Mia's Teaching Journey

There is no learning that doesn't require a lens on language. LANGUAGE carries the concepts and meaning. When you put the LENS of the language on the topic of the domain you are working in, you need to think, how are you going to do this so it results in heightened levels of language. You have got to be really discerning about what you are doing, could we honestly say in all the work that we are doing, whatever level, are our children having heightened level of complexity as their capabilities? This is something we need to constantly be thinking about. Where does language occur? Spoken form, print. What we have got to be thinking of.. we could have mileage in print and spoken form - but our question has to be - is it heightening their level of understanding and being able to produce themselves.  ORAL LANGUAGE  Thinking and Meaning Concept Knowledge Vocabulary Langaue Structures READING - WRITING Learners need to try out language and expr...

Language in Abundance - Where will you put your lens? Can you think with depth and breadth if you don't have the words to express yourself? 2/3 of a lot of our children's day does not expose them to complex language. Our challenge is to make sure the 6 hours we have with them is to expose to them to as much rich language as possible. We want our kids to do well in education to then step up and be 'higher players' in society, how do we get the parent and caregiver to be more educated? We know that education levels in the family are going to make a difference to their children - if we say there are a large number of families here that don't have higher education it doesn't mean they are NOT going to able to scaffold and help their children. You can't spend your day gathering ideas from the children. What are the trio of lens? - Explicit attention to language - Attention to co-contributors - Optimising envieonmental conditions Language carrie...

Gems from second CoL Meeting, March, 2018 Russell’s Opening All around the country teacher’s are doing inquiries, mostly towards their attestations. In our context, if teachers can’t find the stuff that works and share it with others, our kids will continue to fail. The reason we have Jannie in this year is because all of you guys expressed that we have a language acquisition problem. To get out of poverty, you have to be able to speak the right way. You can’t shift into a different echelon in society if you can’t speak the kind of way that is accepted in our society. Teaching absolutely is an intervention. Your inquiry is part of forming the intervention. There is a difference between teaching, and guiding and supporting. This is teaching as inquiry. What Rebecca said, is that if it’s just development, if we are just letting kids develop, it’s not teaching. Teachers need to take learners beyond development. Part of teaching as inquiry, it is our job it identify the ‘good’...