Globalsport/Teacher Notes/Needs
Rugby World Cup: Learner Needs Teacher Notes
This analysis was undertaken to assist the writers of this unit of work with some understanding of the academic and social status of a year 5 student. The objective in understanding this analysis was so that the activities and content of this unit can be targeted to meet and develop the skills of this age group.
The analysis was undertaken in two separate parts:
- Students academic development
- Students social development
Academic development
(Reading and Writing Skills) – Year 5 student (age 8)
Entry level skills into a Year 5 class
Before entering into this year group students are expected to have developed the following reading and writing skills
Reading
Students will be reading at level 2 of the New Zealand Curriculum which means that they will be able to:
- Read, respond to and think critically about texts
- Locate and evaluate information and ideas with texts
Writing
Students will be writing at level 2 of the New Zealand Curriculum which means that they will be able to write in order to:
- Write text for an audience, for example, story telling, or explaining
- Write text that contains information
- Write text using simple sentence structure
Suggested activities
- Provide material a student would enjoy reading and find informative
- Use maps to identify some countries, states, and capitals
- Use glossaries to identify and record knowledge about new words
Developing skills
Students in a year 5/6 class will be developing reading and writing skills throughout this unit so at the end of this year they will be reading and writing at level 3 of the New Zealand Curriculum.
Reading
A student in this age group should demonstrate the following reading skills:
- Find information within a text
- Evaluate and integrate read information
- Generate questions from read material
- Increase in accuracy and speed through to the end of Year 6
Writing
Students will be writing at level 3 of the New Zealand Curriculum which means that they will be able to write in order to:
- Communicate an experience
- Communicate using their own ideas
- Communicate factual information
Suggested activities
- Provide reading material that extends into non-fiction material
- Ask students to think critically about information
- Give students opportunities to practice their writing skills on a daily basis
- Opportunities to develop research techniques
- Allow access to ICT if possible
Social development
Well known for his work on psychosocial development, Erikson, E.(1975), defined the development of this age group as follows: Children begin to move from individual work and play to adopting the rules and more formal structure of team work, both in sport and in the classroom. The need for self-discipline grows as more academic demands are made on their cognitive skills. They develop the ability to ‘think abstractly and conceptualize, creating logical structures that explain his or her physical experiences’ Piaget, J.(n.d). Because of their growing self awareness and perception of the world outside of their 'self', this is an ideal time to begin teaching this age group about racism and cultural diversity as they begin to form opinions and their natural curiosity creates an awareness of physical differences of people around them.
Suggested activities
- Contextualise the content to engage the student through their self-motivation
- Encourage students to work as a group to develop awareness of team work
- Explore the cultures and customs of different countries
- Provide opportunities for reflection
Conclusion
In designing this program we have kept to the following considerations: this age group are still dependent workers who are developing independent skills; they are beginning to research and develop critical thinking skills and are learning to summarise information and make inferences; they are self-motivated in their learning and are beginning to take an interest in others around them.
Our activities have been structured around these attributes of this age group.
References
- Student academic standards: Retreived 25th August, 2010 from http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/National-Standards/Reading-and-writing-standards/The-standards/
- Student academic standards: Retrieved 25th August, 2010 from http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/News/Literacy-learning-progressions.
- Eriksen, E.(1975). Retreived 10th September, 2010 from http://web.cortland.edu/andersmd/ERIK/bio.HTML
- Piaget, J. (n.d.). Retreived 10th September, 2010 from: http://www.learning-theories.com/piagets-stage-theory-of-cognitive-development.html