Teaching Philosophy And Learning Sequence Evaluation: A Multimodal Approach

Part A – Evaluating The Teaching Philosophy And Learning Sequence

As per Mr Ross’s teaching philosophy, learning is a process, which is not possible without interdependence and interactive sessions among students. Integration of different cultural and language competence is necessary to understand various lingual perspectives and it will assist to increase their capability of reading and writing as well. According to him, learning the language is important and for that vocabulary, grammar and spelling will not need extra attention. As per De La Paz et al., (2014), it will grow eventually with the practice of reading and writing. In order to produce realistic texts he prefers to provide readings in classrooms like newspapers, books, magazines and e-books or relevant internet sources. Mr Ross considers it as a knowledge enriched environment where a student can explore his or her capabilities. Creating texts is a long process following levels of framing a draft, redrafting, editing and proofreading. After executing all these steps, the texts get ready to publish. Mr. Ross prefers writing which are creative and consist of innovative ideas yet encourages group activities.

This teaching philosophy has numerous strengths yet carry weak points too. Mr. Ross prefers to emphasize the practice of reading and writing instead of enhancing vocabulary and grammatical skills. Strength is, extensive reading and writing is extremely helpful to gain lingual competence yet lack of grammatical skills and knowledge of spelling or vocabulary weakens the quality of a written text. Encouraging innovation and exceptionality is strength of the philosophy along with that preference of interpersonal dependence and knowledge sharing is strong part of his teaching philosophy. According to Bazalgette and Buckingham, (2013), literacy educators have gradually being recognized to address wider variety of texts in a classroom setting. The conception of multimodality is repeatedly coming in front while dealing with writing texts in an innovative way. The theoretical framework of multimodality analyses various forms of communication and educators are accepting this as a scientific approach for academic purposes like teacher’s training and classroom regime, policy documents and professional advancement. The theory highlights the important role of moving images in a digital medium or in a book in enhancing knowledge and learning capability of a young student.

Multimodal texts are created to establish a relationship between image and the word. In today’s world, use of computer has increased and people do not use pen and paper to do their regular jobs. Web pages are designed with various images and sound which are dynamic in nature. Words are written referring to relevant images. It has been observed that the visual characteristics of writing is becoming more dominant day by day. According to Bazalgette and Buckingham, (2013), students are being comfortable in interpreting multimodal texts and the meaning of literacy is transforming gradually. According to Mr. Ross, additional training on vocabulary, spelling and grammar is irrelevant and only the capability needs to be grown through practicing. As far as contemporary writing is concerned, there is particular design of texts, which is very different from a traditional or older book. Although images were important part of older books, contemporary books and texts are filled with more pictorial material than they used to be. The synchronization between images and texts were not relevant 50 or 60 years back. However, contemporary representation maintains perfect balance of images and writings whether it is published as a book or in a form of a book (Wan et al., 2014). Considering the young children’s perspective of learning things more quickly when pictorial materials are provided largely, the phenomenon of including media texts within the academic curriculum has been widely accepted. As described in Martix and Hodson, (2014), the influence of digitalization and its socio-cultural importance has been increasing as far as young children’s experience outside regular academic syllabus is concerned.

(a)

In order to elaborate multimodal theory, it can be stated that it analyses every kind of communicative form starting from a spoken to a written form of language. It does not care for advanced vocabulary or proper use of grammar yet it deals with still and movable image, tunes, body language and utilization of space. For not only literacy purpose, but also the theory has made its place into policy documents, education and method of teaching in classrooms (D’warte, 2014). It can be viewed as an extended part of linguistics (Grabe & Kaplan, 2014). Scholars have evaluated multimodality theory based on the teaching and learning process in a schooling situation where science and English is being taught. In order to understand the relevance better few examples can be considered (Nordin, 2017).

Several contemporary texts are now multimodal these days, which combine words with movable images creating soothing visuals. The perception of people are changing regarding texts after the introduction of multimodal theory. In recent times, texts exist in both the traditional and multimodal forms yet if comparison is done texts did not use to be multimodal at all. The innovation lies in the use of language in the traditional texts. It has been argued that traditional texts always have been maintained a multimodal quality by using sensual language, which used to create a visual effect. Apart from that, the type of font or page design can also be considered as elements of multimodality. Multimodal texts are widely available in the web pages and students are being used to texts with numerous ways of communication. Students can enrich their knowledge and generate various ideas, as internet is a good source of watching short films, animated movies and well-synchronized words and images, which are core of creativity. Information communication technology has mastered the art of combining sound and visuals in a process, which has been proven to be highly effective on the learning process of the small children when a class of reading and writing is going on. As per Turkan et al., (2014), the theory is just another way of engaging students to work on preparing better textual contents. Adding the pinch of visual materials can make the literacy lesson more interesting and can enhance the performance of reading and writing better compositions. The multimodal quality of the texts will eventually decrease the chance of spelling errors, as children tend to remember visual things longer than what they read in a traditional format (Wohlwend, 2015).

(b)

However, contradiction of opinion and confusion can be noticed among teacher regarding the application of multimodality. During the sessions of personal development teachers have argued that developing a practice of multimodal setting within a classroom will encourage them to bring non print texts which has seriously been opposed by many teachers. In the addition, many of them have shared a confused perception by saying that digital platforms cannot be used as tool of learning language as it is meant to have fun. Therefore, even if students bring multimodal texts into classrooms there is always a question of justification.

Briefly, the theory does not only highlight the practice of reading and writing in order to earn language competency, but also encourages various modes of communication like visual, musical, auditory and gestural (Joshi, 2017). Media educators have been applying this theory since they have started to learn the language of media studies. Media studies is full of creative ideas and extra ordinary perception, which can be easily described with the help of multimodality.

A major drawback of multimodality is that it does not encourage people’s practice of regular reading and writing. Although the theory addresses hidden insights of textual concepts, gradually it is influencing people not to do experiments with their capability of writing compositions (Troia & Olinghouse, 2013). The changes of technological communications have evolved and with the digital progression children are being confused which theory they should follow. In this course, the practice of extensive reading and writing is being lost. As a result, the conception of a particular language is not growing properly. Rather, children have developed practice of texting each other via social media, playing online games and preferring non-printed academic material than printed one. Therefore, it can be stated that according to Nguyen, (2013), although multimodal theory has several limitations yet it is the most simplified version of learning for primary students. Implications of these theories can be noticed while designing curriculum. Researches have shown that when children are provided with multimodal elements, which are animated films or visual presentation of lessons, they pay more attention than usual (Oh, De Gagné & Kang, 2013). Better understanding develops and they become more interested in the concept of learning. According to the response from both the classroom students and teachers it has been derived that films are equally acceptable as a useful tool just like traditional printed text books and materials. The conceptual understanding gets better if children are taught with the help of both the texts and moving image simultaneously.

However, literacy educators have chosen multimodal texts with good intentions and considering its wider range of application primary teachers have felt its relevance to use it in the classroom curriculum. As described in Jocius, (2013), the best results can be obtained when the theory is applied in a culturally diverse scenario. The language competency of small children takes time to develop, hence, in order to ensure uniformity it is important to install digital modes of materials, which carry multimodality (Purcell, Buchanan & Friedrich, 2013). The confusion among teachers are still present, as soon as the debate will end, it can be expected the limitations and convenience of the theory will be more critically acknowledged as far as teaching and learning language is concerned (de Jong, Harper & Coady, 2013).

Students who struggle with writing: issues and strategies

As per the study of Troia and Olinghouse, (2013), the instruction is to follow credible sources while framing a text in English.  The art is to convert the knowledge obtained from reading into a writing format. For the writers who have been studying English as a second language, while writing they can face struggle if sources are not followed properly (Genesee, 2014). The art of following the source and writing according might be considered as paraphrasing which work on simplifying the material from a complex structure. Hence, this practice is not that scientific if the purpose is to learn the language properly. Several students confront with difficulty and find the process of writing extremely frustrating as they lack the competence and cannot apply the strategies like experts.

Writing is immensely powerful as far as communication is concerned irrespective of boundaries. Before writing a composition, detail knowledge is necessary and if the student is not aware enough of the topic then it is not possible to add artistic, political and spiritual dimensions to the writing. Expressing own thoughts is another critical aspect of producing good quality text. Students face the difficulty and even experts sometimes due to complicated nature of drafting, composing, examining and editing. Especially, students who have learning disability, lack of experience are tend to face complex situation while expressing own thoughts in a written format. Several surveys have shown that, students who have ability to adopt high quality instructions of skilled writers are likely to improve their quality of writing. The challenges are as follows.

• Students with learning disability, who do not have extensive knowledge varied subjects, face issues while delivering a well-structured written document.
• As they have a tendency to ignore an effective planning before writing, they go wrong while making the correct approach.
• Lack of knowledge in both the subject and the language initiates problems in generating ideas to frame a content.
• Students who do not have good writing skill, it has been observed they invest less time in proofreading, struggle with logical transcription and provides inadequate number of evidences. Therefore, the content becomes generalised and unrealistic too.  

There are certain strategies, which can be applied to produce great quality writings like that of expert writers. They follow a particular framework, which can be considered as strategies for students who are suffering while generating ideas and lacking skills to write a composition.

• The first and foremost aspect, which is needed to be addressed, is students’ perception on a good quality writing. Students with learning disabilities state that a good writing must comply with grammatical rules, correct spellings, neat handwriting and several technicalities. On the contrary, when skilled writers answer they emphasize on central idea, theme and main characters of the write up instead of focusing on grammar and vocabulary because as stated by Mr Ross, language competence would grow with practice of reading and writing. These technicalities are only parts of the process of learning.
• The next aspect to be addressed is the correct approach. Several dimensions must be reflected, when a skilled writer produces a content. It can be easily suspected whether the written document has followed the framework of proper planning, composing, examining and proofreading or not by reading it once. Unskilled or novice students when take up responsibility of writing a document, in most of the cases they do not follow the framework and end up producing an irrelevant and only information based content.
• Apart from these two, ability to generate a good content by planning properly is a skill to practice. After writing the entire content, revising and proofreading is important to avoid further chances of mistakes. Besides, an inner conflict is consistent in the mind of students if they are not capable of transforming their thoughts into a written format.
• Another important aspect is it takes time to produce a good quality content. Students who lack the competence and knowledge do not really spend much time to produce a composition. Whereas, skilled writers patiently sketches the details of a write up. The more a writing will reflect logics, relevant information and strong structure, it will an evidence of writer’s confidence.

EAL/D students are those who needs additional support to enhance their efficiency in English, as they have not studied English as first language in school and colleges. Australian students and aboriginal students practice speaking and writing in different Languages other than English. Apart from that, they may have limited or zero education or studied English as a foreign language. As a result, their oral English is not comprehendible. Some of them come with excellent knowledge of mother tongue as well which helps to plan and create composition in a foreign language too.

Therefore, in order to prepare them before allotting the task of writing composition certain requirements are needed to fulfil.

• Students must learn how to communicate both in a formal and informal way using English language. It may take a considerable amount of time before they execute their knowledge of foreign language while writing, especially if they do not have history of formal schooling (Vinyals et al., 2015).
• They must be provided with curriculum, which has been covered entirely through the medium of English language. Considerable support of educators is necessary in order to get through the new curriculum and medium.
• Apart from these, in order to express personal thoughts in writings, students must learn socialization even though there are differences of culture, by using intellect and new language competency.
• Briefly, development of oral dialect must be done. They must address the differences between various textual formats and structure of sentences.

Students, who have studied or have not studied at all, are needed to develop a great sense of spelling, grammar and vocabulary. Otherwise, they cannot be able to read and write. Basic training on the language is necessary before starting the practice of extensive reading (Bartholomae, 2013).

Teaching and Learning Sequence – Year 6

Classroom teacher: Mr Ross

Writing Focus: Explanation 

Teaching Philosophy

Mr Ross is a Year 6 teacher who believes that learning language (speaking, listening, reading, writing) should be done interactively and interdependently, not separately. As he says “We can speak what we hear, we can read what we can write what we can read.” From this whole-language approach to writing and reading, Mr Ross believes that students learn to read by writing, and learn to write by reading.  As well as integration of the different modes of language, Mr Ross believes in cross- curricular integration, where language and literacy is embedded within what he is teaching in the other subject areas. So this term, one of the texts his students will create is an explanation, which links closely to a Science unit that students are completing, called “Our changing world”.  Mr Ross also believes that students should read and write for real or realistic purposes and he uses engaging texts/events that are related to students’ lives out of school. This means he incorporates many text types in his classroom including newspapers, books, magazines, and digital media. Students in his classroom are exposed to a very text rich environment.

Through their immersion in authentic quality texts that they read, with a focus on reading and writing for meaning, Mr Ross believes that students learn all of the associated subsystems of language they need to know like phonics, grammar, and punctuation. As students read and write they access and use all of the cueing systems: semantic, graphophonic, syntactic and pragmatic. For this reason he believes that there is no reason to explicitly teach skills such as spelling, vocabulary or grammar (Henderson, Weighall & Gaskell, 2013).  Likewise, he expects students to understand how multimodal texts make meaning, rather than teaching about how the different modalities work. Mr Ross’s teaching focus is on the way that texts are produced so this means a focus on teaching the processes that proficient writers use when creating texts, such as planning, creating a draft, re-drafting after feedback, editing, proofreading, polishing, and then publishing. However, less focus is given to the editing and proofreading processes. Drafts are shared with Mr Ross as well as peers, and are published in authentic contexts. Mr Ross does not always encourage students to produce a text that is the same as everyone else, but rather encourages creativity and innovation.

As Mr Ross considers that students are knowledgeable beings who bring a great deal to every learning event so accessing student prior knowledge is important. In this unit he especially seeks to build on their prior experience with explanations as sequential, as well as exploring causal explanations in greater depth. Reading and writing work in Mr Ross’s classroom is very collaborative and supportive, with a blend of pair work, group work and independent work in reading and writing activities. There is also an emphasis on self-guided activities, where students research independently, however he has not specifically taught students basic skills for researching information. Mr Ross believes that students need to develop literate behaviours such as being able to reflect on their own activities, using oral language to interact with the texts they read, as well as explaining pieces of writing. He also believes that students should write on a daily basis for real- life tasks.

As far as the selected learning sequence is concerned, the theory cannot be applicable for the students who have studied English as their second language or have not studied it at all. EALD students need different kind of attention from educators rather than few instructions on practice of reading and writing. Mr. Ross cannot ignore the fact that students with almost zero lingual competence in English should develop vocabulary, understanding of grammar and spelling to read and write in the first place. Therefore, according to Rahimi, (2013), along with the practice of reading they should be provided training on sentence construction, the way they can increase their stock of word and how they can improve their oral skill of English. Students who have already a competence of their mother tongue can express inner thoughts better than the rest. It will eventually help them to organize personal thoughts in a foreign language like English as well. Two different kind of approach in training is required to train students who have studied it as foreign language and students who do not have knowledge on the language. However, for both the groups along with reading and writing a formal training on grammatical aspects is necessary. It should be remembered that, critical contents of high quality could not be expected as it takes a considerable amount of time to gain lingual competence and present it as a form of written document. EALD students will be helpful if they receive multimodal learning materials, the cultural differences can be eliminated easily (Sun, 2015).

Now, if the students who struggle with developing a content are taken into consideration teaching philosophy of Ross can be applied. Although, the techniques of skilled writers must be included into the curriculum as students tend not to follow a proper framework while writing a credible content. Struggling students are likely to spend less time in research, do not plan before structuring the write up, do not evaluate and proofread before submitting. Moreover, difficulty can be addressed in the areas of presentation where students’ own thinking process is involved. Through realistic reading of various books, newspapers and web sources as instructed by Mr. Ross can be suggested to them in order to develop their intellect. Struggling students need to be more attentive rather than being casual about their inability. Most of them have a conception that oral skill of the language is more important mode of communication yet they forget the fact that presentation of inner thoughts through writing can help them to communicate by revealing their personality and intellect. Use of multimodal texts can be partly helpful as they already know the language yet face difficulty to present themselves in a written format. As far as training on grammar and vocabulary is concerned, it will grow if educators can make them engage into realistic readings in a greater scale.

References

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de Jong, E. J., Harper, C. A., & Coady, M. R. (2013). Enhanced knowledge and skills for elementary mainstream teachers of English language learners. Theory into Practice, 52(2), 89-97.

De La Paz, S., Felton, M., Monte-Sano, C., Croninger, R., Jackson, C., Deogracias, J. S., & Hoffman, B. P. (2014). Developing historical reading and writing with adolescent readers: Effects on student learning. Theory & Research in Social Education, 42(2), 228-274.

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