Unit of competency details

Descriptor 

This unit describes the skills and knowledge required by education support workers to work with teachers to support students developing their literacy skills, including oral language, reading and writing skills

The unit provides skills and knowledge to enable education support workers to work with the teacher to develop resources to reinforce literacy skills across the curriculum and to support students during various phases in the acquisition of literacy competence

Application 

This unit applies to education support work in a variety of contexts and work is to be undertaken with appropriate guidance, support and supervision by a nominated teacher or other education professional

Employability Skills 

This unit contains Employability Skills

Elements define the essential outcomes of a unit of competency.

The Performance Criteria specify the level of performance required to demonstrate achievement of the Element. Terms in italics are elaborated in the Range Statement.

ELEMENT 

PERFORMANCE CRITERIA 

1. Encourage and model spoken language

1.1 Identify and use a variety of styles of verbal communication 

1.2 Demonstrate the different functions of language  in interactions

1.3 Monitor students' understanding and use of language through observation, listening and conversation, and provide information to teachers to inform planning

1.4 Identify factors affecting language acquisition  and discuss with the teacher/s

1.5 Use language appropriate to students' culture, age, abilities, interests and needs

1.6 Use spoken language to effectively interact  with students

1.7 Use explicit talk  about language to scaffold learning 

1.8 Model language appropriate to the situation, the purpose and the audience for students

2. Support students to read and interpret texts 

2.1 Determine strategies for supporting students in the interpretation of texts  in consultation with the teacher/s

2.2 Implement planned strategies to enhance the abilities of students and address their individual needs

2.3 Encourage students to problem -solve  in order to make meaning from texts

2.4 Use explicit talk  to focus students on specific literacy skills

3. Enhance students' literacy skills through writing activities

3.1 Use accurate terminology , as planned with teacher/s, to support students' learning

3.2 Implement strategies  devised with teacher/s to develop students' skills in the use of written language 

3.3 Use planned strategies to reinforce literacy skills across all key learning areas

3.4 Encourage students to improve spelling skills  using strategies appropriate to students' developmental levels

3.5 Support students to plan their writing tasks 

3.6 Encourage students to critically reflect  on the effectiveness of their writing

3.7 Support students to effectively edit their writing 

4. Design resources to support literacy development

4.1 Plan learning environments  and activities in advance with the teacher/s

4.2 Design resources , in consultation with teacher/s, to reinforce literacy skills, while fulfilling curriculum requirements

4.3 Design resources to suit the developmental level of the students, as determined by the teacher/s

REQUIRED SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE 

This describes the essential skills and knowledge and their level required for this unit.

Essential knowledge :

The candidate must be able to demonstrate essential knowledge required to effectively do the task outlined in elements and performance criteria of this unit, manage the task and manage contingencies in the context of the identified work role

These include knowledge and understanding of:

• The relationships between spoken language and literacy
• The definition of 'texts' and range of texts that students need to interpret
• Explicit talk to support student comprehension
• Terminology of literacy as used by supervising teacher/s
• Questioning techniques that scaffold learning and assist students to problem-solve
• Language and literacy developmental continuum appropriate to the students being supported
• The differences between the roles and responsibilities of teachers and education support workers

Essential skills :

It is critical that the candidate demonstrate the ability to:

• Adapt spoken language to meet the needs of students and learning programs
• Apply knowledge of stages of development in language and literacy
• Use specific strategies to scaffold student learning as directed by a teacher
• Use a range of strategies to support students with the acquisition of literacy skills and knowledge

In addition, the candidate must be able to effectively do the task outlined in elements and performance criteria of this unit, manage the task and manage contingencies in the context of the identified work role

These include the ability to demonstrate application of skills in:

• Communication

• active listening
• speaking - including explicit talk, questioning
• writing - use of genres, editing, spelling
• consultation - with teachers

• Forming letters in scripts appropriate to the phase of learning of the students
• Problem-solving and scaffolding problem-solving
• Initiative - to use appropriate support strategies when opportunities arise and to inform teachers of student abilities

EVIDENCE GUIDE 

The evidence guide provides advice on assessment and must be read in conjunction with the Performance Criteria, Required Skills and Knowledge, the Range Statement and the Assessment Guidelines for this Training Package.

Critical aspects for assessment and evidence required to demonstrate this unit of competency :

• The individual being assessed must provide evidence of specified essential knowledge as well as skills
• This unit may be assessed either on the job or off the job through an appropriate workplace simulation
• Assessment should ensure the candidate addresses the elements and performance criteria on at least three occasions, over a period of time

Access and equity considerations :

• All workers in community services should be aware of access, equity and human rights issues in relation to their own area of work
• All workers should develop their ability to work in a culturally diverse environment
• In recognition of particular issues facing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, workers should be aware of cultural, historical and current issues impacting on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
• Assessors and trainers must take into account relevant access and equity issues, in particular relating to factors impacting on Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander clients and communities

Context of and specific resources for assessment :

• This unit can be assessed independently, however holistic assessment practice with other community services units of competency is encouraged
• Assessment requires access to a range of opportunities defined in the Range Statement, including access to:

• an educational work environment or simulation of realistic work environment to enable candidates to demonstrate their knowledge and skills while working with teachers and students
• literacy terminology used in the educational organisation

Method of assessment :

• Assessment methods suitable for valid and reliable assessment of this competency may include, but are not limited to, a combination of two or more of:

• case studies
• demonstration
• observation
• questioning - oral and written
• scenarios, simulation or role plays
• workplace projects
• authenticated evidence from the workplace and/or training courses

• Assessment methods should reflect work demands, such as literacy, and the needs of particular groups, such as:

• people in rural and remote locations
• people with disabilities
• people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
• women
• young people
• older people

RANGE STATEMENT 

The Range Statement relates to the unit of competency as a whole. It allows for different work environments and situations that may affect performance. Add any essential operating conditions that may be present with training and assessment depending on the work situation, needs of the candidate, accessibility of the item, and local industry and regional contexts.

Styles of verbal communication may include :

• Informal
• Formal
• Transactional e.g. greetings, shopping, giving directions/instructions
• Reading aloud
• Recounting
• Reciting
• Interrogating

Functions of language may include :

• Informative:

• the communication of information

• Expressive:

• reports feelings or attitudes of the speaker/writer/ subject to evoke feelings in the listener/reader

• Directive:

• language used for the purpose of causing (or preventing) overt actions

• To establish and maintain relationships
• To influence

Factors affecting language acquisition may include :

• Limited opportunities for practice
• Health issues
• Socioeconomic issues
• Home language other than English
• Planned or incidental learning opportunities

Use spoken language to effectively interact may include :

• Use of phrases and jargon that the student uses
• Using name used by family or friends/peers
• Using language specific to an area of the student's interest e.g. Football/fashion
• Suiting language to the student's age and level of comprehension
• Encouraging participation in group or individual discussions
• Reading books, telling stories, reciting poems and rhymes out loud
• Involving students in songs, rhymes, jokes, plays, presentations
• Informal conversation / chatting
• Varied intonation (for example different intonation used when asking questions, making statements, giving commands)
• Clear articulation to support comprehension
• Appropriate pronunciation
• The ability to transition between verbal cultural norms
• Discussing student's selection of materials/photos collected at home
• Using digital photos to stimulate recall, prediction, discussion, vocabulary about a class activity or excursion

Explicit talk  (talking the talk ) may include speaking aloud about :

• Thinking processes involved in constructing communications ('I' statements)
• Open-ended questioning about meaning and alternative ways to convey meaning
• The structure of a sentence
• The purpose of the language used
• The effectiveness of language used for the chosen audience
• Processes used to determine meaning
• Processes used to work out the spelling of words
• How a word may be broken into syllables to help with spelling or meaning
• Relating the new to the known
• Specific strategies devised for specific purposes in consultation with teacher/s

Scaffold learning involves providing temporary support to students to enable their progress toward independent thinking and learning 

It may include :

• Relating new knowledge to student's current knowledge
• Breaking new information into smaller chunks
• Approaching new information in a familiar way or by referring to known information
• Encouraging students to concentrate on new information
• Providing achievable challenges
• Reinforcing attempts to use new information
• Encouraging repeated use of new information to achieve automaticity

Texts may be drawn from many genres including :

• Literary texts - characterised by the aesthetic use of language and the imagination to explore understandings about human experience through real and imagined (including virtual) worlds.
  Examples of literary texts include:

• narrative picture books
• novels/e-books/short stories
• poems (ballads, lyrics, sonnets)
• plays/drama
• song lyrics
• biographies/ autobiographies
• feature films

• Everyday texts - those associated with education, leisure, work, family and daily life:

• factual texts/reference books/dictionaries
• DVDs (feature films)
• web-linked computer games
• personal email/on-line discussions/SMS messages
• letters/reports
• catalogues/advertising
• signs (street names, directional signs)

• Mass-media texts - those produced in a variety of paper and electronic media for a mass audience:

• television programs
• newspaper stories
• magazine features
• radio talkback
• television news
• feature films
• web pages

Strategies for supporting students in the interpretation of texts may include :

• Orientation to the text
• Asking for students' opinions about parts of the text
• Asking students to compare the text to other texts
• Asking students to compare the text to their own experiences
• Encouraging students to analyse and/or criticise the text
• Encouraging students' consideration of the genre of the text
• Encouraging students' consideration of the effectiveness of the text's messages
• Engaging in discussion that summarises or encourages comment about information in the text
• Utilising Rosenblatt's Five Response Types to encourage deeper understanding of the text's meaning

Encourage students to problem -solve by :

• Modelling problem-solving strategies aloud (talking the talk)
• Accepting and valuing students' attempts to solve problems
• Encouraging self-help
• Using open ended questioning
• Referring to similar problems and how they were solved
• Encouraging risk-taking
• Allowing sufficient thinking time (wait time)
• Not interrupting the child's reading
• Offering support which provides least support first, and moving to most support only if required

Accurate terminology will depend on the phase of learning being supported and may include selections from this glossary of terms :

• Active voice:

• refers to a verb group where the subject of the clause is the actor or 'do-er' (e.g. 'the child washed the window' as opposed to 'the window was washed by the child' which is in passive voice)

• Antonym:

• words that have an opposite or contrasting meaning to a given word (e.g. 'alive' is an antonym of 'dead')

• Clause:

• a unit of meaning grouped around a process (verb); the basic building block of language. (e.g. 'I finished my work, even though I was tired'; My boss, who's moving to another department soon, is organising a party')

• Decoding:

• processes involved in changing written letters into spoken sounds to arrive at the meaning of the written text - a bit like 'breaking the code'

• Discourse:

• a Discourse (upper-case D) is a socially accepted association among ways of using language, of thinking, feeling, believing, valuing and acting that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group or social network

• Encoding:

• process of changing spoken language into symbols of written language (writing) similar to converting spoken language into a code

• Field:

• the topic of language in a particular context, realised through processes, participants and circumstances

• Foreground:

• make the focus by placing at the beginning of a clause, sentence, paragraph or text

continued  ...

Glossary  (contd ):

• Genre:

• any staged, purposeful social activity which is accomplished through language (e.g. making a purchase in a shop, a letter to the editor, meeting procedures)
• genres which are valued and common in formal schooling contexts include recounts, descriptions, reports, narratives, arguments and discussions
• texts can be macro-genres; that is, they consist of two or more genres in achieving their overall purpose
• for example, in writing an argument against the logging of rainforests, the writer might include a report about the trees that grow in rainforests and the animals that need the rainforests to survive

• Graphophonic code/graphphonics:

• the set of letters and sounds and rules for using them to convert spoken language into written language
• the grapho part of the word is derived from the Greek root graphos meaning to write and the phonic part is derived from the Greek root phonos  meaning sound

• Language:

• language (both oral and written) is a semiotic system that uses words, sentences and paragraphs as its set of signs and codes to convey meaning

• Literacy:

• the flexible and sustainable mastery of a repertoire of practices with the texts of traditional and new communications technologies via spoken language, print, and multimedia

• Metalanguage:

• a language for talking about language, its patterns and conventions

• Metalinguistic awareness

• awareness of the form of language rather than its meanings i.e. its patterns, sounds and conventions
• examples: caterpillar is a long word (even if a caterpillar is a short little creature); want I go (incorrect order) for I want to go.

• Modality

• refers to the aspect of speaker/writer judgement or assessment of probability, usuality, obligation and inclination (e.g. 'he might be the one' 'she always wins' 'I always have to help')

continued  ...

Glossary  (contd ):

• Mode:

• concerned with the medium and channel of communication
• broadly speaking, it refers to whether the channel of communication is spoken or written, and is the role that language has in the meaning making

• Morphemes:

• the smallest units of meaning in a word
• examples: sighs (two morphemes sigh + the plural marker s); size (one morpheme); pretty (one morpheme but two syllables)

• Multiliteracies:

• literacy educators use the term multiliteracies to focus on the ways in which literacy education will continue to change in order to equip students with the skills necessary to be active and informed citizens in present and future societies, and to address the challenges posed by a changing world

• Onset-rime:

• the division of a word into the initial consonant or consonant blend and the following syllables
  Examples: p-ot (pot): str-ing (string): m-y (my)

• Passive voice:

• refers to a verb group where the subject of the clause is the goal or the receiver of the action (the done-to) e.g. 'the car was washed by the child' as opposed to 'the child washed the car' which is active
• the passive voice is used when the speaker/writer wishes to foreground the goal of the action as in:

• 'the dried ingredients are added to the mixture'
• 'the car gets serviced at the garage'
• 'taxes were raised after the election'

• Pedagogy:

• all the various aspects associated with teaching including teaching, assessing and planning

• Phonemes:

• the smallest element of sound that allows us to differentiate between words (examples: cat, rat or big, bag)
• the sounds represented by those letters are phonemes
• phonemes are the smallest building blocks of our language

continued  ...

Glossary  (contd ):

• Phonemic awareness:

• concepts about the structure of words (individual phonemes)

• Phonics:

• a term commonly used instead of the term graphophonics
• the word makes reference to the 'sound' aspect of the word and does not include the 'letter' aspect
• phonics and graphophonics are used interchangeably

• Phonological awareness:

• concepts about the way spoken words sound including an understanding that words can be broken into syllables, an understanding of alliteration, onset and rime, and rhyme

• Reading:

• a problem-solving process involving the use of cognitive, cultural and social resources

• Scaffold:

• in pedagogy: temporary support given to students to enable their progress toward independent thinking and learning
• this support may take the form of explanations, examples, pictures or diagrams, with teacher modelling of procedures, responses etc
• the amount of scaffolding is deliberately reduced as the student progresses

• Schematic structure:

• the distinctive way in which a text is structured, having identifiable stages or parts which enable it to achieve its purpose

• Semantic or semantics:

• meaning

• Semantic cueing system:

• the meaning clues the reader is able to use to decode and to make meaning
• clues relate to all different kinds of knowledge the reader has and related to the reading

• Subject-verb agreement:

• refers to where a plural subject requires a plural finite (verb) form (e.g. 'chairs were ...') or a singular subject requires a singular finite form (e.g. 'a chair was ...')

• Synonym:

• a word with a similar meaning to another
  (e.g. 'youthful' is a synonym of 'young')

continued  ...

Glossary  (contd ):

• Syntax:

• word order: the rules that govern the way the words are ordered in sentences

• Syntactic cueing system:

• the clues the reader is able to use about possible words because of their knowledge of syntax as they decode and make meaning

• Teacher talk:

• the term used to refer to the specific way teachers and support personnel use language to interact with the children for the purpose of supporting their learning

• Tense:

• the setting in time of a clause (e.g. the primary tenses are past - 'I went', present - 'I am going', and future 'I will go')

• Text:

• most broadly, this term is used to refer to anything which can be read for meaning. A text is a combination of signs selected and organised to convey meaning

• Theme:

• refers to what is foregrounded in a clause, which focuses the listener/reader on how the text is unfolding

Strategies to develop students' skills in the use of written language may include :

• Helping students to have a go at unknown words
• Modelling (by an adult) of spelling strategies
• Scribing for beginning writers
• Using temporary spelling as a tool for early writing
• Written conversations
• String sentences
• Transformations for supported writing
• Using a digital camera to support writing

Spelling skills may be enhanced through the development of :

• Visual awareness:

• recognising the shapes and patterns of letters and words

• Morphemic awareness:

• recognising patterns of meaning within and between words

• Graphophonic awareness:

• recognition of relationships between shapes (letters or groups of letters) and sounds

• Etymological awareness:

• recognition of the historical origins of words and their meaning

Plan writing tasks may include :

• Deciding on the purpose
• Determining the audience
• Deciding what the message is
• Researching specific information and/or references
• Structuring the writing to best convey the message to the audience
• Drafting and editing

Encouraging students to critically reflect on their writing may include :

• Questioning:

• Does it say what you want it to say?
• Is the message clearly articulated?
• Is it easy to read?
• Is the format inviting?
• Is there any unnecessary material?
• Is all the necessary information presented?
• Is there an effective conclusion?

• Asking students to read their writing aloud
• Reading parts of the writing aloud to the student to help identify problems
• Suggesting comparison against exemplar texts

Effectively edit writing may include checking and revising :

• The structure of paragraphs
• The structure of sentences
• The information contained in the text
• The flow of the writing
• References
• Formatting
• Spelling
• Applicable genre structure
• Language/ tone/ vocabulary suits the audience and the purpose

Learning environments may include :

• Classrooms
• Libraries
• Laboratories
• Outdoor areas
• Community spaces
• Art areas

Resources may include :

• Charts
• Posters
• Games
• Handouts
• Displays
• Labels
• Workbooks
• Reference materials