Deepening My Understanding of Concept-Based Literacy

Madhavi K Sindhe, EAL teacher

It was an enriching professional learning experience that helped me to reflect on my own teaching practice and broadened my understanding of literacy instruction.

As an EAL teacher, explicitly teaching language skills across the four domains-listening, speaking, reading and writing is an essential part of my everyday practice. Being part of an IB school, inquiry is also at the heart of our teaching and learning. This course helped me connect these two approaches by showing how language and literacy can be taught through concepts that encourage deeper thinking, meaningful understanding and the transfer of learning beyond the classroom.

One of the most important things I learnt was the difference between knowledge and process. Knowledge is what students learn about, such as concepts and themes like courage, friendship or change. Process is how students think, using skills like predicting, questioning, inferring and making connections. This helped me understand that teaching literacy is not just about what students know, but also about how they develop their thinking and use these skills across different learning experiences. In my EAL classroom, we already practise many of these thinking skills during our guided reading and Book Club sessions, where students predict, infer, question and make connections with texts. In our language acquisition lessons, these understandings can also be extended into writing by explicitly teaching grammar concepts while encouraging students to think critically and apply their learning. This approach helps students use their language skills meaningfully across all four domains—listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Another key learning was understanding the importance of concepts, generalisations and guiding questions. I learnt that lessons should be planned around big ideas that students can connect to their own lives and transfer to new situations. Using a mix of factual, conceptual and debatable questions encourages students to think more deeply, discuss different perspectives and develop lasting understanding rather than simply recalling information.

The course also strengthened my understanding of how the four literacy strands—Understanding, Responding, Critiquing and Producing work together to help students become thoughtful communicators and lifelong learners. It reinforced the importance of teaching literacy skills with purpose through authentic learning experiences and meaningful inquiry, helping students understand why they are learning something, not just what they are learning. These understandings are transferable and remain with students as they continue their learning journey.

To successfully complete the course, I designed a Concept-Based Literacy Unit Plan and a Lesson Plan based on everything I had learnt. This practical task allowed me to apply the concepts, generalisations, guiding questions, literacy processes and assessments discussed throughout the course. It challenged me to think more intentionally about planning lessons that build conceptual understanding rather than focusing only on isolated skills.

Overall, this course has deepened and broadened my knowledge of concept-based literacy and strengthened my confidence in designing purposeful learning experiences. I look forward to applying these ideas in my EAL classroom as well as the reading and writing groups, so that students not only develop language skills but also become curious, reflective and lifelong learners who can transfer their understanding beyond the classroom.