Developing Language Across the Curriculum in Premia Academy

Developing competence in the language of instruction is the goal of all teaching activity throughout the school day at the Premia Academy. We believe that literacy is the most fundamental competency necessary for our school’s success. The everyday social language, formal academic language, and subject matter vocabulary are all critical in the holistic development of the students’ at the Premia Academy.

Language development at all levels — informal, problem-solving, and academic needs to be cultivated through use and through purposeful, deliberate conversation between teacher and students and not through drills and decontextualized traditional rules. Reading and writing will be taught both as explicit curricula and integrated into each content area.
The ways of using language will prevail in teaching e.g. different ways of asking and answering questions, challenging claims, and using representations. These ways are unfamiliar to many students. The teachers also understand that the students’ own culturally based ways of talking can be effectively linked to the language used for academic disciplines by building learning contexts that draw out and build upon children’s language strengths.
The development of language and literacy as a goal at the Premia Academy also applies to the specialized language genres required for the study of science, mathematics, history, art, literature and social emotional learning. Effective mathematics learning for students is based on the ability to “speak mathematics,” which is the overall ability of the students to achieve across the curriculum and dependent on mastery of the language of instruction. Thus applies especially to the solving of word problems. Reading, writing, speaking, listening, and vocabulary is taught and learned in every subject matter. An Integrated curriculum provides an ideal venue for developing the language of the activity’s domain.

At The Premia Academy, teachers practice the following to make sure that there is appropriate development of the English Language:

Teachers listen to student talk about familiar topics such as home and community at every grade Level.

Our Teachers:

• Respond to students’ talk and questions, making impromptu changes during conversation that directly relate to students’ comments.
• Assist written and oral language development through modelling, eliciting, probing, restating, clarifying, questioning, praising, etc., in purposeful conversation and writing.
• Interact with students in ways that respect students’ preferences for speaking that may be different from the teacher’s, such as wait-time, eye contact and turn-taking
• Connect student’s language with literacy and content area knowledge through speaking, listening, reading and writing activities.
• Encourage students to use content vocabulary to express their understanding of the subject.
• Provide frequent opportunity for students to interact with each other and the teacher during all instructional activities.
• Encourage students’ use of first and second languages in instructional activities.