Podcast Transcript Ep 58-59: Effective Literacy Teaching in High Schools

About this teaching resource

In this podcast transcript of Episodes 58 and 59, we are joined by Misty Adoniou, Adjunct Associate Professor at University of Canberra and Principal Fellow, Melbourne Graduate School of Education and a leader in literacy research and practice.

Addressing the varied literacy levels in high school is a big challenge for teachers, and helping students with low literacy can be difficult. 

Joining us to discuss this is literacy expert Misty Adoniou.

The conversation covers:

• Misty's background and current work in high schools, greatly enjoying helping teachers apply research directly in their classroom, and specifically about the teaching of Writing, Spelling, Grammar and English as an Additional Language.
• How to shift teachers' learning and students' outcomes, through apprenticing teachers into teaching literacy strategies in their specific discipline: Science, Mathematics, History etc
• How teaching vocabulary in a discipline is a very useful starting point. Misty explains that 80% of words students come across in high school are multi-morphemic words that they haven't encountered before
• How the high school timetable, with students encountering 5-6 disciplines in one day, can be looked at in exciting and positive ways, and explained as such to students
• The two major concerns of high school teachers: students lacking skills in writing, and little motivation to write, and how this can be unpacked and addressed
• How teachers can teach writing skills more effectively – like a scientist, a mathematician, historian etc., and the example of a lab report in Science.
• How the teaching of skills and strategies can occur in each lesson for only about 10 minutes, based on excellent models of writing in that discipline. And how passion for your discipline is key to teaching it.

Part two of the conversation covers:

• How to help high school students who are losing the motivation to write
• Why the purpose of the writing has greater importance than structure
• How to use beautiful children's literature for models of writing
• Why more funds should go into teachers' professional development instead of programs
• How to support and provide scaffolds for struggling students
• How Misty develops a professional learning plan for a school

And many more practical tips and insights!

• Listen in to Ep 58 here.
• Listen in to Ep 59 here.