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My personal literacy and numeracy reflection

Published on: May 28, 2024

– Kenni Bawden

My personal reflections on literacy and numeracy, having completed the Literacy and Numeracy Across the Curriculum course at RMIT.

Literacy

Having completed my LANTITE (Literacy and Numeracy for Initial Teacher Education) test before learning about the pedagogy of literacy and numeracy, I understood that all of my skills were well above standard.

Literacy LANTITE results: Band 3 Reading, above Band 3 Technical writing skills
My Literacy results in the LANTITE test.
(Band 3: Clearly above the standard; Band 2: At and above the standard; Band 1: Below the standard)

However, I learned that among other models for understanding literacy, it can be thought of as more than a mere set of operational skills. There are cultural and critical aspects of literacy that are also important to recognise and teach.

I have many cross-cultural friends and relationships, this has given me lots of practise in recognising and explaining mainstream Australian culture to people with English as an Additional Language. I found that this conversations provide a useful template for engaging with EAL students.

Due to my background in politics and unions, I am personally very interested in critical analysis and understanding power relations. While on placement, I observed that these are skills and viewpoints I have built over time and that we cannot assume that students should “just know” how to think in this manner. For example, we have to explicitly teach students the reasons that discrimination is hurtful to individuals and damaging to society.

Numeracy

Having studied STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) degrees and worked in analytical fields, I have many techniques and real world examples to pull from to help in my numeracy teaching. For example, teaching algebra using the familiar real world example of cereal-box packaging. Tasks like these provide a relatable, real life example for all students and ample oppurtunity for differentiating with practical depth and complexity.

Numeracy LANTITE results: Band 3 Number and Algebra, above Band 3 Measurement and Geometry, Band 3 Statistics and Probability, above Band 3 for Calculator Available questions and Band 3 for calculator not Available questions
My Numeracy results in the LANTITE test.
(Band 3: Clearly above the standard; Band 2: At and above the standard; Band 1: Below the standard)

I have learned that teachers can be flexible and provide aides or alternative approaches that might not be appropriate for all students. For example, some students have trouble calculating multiples (useful for working with fractions in year 7) so we might allow them to use a calculator to multiply 3 by 3 by 3 by 3 to find out if 27 is a multiple of 3. Providing these scaffolds ensures that all students have the oppurtunity to learn numeracy skills not by equivalent processes, but in an equitable manner.