CHCLLN001: Marla, a grade 3 student at a small rural school, has been described as a ‘low achiever’ amongst staff: Respond to client language, literacy and numeracy needs Assignment, Australia

The Project

Choose case study A or B and answer the questions 

a. Marla, a grade 3 student at a small rural school, has been described as a ‘low achiever’ amongst staff. She particularly struggles with reading and spelling, often appearing disinterested and preferring not to try in these activities in class. Maria’s parents are hardworking orchard hands and come from Bulgaria originally. During recess and lunchtimes, Maria is often preoccupied with collecting bugs and foraging around the heavily treed areas. She does communicate with and enjoy the company of two other classroom students.

Your supervising teacher has enlisted your help as the classroom education support to work with Maria to improve her skills in reading and spelling.

b. Kenny, a grade 4 student, has difficulty grasping basic numerical concepts. The supervising teacher has held discussion with his mother who complains that he can’t read the time or calculate money for even small purchases. Kenny’s father is a practicing accountant and there seems to be a bit of disappointment expressed about Kenny’s numerical ability. The teacher recognizes his confusion with the place value system and decimals, as well as analogue time and assures the parents that suitable support measures will be taken. Some classroom observations of Kenny have shown he is shy, lacking confidence and unwilling to take risks.

• He does have a level of enthusiasm with the outside gardening activities held every Friday afternoon at school.
• Your supervising teacher has enlisted your help as the classroom education support to work with Kenny to improve his skills in calculating time and money.

Questions and tasks

Your first course of action is to conduct an informal interview with the student to gather information about their: strengths, perceived weaknesses, interests, preferred style of learning and personal motivating factors.

As part of this process, identify strategies for indicating and evaluating the skill gaps of the learner.

This session should also be shaped to assist you to develop a rapport with the student, essential for any further education support arrangements.

1. Devise a list of small activities and questions you could use to complete this informal interview task and provide a sequenced plan to go through this.
2. Develop a toolbox of ideas for activities you could use to encourage the student’s interest, application and achieve outcomes of improvement in reading and spelling skills.
3. Provide 2 specific examples of activities you would undertake with the student.
4. Source two age, level and interest appropriate children’s literature (books) that would be a useful tool in aiding the improvement of the student’s LLN skills.
5. List the Title, Author. Publisher, date of first publication, genre ie. fiction, nonfiction, magazine, poem etc. and a short blog (description) to explain their relevance as a selection.
6. How would you monitor the performance outcomes over a semester or 12 week period.
7. Identify effective ways for providing feedback to the classroom teacher, the student and their parents