English Curriculum: Text Production

This course will engage preservice teachers with theoretical perspectives and approaches for teaching and learning of writing and multimodal text production. Preservice teachers will develop knowledge of text production from a semiotic perspective, inclusive of linguistic and non-linguistic modalities and a range of production technologies. Preservice teachers will also focus on producing and interpreting texts in a range of genres, including narrative, informational and persuasive genres, using a variety of modes. Preservice teachers will learn about and apply instructional practices for teaching writing and multi-modal text production in diverse classroom contexts, building on knowledge of literacy, language and literature gained in previous English courses. This will include knowledge about the phonological, syntactic, semantic and visual resources that children use in the process of composing texts. They will learn how teachers use quality literature and writing processes to support learning about literary and imaginative writing. They will examine how educators, working within current English curriculum frameworks employ specific strategies to teach and assess writing and text production in educational contexts from early childhood through the primary years.