knowledge to design learning
sequences and lesson plans.
• APST 5.1 Assess student learning: Demonstrate understanding of assessment strategies, including informal and formal,
diagnostic, formative and summative approaches to assess student learning.
• APST 5.2 Provide feedback to students: Demonstrate an understanding of the purpose of providing timely and
appropriate feedback to students about their learning.
• APST 5.3 Make consistent and comparable judgements: Demonstrate understanding of assessment moderation and its
application to support consistent and comparable judgements of student learning.
Aspects of Explicit Teaching
The aspects of explicit teaching include:
• focusing instruction on identified curriculum content
• connecting to prior knowledge and skills when beginning a learning sequence
• establishing and maintaining clear learning goals and expectations for each lesson
• teaching and expecting students to use metalanguage in ways that support learning
• deconstructing and sequencing teaching to focus on the steps that lead to new knowledge, deeper
understandings and/or more sophisticated skill
• describing and modelling concepts and processes clearly, using ‘think aloud’ and examining models and
inferior examples
• varying instruction in response to immediate and reflective feedback
• asking questions to continually monitor understanding and progress and inform immediate feedback
• providing scaffolded learning experiences for students to practise, synthesise and consolidate learning
• developing the capability of students to self-regulate and learn independently.
https://www.teachingacenglish.edu.au/explicit-teaching/overview/explict-overview.html
Differentiation
The aspects of differentiation represented in these vignettes include:
• ensuring the curriculum informs teaching, learning and assessment
• using qualitative and quantitative data to inform teaching and learning
• having clear, shared learning intentions (and success criteria)
• using flexible grouping in order to respond to curriculum intent and learning needs
• varying the speed and delivery of instruction in response to immediate and reflective
feedback
• providing targeted learning experiences
• selecting and modifying resources according to students’ needs and learning goals
• personalising learning goals according to student needs/readiness
• ensuring all students are engaged in cognitively demanding tasks
• valuing feedback.
https://www.teachingacenglish.edu.au/differentiation/overview/differentiation.html
Text Selection
• An English unit focuses on teaching reading & writing
• Select a focus text that enables you to teach both
reading & writing to your chosen year level
• Accurately identify the genre of your text.
• Understand:
– The social purpose of the genre
• PIE: persuade, inform/instruct, entertain
– Consider the stages of a the text:
• Orientation
• Complication
• Resolution
– The language features
• Macro or Micro features
We have focused on narratives during this
course.
For this reason it may be best to select a
narrative text.
Quality Literature
Other Sites to look for literature
Magabala Books
The Indigenous Literacy Foundation
Asian Australian Children’s Literature
UniSQ Library – The Source DataBase
ALEA – Resources – Reading Australia
Reading Australia
The Children’s Book Council of Australia
AC:E Content Description – Years 3 or 4
Language Literature Literacy
1 Content Description 1 Content Description 1 Content Description
1 Elaboration 1 Elaboration 1 Elaboration
Select a teaching focus, Curriculum Framing & Text Selection
• One AC:E Content Description & one Elaboration from each strand
• Consider what aspects of the Content Descriptions overlap with each other to help inform
your selection?
• NB. Some Content Descriptions are addressed all year – not in a unit focus – eg.
Handwriting
• Make sure you understand the intent of the Content Description and the Elaboration
• Consider how these Content Descriptions & Elaborations are represented in the selected
focus text?
• Consider what will be the Explicit Teaching focus of the Content
Descriptions – highlight these aspects of the Content Descriptions & Elaborations.
• Copy & paste – do not make up your own Content Description.
These Content Descriptions and Elaborations can be copied and
pasted into the Language, Literature and Literacy columns of the
template.
General capabilities & cross-curricular priorities
– Select the ones your unit addresses – delete the others.
– Briefly describe aspects of the ones you have selected.
Reading Block
• Keep you Reading Block to 1 page.
• Your explicit teaching focus – must be specific and
achievable in one week.
• You can use dot points.
• Avoid writing a detailed lesson plan.
• For Shared Reading know what part of the Content
Descriptions you are teaching and how you are
going to teach the Content Description.
• Use your focus text for the Modelled and Shared
Reading Experiences.
• The Shared Reading experience must have a before,
during and after learning experience.
Reading Block
• The After learning task in the Shared Reading section must be
designed to enable students to demonstrate their learning of the
explicitly taught focus of the Content Description by the end of
the week.
• State what data you will collect and what assessment strategy
you will use to identify the students who are able to demonstrate
their learning of the explicitly taught Content Description or the
students who are still consolidating this knowledge.
• Remember the Shared Reading lesson has to align with the
Content Descriptions you have selected for the week. For
example, this Share Reading experience may align with the
Literacy and Literature Content Descriptions you have selected.
Reading Block
• For Shared Reading consider what reading strategy
you will be teaching students.
• Consider how this reading strategy connects with your
selected content description?
• Identify a Comprehension Level:
– Literal
– Inferred
– Interpretive – Critical
• Identify Before, During & After learning activities that
you can use to teach the Reading Strategy.
• Remember to align these learning activities with the
aspect of the Content Description that will be explicitly
taught?
• Remember to align the After Reading activity with your
assessment strategy.
Reading Block – Week 9
Look at the week 5 Sway for:
Before, During & After reading
Look at the week 6 Sway for:
Reading strategies &
Comprehension levels.
Guided Reading Plan • Plan 3 x 30mins sessions for each group
• 3 groups based on flexible grouping
• Flexible grouping means that Guided Reading Groups can be changed each week depending on the
reading needs of our students.
• It is important to explain how you have grouped your students for Guided Reading in your Rationale.
• Refer to week 12 for examples of flexible grouping.
Differentiate Texts
• Plan differentiated teaching & learning for each group
Assume:
• Lower Group: reading below year level
• Middle Group: reading at year level
• Higher Group: reading above year level
• Identify text titles, level of comprehension and reading strategy.
• Outline how you will engage students in guided reading.
• Students must read the same text in each session e.g. Teacher session, TA session & Independent session.
• Identify what formative assessment data you would like to collect from students learning during Guided
Reading sessions.
Guided Reading Plan Overview
Teacher
What reading strategy
or SMV cue are
students learning this
week?
Teacher Aide
Week 4
Adoniou (2022)
Chapter 3 – How do we
learn to spell?
Independent
Grammar
Repeated Reading –
week 5
Communication Game
– week 7
Assessment
Plan to use each of the 4 assessment techniques:
• Observation, Consultation, Focused Analysis & Peer/self-assessment
• Also, refer to attached Suggested Assessment Techniques & Instruments
reading located in the week 13 page of StudyDesk.
• Making Judgments – what specific criteria you will use to judge the
effectiveness of student learning?
Unit Feedback
The ways to monitor learning and assessment and the type of feedback you give to
students will depend on the types of assessment strategies you use and the
Content Descriptions selected for the Curriculum Plan.
Assignment 2 Information Page
Types of Assessment Data
Writing Block
The Independent
Construction task should
align with the explicitly
taught language feature from
the focus text.
How will you get students to
demonstrate their learning of
this language feature?

Readings and Resources – Writing Block
The following course readings will help you develop your Writing Block:
Week 1:
• Axford, Harders & Wise (2009) Why Scaffold Literacy Learning? – This reading can be found in the Course
Reading DiReCt. Part A and Part B.
Week 2:
• Macken-Horarik, Love, Sandiford and Unsworth (2018) Moving South Teaching narrative in classrooms – This
reading can be found in the Course Reading DiReCt. Teaching-Learning Cycle examples.
• Derewianka (2015) The contribution of genre theory to literacy education in Australia – This reading can be
found in the Course Reading DiReCt.
Learning content and Sway presentations
• Weeks 1 and Weeks 2.
Assessing Writing
Formative writing assessment:
• should occur at each stage of writing
• is interactive between teachers and students identifying what a
student can do and needs to develop
• is reflective as it marks what a student has achieved and the
effectiveness of this achievement
• identifies what a student is taught next and a learning goal for
the student’s writing.
(Davis, 2013)
Formative Assessment for learning:
Formative assessment is the process of assessing and
considering students’ writing achievements, capability
and expertise and using this information to inform
subsequent teaching and learning (Davis, 2013, p. 10 )
Observation Consultation
Focused
Analysis
Peer/Self
Assessment
Assessing Writing
Teachers can gather writing assessment data
through:
• Teacher observation
• Anecdotal records
• Student-teacher conversations about writing
• Writing conferences
• Student self and peer reviews
• Analysis of student’s writing sample
• Judgements against the ACE achievement
standards
(Davis, 2013)
Observation Consultation
Focused
Analysis
Peer/Self
Assessment
Analysis Writing Samples
Macro language features
• Whole Text Level Genre: Narrative stages
of Orientation, Complication, Resolution.
Micro language features
• Cohesion: referencing, repetition,
synonyms, antonyms, whole-part, class- member
• Sentences: simple, compound, complex and
complex/compound
• Word groups: any noun groups, verb
groups, adverbials
RATIONALE
• 650-800 words
• Identify the year level for the plan. You must select a
middles year E.g. Year 3 or 4
• A rationale for the literary text choice and unit focus, making
explicit links to relevant research literature and the
Australian Curriculum: English
Writing Your Rationale
• Explain why the unit is important
• State the year level of the English Curriculum Plan – Year 3 or 4
• Describe the class context of the unit plan. This could include:
– Stating where the school is located.
– Stating the school term the unit plan will be implemented
– Describing students’ prior knowledge, established classroom routines e.g. Have students
complete Guided Reading groups previously?
– Describing the diversity of students in the class. This will link in with your three student
groups identified for Guided Reading
• Accurately identify the genre of your focus text
• State what focus text you have selected for Modelled and Shared Reading and
give a reason.
• State what texts you have selected for your Guided Reading sessions and give
a reason.
• State the English Curriculum Plan will form a part of a one week literacy block.
• Describe the explicit focus and Content Descriptions for learning in the unit.
Writing Your Rationale
• Remember the purpose of a rationale is to explain & justify
what you plan to teach, how you plan to teach it and what
resources you will use – with reference to the AC:E &
Teaching Approaches and Frameworks.
• Use the course readings and other academic literature to
justify the planning decisions for the English Curriculum Plan
Writing Your Rationale
• Reference original sources
• use course readings where possible
• use the USQ library to find other academic literature
• Use APA referencing – a guide can be found at the
USQ Library site using the following link:
https://www.usq.edu.au/library/referencing/apareferencing-guide
• Include an image of your focus text
Reference List
• Include at least 10 references
• Include the selected focus text in the reference list
• Include the Guided Reading texts in the reference list
• Include The Australian Curriculum: English – once
• Use the course readings and other academic literature
• There are 5 marks for appropriate academic writing and APA
referencing on the rubric.
Assessment Rubric
Rationale
Reading &
Writing
Assessment
Writing,
Reading &
Guided Reading Plan
Academic
Literacies
Teaching Approaches
Frameworks
AC:E
Assessment Types:
1. Observations
2. Consultations
3. Focused Analysis
4. Peer/Self Assessment
Teaching Approaches
Frameworks