ECL310 Assignment 1

Middle Years Learner Profile and Plan.

Your student name: Naomi Mathew
Introduction
This assignment focuses on the reading and writing capabilities of Eleanor who
is in grade 6 and Meg who is in grade 5. They were assessed on their reading
and writing of a PROBE test, their comprehension answers based on the reading
of the text, their On Demand performance reports, their planning of a
persuasive task, their draft persuasive writing piece, their revised and edited
persuasive piece as well as a recording of Eleanor and Meg listening to and
speaking about their interests and multi-literate practices.
Learner Profiles
Based on the assessment results, Eleanor and Megs strengths and areas of
need have been listed in the table below. These strengths and areas of need
indicated in the table below would suggest that Eleanor and Meg would both
benefit from writing tasks that focus on appropriate sentence structuring which
would also include choosing the correct punctuation and vocabulary. As an
added benefit, a task such as the one mentioned previously would also allow for
the practice in spelling. A suitable reading task for Eleanor and Meg would be
one that promotes the skills involved in effective and accurate reading as well
as the decoding of texts.
Student One: Eleanor
skill
Strengths
Reading: Eleanor
shows the ability to
explain and decode
information that is
implied in the text.

evidence
When answering
the comprehension
questions for the
text, Beans,
Eleanor stated that
the special drink
Cortes was given
was a peace
offering which she
deduced from the
fact that Cortes
came to invade the
Aztec empire and a

Link to AusVELS
Reading and
viewing Level 5:
Students analyse
and explain
implied
informationand
explain their own
responses to
them.

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Writing: Eleanor
understands the
appropriate writing
conventions to
formulate a proper
sentence.

Areas of Need

Reading: Eleanor
has difficulty with
locating
information directly
stated in the text.

Writing:
Eleanor needs
practice in using
language features
that evoke meaning
and are appropriate
to the type of text.

short time later,

he was meeting
with the Aztec
leader. Seeing as
how the drink was
reserved for the
wealthy and
powerful, Eleanor
understood that
Cortes invasion
was probably a
successful one,
hence the peace
offering or special
drink. (See
Appendix 1a)
For example, she
wrote Our school
looks horrendous!
to emphasis her
point.
(See Appendix 2a)

When answering
Question 3 in Beans
comprehension,
Eleanor states that
Columbus
probably talked
about the beans
however in the
text, it states that
[n]othing more
was heard about
the beans. (See
Appendix 1a)
Eleanor uses
language features
such as rhetorical
questions but does
not fully
understand how to
use them for full
impact. For
example, she
begins her final
paragraph in the

Writing Level 5:
When writing, they
demonstrate
understanding of
grammar, select
specific vocabulary
and use accurate
spelling and
punctuation,
editing their work
to provide structure
and meaning.
Reading and
viewing Level 5:
Students analyse
and explain literal
informationand
explain their own
responses to
them.

Writing Level 5.5:

Students [choose]
and [experiment]
withlanguage
features

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body of her
persuasive piece
with How are we
meant to get what
we want if no one
asks us about what
we want? (See
Appendix 2b)
Student Two: Meg
Strengths

skill
Reading: Meg is
able to infer and
evaluate
information
indirectly stated in
the text and make
connections with
the information
stated.

Writing: Ability to
formulate
appropriate
structure and ideas
for the type of text
created, in this
case, a persuasive
piece.

Areas of Need

Reading: Meg
struggles to
support her
interpretations
from the actual
information given
in the text.

evidence
When answering
Question 4 of the
PROBE
comprehension
questions, Meg
correctly evaluated
that the bird was
called Captain Hook
because it looked
like aparrot that
would be in books
and movies on
Captain Hooks
shoulder. (See
Appendix 1b)
For example, in
Megs first draft of
her persuasive
piece, Meg starts
her first body
paragraph with My
first argument is
and she continues
to write in a similar
manner for her
second and third
paragraph. This
demonstrates her
understanding of
appropriate text
structure for a
persuasive piece.
(See Appendix 3)
Meg struggled to
use the text to
support her
interpretations. For
example, when
answering Question
3 of the PROBE
comprehension
task, Meg can recall
that the other kids

Link to AusVELS
Reading and
Viewing Level 4:
Students describe
literal and implied
meaning
connecting ideas in
different texts

Writing Level 3.5:

Students create
persuasive texts for
a widening range of
audiences
demonstrating
increasing control
over text
structures

Reading and
viewing Level 4:
Students describe
literalmeaning

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Writing: Meg
struggles with
sentence structure,
punctuation,
grammar and
spelling

expected the parrot

to talk. She tried
skimming over the
text to support her
answer and
justified it with the
fact that it
couldnt talk but
did not reference
the part in the text
where it directly
states to our
disappointment, it
couldnt speak.
(See Appendix 1b)
For example, in
Megs re-draft of
her persuasive text,
she writes Are
tethers mad or like
buying crap cose
were in grade four
for cring out loud!
(See Appendix 4)

Writing Level 3:
Students
demonstrate
understanding of
grammar and
choose vocabulary
and punctuation
appropriate to the
purpose and
context of their
writing

Mini-Lessons
Reading

Lesson Focus:
Eleanor will specifically focus on the flow of the narrative so that she focuses on
decoding the meaning of the narrative as a whole which relates to AUSVELS
standard from Level 5: Navigate and read texts for specific purposes applying
appropriate text processing strategies, for example predicting and confirming,
monitoring meaning, skimming and scanning (ACELY1702). Meg will focus on
monitoring meaning of the text and cross checking so that she is constantly
evaluating what is written and if that makes sense which relates to the AUSVELS
standard from Level 4: Use comprehension strategies to build literal and
inferred meaning to expand content knowledge, integrating and linking ideas
and analysing and evaluating texts (ACELY1692).
Resources:

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Eleanor and Meg will each have access to a copy of Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
as well as one iPad each which they will use for recording purposes. They will
also need a piece of paper and a pen.
Introduction:
For the introduction, Meg and Eleanor will be encouraged to write down their
predictions for the novel based on the visuals and written text inside (apart from
the actual narrative) or on the cover of the book which will set the context for
what the narrative is about.
Elaboration:
As Meg and Eleanor are required to focus on the meaning of the texts and using
reading strategies to understand the narrative as a whole, the teacher will use
modelled reading in the first part of the lesson while Meg and Eleanor confirm or
change their predictions. The teacher will model good reading strategies such as
checking if the words make sense in context when a mistake is made,
monitoring reading by asking questions and rereading when a sentence does
not make sense. Furthermore, the teacher will practice accurate and fluent
reading.

Practice:
For practice, Meg and Eleanor will be required to record themselves reading
using the iPad. While reading, they are to practice appropriate strategies such
as rereading, checking for cohesion when a sentence does not make sense,
asking questions when a part of the story does not make sense. If there is a part
of the story which Meg and Eleanor do struggle with and cannot understand
after using their reading strategies, they can write it down on a piece of paper
and discuss it with their peer first before discussing it with the teacher. Ongoing
assessment of reading strategies will occur while Meg and Eleanor are reading
to determine how effectively they are using their reading strategies.

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Review:
For the review, students will read over the parts of the text that they had trouble
with and try to apply the newly learned strategies to help themselves. The
teacher will enter in a discussion of the strategies that worked for them which
did not previously. Once they have finished reading the text, the teacher will use
Read and Retell as an assessment strategy to gauge how the strategies have
helped with the students understanding of the text.
Writing
Lesson Focus:
Eleanor will focus on creating meaning through her writing by concentrating on
including appropriate language features which relates to AUSVELS standard
from Level 6: Plan, draft and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive
texts, choosing and experimenting with text structures, language features,
images and digital resources appropriate to purpose and audience
(ACELY1714). Meg will focus on her grammar and punctuation by recognising
how the correct word and sentence looks and sounds like which relates to
AUSVELS standard Level 3: Reread and edit texts for meaning, appropriate
structure, grammatical choices and punctuation (ACELY1683)
Resources:
Eleanor and Meg will have access to one copy of Artemis Fowl Eoin Colfer and a
laptop each. The teacher needs to have a page from Artemis Fowl printed out, a
copy of a dictionary and a thesaurus.
Introduction:
The teacher will demonstrate writing a paragraph with appropriate structure,
punctuation and language features to model for Meg and Eleanor what an
interesting and grammatically correct paragraph looks like. This will draw Meg
and Eleanors attention to appropriate sentence structure and language features
that have been included and allow them to visually recognise what the sentence
should look like

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Elaboration:
The teacher and students will take part in guided writing using the printed out
page from Artemis Fowl. The teacher will cut up the words on the page into
sentences, highlighting the appropriate sentence structure, punctuation and use
of words. It will also draw attention to the language that has been used in a
fantasy novel. Words that are unknown will be looked up in a dictionary and
clarified.
Practice:
Meg and Eleanor will use the printed out page from Artemis Fowl which has now
been cut up into words, phrases and punctuation marks. The words, phrases
and punctuation marks from each sentence will be jumbled up and Meg and
Eleanor have to put them back into an appropriate form. Meg and Eleanor can
use their strategies they used in reading which were rereading and asking
whether it makes sense to help them confidently create sentences. This will
demonstrate their understanding of appropriate sentence structure which will
give the teacher a clear way to assess Meg and Eleanor.
Review:
In the review section, Meg and Eleanor will use their laptops to draft an
imaginative piece which would be an alternative ending to the text Artemis
Fowl. Meg will use her knowledge from the guided writing session to focus on
sentence structure and punctuation as well as using a dictionary to help her
with spelling. Eleanor will use knowledge of the book Artemis Fowl to decide
which language features would be appropriate in an imaginative piece and a
thesaurus to help guide her vocabulary choice. Meg and Eleanor will also read
out their short endings and the teacher will take note of the sentence structure,
punctuation and language features apparent in both pieces of writing and their
reading capabilities.
Rationale:

The focus for the writing mini lesson was on appropriate sentence structure and
language form for a certain type of writing piece which in this case, was
imaginative. The reason for this is because both Meg and Eleanor struggled with

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creating proper sentences with correct grammar and punctuation in their final
drafts of their persuasive pieces. An example of this can be seen when Meg Are
tethers mad or like buying crap cose were in grade four for cring out loud! (See
Appendix 4) in her persuasive piece. It was clear that Meg needed additional
practice with sentence structuring, punctuation and visually recognising if the
statement or phrase looks appropriate as knowing that will encourage her to
check her work. The focus of the mini lesson was also on appropriate language
features. As well as focusing on sentence structure, it was noticed that Eleanor
was attempting to use language features appropriate to a persuasive piece such
as rhetorical questions and exaggeration as evidenced in her persuasive piece.
However, I felt that her writing piece was quite good in all other aspects and
that she was ready to experiment more with language features to improve her
writing a bit more.
For the reading and writing mini lessons, I chose to use modelled reading and
guided writing respectively. I chose modelled or shared reading because I
believe that there are so many different factors that contribute to a fluent
reader such as speed, expression, pronunciation and so on. As such, modelled
reading provides Meg and Eleanor with an audial and visual example of how to
achieve each of those components. Meg and Eleanors primary area for
improvement in reading would be their ability to decode meaning in the text
and to recognise when an error has been made. Modelled reading allows the
teacher to demonstrate strategies needed to solve their issue such as rereading
and so on. Modelled reading also gives students the chance to think critically
about the text as well as allowing them to access texts at a greater reading
level than they are at (Winch et al. 2010, p. 152). This was especially useful
because Eleanor is at a higher reading level than Meg and modelled reading
allows the teacher to guide Meg through a text at a higher level than she is at
as well as giving them the opportunity to understand what is being read without
having to focus on their reading skills. Similarly, I chose guided writing because
it involves more input from Meg and Eleanor and allowed them to work with the
teacher to understand proper sentence structure and language features used in
the type of text studied. Both Meg and Eleanor showed some sort of lacking in
sentence structuring in their persuasive pieces while Eleanor could be

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challenged with use of language features and as such, it is important to go over

the foundations of creating a type of text with the students.
For the reading mini-lesson, the fantasy and adventure book, Artemis Fowl was
chosen as that is something of interest for Meg and Eleanor and it was also used
in the writing lesson as they are already familiar with the text. The introduction
activity for reading was chosen because it allows Meg and Eleanor to
understand that meaning is placed everywhere and that decoding a text
requires you to decode visuals, written text and other forms of writing. The
modelled reading was chosen to demonstrate appropriate reading skills and
strategies and as such would give Meg and Eleanor the tools needed for their
independent work. The independent work was chosen because it allowed Meg
and Eleanor to apply their strategies and skills but also allowed them to listen
back to themselves reading so that they might be able to pick up on possible
improvement areas and patterns in reading that they might have. This is done
so that if they cannot understand why they struggle to read a certain part or
understand it, the teacher and their peer may go over it with them to help them
learn. The independent and modelled reading activities were also chosen
because they can support and scaffold learners[and] target and differentiate
their instruction (Winch et al. 2010, p. 150) which is a particularly effective
form of learning. Similarly to the reading activities, the writing activities were
also chosen because they were allowed for scaffolded learning. Each of the
tasks in the writing lesson slowly gives the students control over their writing.
According to Winch et al. (2010), the teacher and the students should
participate in the joint construction of the text which involves the discussion and
sorting of the type of texts appropriate for a certain genre as well as the
discussion and contribution about how the text should be structured before the
students start their independent writing. This is to ensure that the teacher
guides the students in the right direction while allowing them to participate
more. The independent activity for the writing lesson was chosen because it
allows the students demonstrate their understanding in a creative way. It was
also purposefully completed on a laptop so that they could check their spelling
and sentence structure as they complete it.

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A number of assessment strategies have been chosen for the reading and
writing lessons which include Read and Retell, ongoing observational
assessment as well as using the reading of Meg and Eleanors final imaginative
piece for writing and reading. The ongoing assessment is done while the
students do their independent assessment and is important to have in a lesson
because it allows teachers to monitor progress in work and if any adjustments
need to be made to their teaching (Winch et al. 2010, p. 136). The Read and
Retell assessment provides information about comprehension, sequencing of
ideas and writing skills (Department of Education, Science and Training 2002)
which provides the information required to assess Meg and Eleanors decoding
of meaning in the text. Meg and Eleanors final draft of their imaginative piece
will be used as an assessment of their reading and writing which could be
particularly effective as Winch et al. (2010) states that a good practice to have
in literacy is to link reading and writing tasks. This is due to the fact that written
text and verbal speech are closely linked and can help to consolidate learning.

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References
Winch, G., Johnston, R., March, P., Ljungdahl, L. & Holliday, M. (2010), Literacy
Reading, Writing and Childrens Literature (4th edition), Oxford University Press,
South Melbourne, Victoria.
Department of Education, Science and Training 2002, Read and Retell,
Department of Education, Science and Training, retrieved 9th August 2014,
<http://www.myread.org/monitoring_read.htm>
Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority 2013, pp. 9-14, Standards and
progression point examples, Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority,
retrieved 8th August 2014,
<http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/auscurric/progressionpoints/AusVELSEnglishProgressionPoints-2013.pdf>

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Appendices
Appendix 1a: Eleanor answers PROBE questions Beans notes

-no prior knowledge of Christopher Columbus but does have knowledge on chocolate
-Question 1 (inferential): correct
-Question 2(inferential): correct
-Question 3(evaluation): states that Columbus probably talked about it because he was
surprised about how protective they were of it. It was actually noted that nothing more
was heard about the beans so it is more likely that he didnt talk about beans that
were insignificant that he didnt know about. Incorrect.
-Question 4(evaluation): recognises that they were a form of currency and therefore
that must have made Mayans protective of them. Correct.
-Question 5(inferential): Eleanor mentions that it was due to overpopulation but that is
not mentioned anywhere. Probably an educated guess which relates to her prior
knowledge ie. Why English came to Australia. Incorrect.
-Question 6(vocabulary): correct
-Question 7(evaluation): Eleanor states that it was a peace offering. Evaluated from the
fact that Cortes came to invade and soon after was meeting with the Aztec leader.
Special drink is said to be reserved for the powerful. Eleanor states that it was peace
offering because it was reserved for wealthy people-not powerful. Correct. On the right
path.
-Question 8(reorganisation): correct there wasnt many equals rare.
-Question 9(inferential): correct. Gave right reasoning.
-Question 10(inferential): mixes up information provided. Columbus saw the Mayans
with the beans. Cortes discovered it when he attacked the Aztec empire. Incorrect.
Inference: 3/5

Evaluation: 2/3

Vocabulary: 1/1

Reorganisation: 1/1

Total: 7/10

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Appendix 1b: Meg answers PROBE questions Parrots notes

-Question 1 (evaluation): incorrect. Stated that Larry would not be able to teach the
bird but it couldve been that Larry was too opinionated.
-Question 2 (vocabulary): correct. On the right track to stating that feathers was
plumage. Megs focus was perhaps on the quantity of feathers but she still knew that it
was feathers.
-Question 3 (inference): correct. Meg states that the other kids were disappointed
which is true but cannot recall exactly why she thinks that. Eventually she does
reference, in a small way, the bit of the story that talks about the bird not being able to
talk.
-Question 4 (evaluation): correct. Meg made the connection that Captain Hook is a
pirates name and that the parrot looked like a bird that would sit on a pirates shoulder
which was mentioned in the story.
-Question 5 (evaluation): correct. Gordon was the owner.
-Question 6 (reorganisation): incorrect. Unable to recall the number of times and
guesses 5.
-Question 7 (inference): correct. Bird would get a reward/treat in the form of the food
and therefore encourage it to talk.
-Question 8 (inference): correct. Nocoz it said they gave up
-Question 9 (evaluation): correct. Parrot heard no Larry many times and learnt it that
way.
-Question 10 (reorganisation): correct.
Inference: 3/3

Vocabulary: 1/1 Evaluation: 3/4

Reorganisation: 1/2

Total: 8/10

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Appendix 2a: Eleanor persuasive piece re-draft page 1

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Appendix 2b: Eleanor persuasive re-draft page 2

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Appendix 3: Meg persuasive piece 1st draft

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Appendix 4: Meg persuasive piece re-draft

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