Course Title: Teaching Upper Primary Literacy and English

Part A: Course Overview

Course Title: Teaching Upper Primary Literacy and English

Credit Points: 12.00

Course Coordinator: Naomi Wilks-Smith

Course Coordinator Phone: 03 9925 7480

Course Coordinator Email: naomi.wilks-smith@rmit.edu.au

Course Coordinator Location: Bundoora

Course Coordinator Availability: By appointment

Pre-requisite Courses and Assumed Knowledge and Capabilities

Enforced Pre-Requisite Courses 

Successful completion of TCHE2703 Teaching reading and writing  

Note: it is a condition of enrolment at RMIT that you accept responsibility for ensuring that you have completed the prerequisite/s and agree to concurrently enrol in co-requisite courses before enrolling in a course. 

For your information go to RMIT Course Requisites webpage. 

Course Description

The course has as its central core the deepening of knowledge about literacy teaching and learning in the upper primary. You will have the opportunity to consider the data from both school-based and system-based sources and how this can be used to both differentiate the curriculum in literacy for learners and set goals and plan for literacy learning in the upper primary school. Special consideration will be given to the resources in and for reading in the upper primary with both an overview of the field of children’s literature with a focus on specialised texts such as poetry, non-fiction, multimodal texts and listening texts such as podcasts. A focus on the EAL/D learner in the upper primary classroom and their specific needs for the building of cognitive academic language proficiency will take place.   

You will learn to design learning sequences with a view to responding to both the demands of the curriculum (in other learning areas as well as in the subject English) and the demands of assessment in the upper primary years. Assessment as learning will also be applied to the teaching of literacy in text based and digitally based resources.   

Objectives/Learning Outcomes/Capability Development

This course contributes to the following BP320P24 Bachelor of Education (Primary) and BP320PEC24 Bachelor of Education (Primary and Early Childhood Education) Program Learning Outcomes: 

PLO1 Develop and demonstrate broad and coherent theoretical and practical knowledge through one or more of the following practices: planning using data; teaching and learning; assessing; feedback and professional judgement; and appraising impact of teaching across a range of disciplines. 

PLO3 Support students to develop the skills needed to become collaborative, problem-solving, creative learners with agency, and innovative and engaged members of society. 

Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:  

		Graduate APST
1.	Design learning sequences that provide differentiation for a diversity of learners, using assessment data to inform your planning.	4.1, 5.4
2.	Design lessons for teaching of literacy in the upper primary classroom using Victorian Curriculum English and English as an Additional Language/Dialect	3.2, 3.3
3.	Evaluate a collection of visual and multimodal texts	3.4
4.	Create a collection of annotated children’s literature and specialised texts for the upper primary classroom	2.2
5.	Describe and apply methods to assess writing and reading as reciprocal skills	5.1, 5.3
6.	Describe strategies to cater for EAL/D learners in the upper primary classroom and academic language proficiency.	1.3

Overview of Learning Activities

You will be actively engaged in a range of learning activities such as workshops, tutorials, seminars, project work, class discussion, individual and group activities. Teaching and learning may be face to face, online, or a combination of both. 

Overview of Learning Resources

RMIT will provide you with resources and tools for learning in this course through our online systems. 

There are services available to support your learning through the University Library. The Library provides guides on academic referencing and subject specialist help as well as a range of study support services. For further information, please visit the Library page on the RMIT University website and the myRMIT student portal. 

Overview of Assessment

You will be assessed on how well you meet the course’s learning outcomes (CLO) and on your development against the program learning outcomes. The assessment is also mapped against the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST).  

Assessment Tasks 

	Title	Weighting	CLOs	APSTs
AT 1	Upper primary literacy quiz	20%	5, 6	1.3, 5.1, 5.3
AT 2	Annotated upper primary literacy lesson plan/s	40%	1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6	1.3, 2.2, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 4.1, 5.1, 5.3, 5.4
AT 3	Annotated collection of upper primary reading texts	40%	3, 4	2.2, 3.4

 

Feedback will be given on all assessment tasks. 

If you have a long-term medical condition and/or disability it may be possible to negotiate to vary aspects of the learning or assessment methods. You can contact the program coordinator or Equitable Learning Services if you would like to find out more. 

Your course assessment conforms to RMIT assessment principles, regulations, policies, procedures and instructions.