Embedding Numeracy in Languages Programs: Some Theory & Lots of Practice

Within the Australian educational context, all teachers including Languages teachers must engage with numeracy content through the Numeracy General Capability (Australian Curriculum), a state-based equivalent such as Numeracy Foundational skill (Victorian Curriculum v2.0) and/or the AITSL professional standard 2.5 (Literacy and numeracy strategies). This workshop aims to familiarise teachers with the expected numeracy content and to provide an opportunity for them to identify topics and skills they may already be addressing in their Languages programs. 

We will be looking at how to align current practices with the numeracy curriculum expectations and also ways to add intellectual challenge to what might be considered important but mundane content. Significantly in this session, we will examine particular linguistic, cognitive and intercultural affordances offered by engaging with numeracy content plurilingually. 

The argument will be put forward that the 4Cs CLIL framework (Doyle et al, 2010) can be usefully deployed to plan and evaluate numeracy learning activities, though other evidence-informed practices are also referenced (e.g. HITS). This theoretical framing will not be the focus, rather it is the backdrop to a hands-on, practical session, where teachers will experience and reflect on a series of worthwhile numeracy-based learning activities such as games, inquiry tasks, puzzles and numeracy-related texts that they can use in their own classrooms.