Professional Development Resources
Literacy
ACAL recorded webinar – the Social Practice View of Literacy by Pam Osmond
5 minutes on the Social Practice View of Literacy
Remember the names Street, Gee and Hamilton?
and the terms socio-cultural language resources, literacy domains, and multiple literacies?
Spend 5 minutes with Pam Osmond to think about literacy as a social activity and its implications for policy, provision, and our teaching and research. What does the concept of social practice really mean when we talk about adult literacy?
ACAL recorded webinar – Student-centred learning by Pam Osmond
5 minutes on student-centred learning
ACAL invites you to reconsider the value of student-centred learning.
Regardless of constraints of curriculum and compliance, remaining focussed on the central concepts of adult learning and a student-centred approach provides those rich opportunities to deliver learning opportunities that are truly valued by students. Thank you to Pam Osmond for spending 5 minutes to describe student-centred learning and share the benefits of this approach.
ACAL recorded webinar – Reading with rhythm to read fluently
Reading with rhythm by Adam Nobilia.
In this 5 minute presentation Adam Nobilia shares a pre-reading strategy he has successfully used to teach reading fluency. As a musician (under the name Adam Blacksmith) and an experienced adult literacy teacher, Adam has combined his knowledge of music and literacy to teach students how to easily understand the purpose of punctuation when they read.
You can see Adam on the SBS documentary Lost for Words on SBS Demand.
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Literacy: ACAL recorded webinar – Whole language – What’s all the fuss about? By Pam Osmond
5 minutes on whole language – what’s all the fuss about?
Every now and then the reading wars break out and people new to the field of adult literacy get caught up in a debate about whole language versus phonics.
But does whole language necessarily exclude the teaching of phonics?
In this 5 minute presentation, Pam Osmond, who was working with the academics who brought the whole language approach to Australia in the 1970s, demystifies whole language and how adults read. Pam suggests that these days whole language is a term best avoided as there are so many misunderstandings, and different meanings and connotations. That doesn’t mean abandoning the approach, but rather thinking of it as ‘student-centred learning’.