Understanding Language and Literacy
Assessment context
The purpose of this folio assessment is for you to gather information to demonstrate your understanding of the importance of connecting and developing partnerships with families of the children in your centre or class/school, and the implications that children’s culture and home language have on the teaching and learning of English language and literacy.
Partnerships is one of five key principles outlined in the Early Years Learning Framework (DEEWR, 2009) as underpinning good early childhood education. Partnerships involve educators creating a welcoming environment where families are respected and encouraged to collaborate with educators about curriculum decisions. When early childhood educators work in partnership with families, learning outcomes are most likely to be achieved (DEEWR, 2009, p. 12). When educators show a genuine interest in getting to know each child and their family as individuals then a sense of belonging and partnership begins to develop and it strengthens over time. Belonging is as important for family members as it is for the children.
There are various ways in which centres and primary schools can connect and develop partnerships with families. Among them is the creation and distribution of newsletters. This folio assessment will allow you to demonstrate your understanding of the importance of building home-school partnerships by creating a newsletter with a focus on teaching an aspect of emerging or early literacy. In addition, you will also be able to demonstrate your understanding of the implications that culture and home language has for teaching and learning.
Related learning outcomes
This task is assessing your ability to demonstrate that you meet the following unit learning outcomes:
- Describe key concepts with regard to language and literacy in Australian education contexts.
- Identify the implications of culture and home language for learning and teaching.
- Demonstrate appropriate communication skills.
Assessment details
- To complete this folio assessment, you are required to respond to the following scenario. In addition, you are required to use a minimum of 5 scholarly and professional sources to inform the content of your newsletter.
Scenario:
You are a newly appointed educator either at an early childhood centre. You have been tasked with the job of creating a newsletter for parents/caregivers of the children in your centre/room that reflects the teaching of one aspect of emerging or early literacy. You have been given 3 options to choose from as a topic of focus for your newsletter:
- Visual literacy
- Critical literacy
- Digital technologies in English language and literacy teaching and learning
Using the scenario presented above, create a newsletter for the selected age group 3-4 year olds in Early Childcare Education and expand on your selected topic. Your newsletter should include the following information:
- A definition of the selected topic and an explanation as to why the topic is important for the teaching and learning of emerging or early literacy.
- An outline of the benefits and potential risks associated with the chosen topic (dot points can be used for this section)
- A description of a learning experience for your selected age group which includes:
- a statement of the age group for 3-4 year olds in Early Childcare Education
- a rationale of the learning experience (e.g. what the children already know, what they have been introduced to at the centre or class/school, and how this learning experience will help strengthen those skills)
- an expected learning outcome of the learning experience which includes a link to a specific sub-outcome under Outcome 5: Children are effective communicators from the EYLF or a content description under the Australian Curriculum: English (or a state equivalent e.g. Victorian Curriculum: English).
- a teaching strategy to support all children’s learning and development
- a teaching strategy to support children with English as an additional language or dialect (EAL/D)
- An example of how parents and/or caregivers can assist children with their learning about the selected topic at home.
- An invitation for parents/caregivers to share what they have done at home with their child(ren) and/or to provide feedback and suggestions.
Your newsletter should be written layperson’s language. The tone should be professional, warm, welcoming and inviting. Ensure that your newsletter follows a logical order and it should be coherent and appealing for your target audience. In addition, your folio must be properly referenced with in-text citations and a reference list using the APA referencing style. The reference list will also not be included in the word count.
Note: Your newsletter can be created using a Word Document. When you go to create a new document within Word, you can search for newsletter templates. Attached under Assignment 3B is an example of one of the Word document newsletter templates that you can use. However, feel free to choose a different template – there is a range to choose from.
Therefore, to give your newsletter a sense of originality, you can be as creative as you would like by including additional content such as a name of the ECE or primary school, identify yourself as the educator, use borders and/or images, include an upcoming centre/school event and/or a quote of the week/month and so forth. The additional content will not be included in the word count.