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Check out our improvement!

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Challenge 7 -             N e w    V e r s i o n 

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Challenge 7 -             N e w    V e r s i o n 

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Thank u for visiting us and sharing your opinions during the semester :)

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Thank u for visiting us and sharing your opinions during the semester :)

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Task 1

Does this task meet the design criteria for "good" communicative tasks?

In our opinion, this task does not meet the criteria for a  “good communicative task” at all, since it mainly focuses on grammar features without giving space for real-world communication. Thus, the answers are guided and not spontaneous, unlike in a communicative task.

Furthermore, regarding group work interaction, it can be said that it is completely absent in the task, since the only part in which the students can interact with the rest of their classmates is in activity D “Share your sentences with the class. Is everyone in agreement?” ; however, the second part “Is everyone in agreement?” is a yes or no question, in which there is not much space for discussion. Besides, it is too subjective too agree or disagree with the likes and dislikes of others.

Do you think this task would work well in a beginning language class?

We believe that this task can be suitable for a beginner level, since it includes useful vocabulary and it provides students with examples of how to perform the different sections that we can find in this task. But at the same time, we believe that this might be detrimental for the students since all they have to do is repeat the chunks of information that are being presented in the examples, leaving little room for them to create and discover new ways to express their thoughts.

In addition, by using a grammar focus the students can get bored and it is more complicated for them to achieve a long-term learning, since the only cognitive level that they are employing is memory, and therefore, is going to be harder for the students to apply this knowledge in the future, or in another context.

Could this task be improved? How?

First, by giving the students the option to write and express their thoughts in a different way from the one presented in the task. We believe that is quite important that students can find their own voice and style when they have to compose any piece of writing.

Secondly, by changing the instructions in section D. We believe that making students share their answer with the whole class can be too overwhelming for them, and considering the time of the lesson it would be impossible that everyone gets the chance to speak and tell his/her answer.  We consider that a more plausible option is that students work in groups so that they can actually share their responses with their classmates,which will make more possible that the students comment and discuss about each other’s answers.

Task 2

Does this task meet the design criteria for "good" communicative tasks?

We believe that this task does not meet the criteria to be considered a good communicative task, since it does not align with the guidelines to how implement one. For example, not all the participants are equally involved in this activity since one student gives the description of his portrait and the other only has to draw according to what his/her partner says, limiting the interaction between the students. Similarly, just by reading the instructions in the section B, we consider that there is not an explicit effort to mix the groups that are working since the task just says “work with a partner.”

All in all, the task doesn’t seem to be communicative enough since doesn’t promote a constant interaction among students or teaches group interaction skills.

Do you think this task would work well in a beginning language class?

In our opinion, this task would work well at a beginner level since it is not too cognitively demanding according to the levels of hierarchy of Bloom’s taxonomy (understand). In addition, this task requires students to draw a face by applying the concepts that they are learning (adjectives), which can very useful for students who are more visual and learn better by relating concepts with drawings. In this sense, we believe that the intentions of the task are good; however, there are elements that need to be improved, such as the instructions of the task, which are not very clear for a beginner level.

For instance, the instruction given in section “A” where it says “Write 5 or 6 good sentences” it doesn’t specify what can be considered as a “good sentence” and as consequence, it can prompt a feeling of anxiety in our students since they don’t know whether their sentences are appropriate or not for the exercise. Additionally, we believe that the sentence  “Pay attention to adjective agreement”  can be too complex for a children in a basic level, especially if  the teacher does not explain it.

Could this task be improved? How?

This task could be improved by implementing a game called “ Guess Who”, where students will have to draw a famous person and their partners will have to make questions in order to find out who is he or she. This game can be more engaging for students since their interests are being included, and also their knowledge will be applied through a more holistic approach, where students will be able to use all the knowledge that they have available, and not just one concept at the time.

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By doing this challenge we realized how hard can be sometimes to find authentic material that can be used considering the different aspects asked by the Ministerio de Educación. We went through at least 6 different samples of texts before finding one that aligned with the requirements from Bases Curriculares and also the English level of the students, which varies from context to context.

We also discussed the importance of how to express an opinion in a respectful way, which turns vital when controversial topics, such as same-sex marriage are being covered in class. We want to encourage our students to develop a critical perspective of the different affairs that occur in our society, but we also think that is important to teach them on how to develop their ideas and opinions in a way that doesn’t denigrate the other person, regardless of how different your opinion is from him/her.

During this challenge, we remembered that planning a lesson plan is not that simple since you have to manage to include many different aspects, such as the time available for the activities we want to cover in a session, the different kinds of students that we have in our classroom, the level of proficiency of the students, the complexity of the text, among others.

We include this reading activity because it met the learning outcomes required by the bases curriculares; however, LGBT topics were not considered in the topics of the students' book nor the Programa de Estudio. We choose this reading because we believe that LGBT topics are taboo in the classroom, and it is important that students are aware that there are different realities in our society, and that this types of issues are happening even in their own country.

Regarding the principles of UDL, we try to keep them in mind at every stage of the lesson plan. In the pre-reading stage, we try to include the 1st principle "multiple means of representation" in the fact that they had to work in pairs or in groups, as well as individually in the different activities. In the post-reading stage, we provided the students with the possibility of expressing their understanding of the topic — 2nd principle — through a debate or a writing task, in which the students were free to choose what assessment was more suitable for them. Finally, in terms of the third principle "multiple means of engagement," we tried to include strategies so as for them to be able to express their opinions without being disrespectful to another person, thus through this type of strategies we are giving them the tools for being more autonomous learners.

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Learning outcome:

“Leer y demostrar comprensión de ideas principales e información relevante en textos informativos, descriptivos y narrativos auténticos, simples y de variada extensión” (Bases Curriculares, 2009)

The students will be able to:

To recognize vocabulary related to rights and duties of youth in modern society.

To Infer main and specific information of a piece of news related to a current affair in Chile.

To express their opinions by composing a piece of writing or debating a posture in favor or against the topic.

Lesson sequence:

T asks Ss to look at the images in the pre-reading activity and work in pairs to answer the questions related to them. T monitors the discussion of students by moving throughout the classroom.(5 minutes)

T reads the concepts presented in the pre-reading activity and asks Ss to repeat them so they can practice their pronunciation.  T models an exercise of the matching activity. (5 minutes)

T checks the answer out loud.

T presents the topic of the class (“Same-sex marriage in Chile”) and the learning objects of the session.

T gives Ss 15 minutes to read the piece of news and work on the while-reading activities.

T explains that the post reading activities are more demanding and require more time than the one available in class, so depending on which one they choose, they will have to work individually or in groups outside the classroom hours.

T explains each activity from the post-reading section and, considering the controversial nature of this topic, presents different tips on how to give your opinion without being disrespectful to the other person. (5 minutes)

T gives the last 15 minutes of the session to students to work on the post-reading activity.

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Reading

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/chile-s-president-send-gay-marriage-bill-congress-2017-n652666

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1.Learning outcome:
The students will be able to predict and summarize Enzo Ferrari’s biography by using the past simple tense.

2. We have decided to choose the two following activities as post reading:
1) “Enzo Ferrari discussion”:
STUDENT A’s QUESTIONS (Do not show these to student B)
1.What do you know about Enzo Ferrari?
2.Would you like to have met Enzo Ferrari?
3.What would you like to know about Enzo Ferrari and why?

STUDENT B’s QUESTIONS (Do not show these to student A)
1.What did you learn from this text about Enzo Ferrari?
2.What questions would you like to have asked Enzo Ferrari?
3.What would his answers have been to those questions?

Reasons: This activity allows students to work collaboratively by answering questions related to Enzo Ferrari. Additionally, students are practicing their speaking skills, ability to summarise information and give their own opinion about this famous character, whether it’s positive or negative.

2) Writing:
"Write about Enzo Ferrari for 10 minutes. Show your partner your paper. Correct each other’s work"

Reasons: A good post-reading activity is able to integrate other skills in order to take the most out of the material (text). In this way, with this activity students will be able to practice writing, and also they will be able to receive peer feedback from their classmates, which can be very beneficial for their learning, since they will be noticing errors that they may also have committed but did not notice before.

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Click below to see our  challenge! :o

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Which principles did you use? why?

We managed to include the three principles of the UDL in our pre-reading task.
The first principle "Multiple means of representations" can be represented in the video, which aims at introducing lesson 3 "Urban Legends" through an audio-visual presentation of the topic.
The second principle "multiple means of expression" is included in the task, in exercise 3, where students are provided with a variety of options through which they will have to present the myth that they have chosen to the rest of the class.
The third principle "multiple means of engagement" can be seen in the fact that students can present a topic which they are familiar with.

We also decided to follow some of the strategies that were presented in class, such as provide flexible models of skilled performance, use of multiple media, offer choices of content and tools and offer adjustable levels of challege. Considering that the activity belongs to a senior year textbook, we believed that the activities had to be meaningful for our students, and what better way to do it than by teaching them about their own Chilean culture.

What did you learn adapting the exercise?

At first, adapting exercises in order for them to meet UDL requirements is not that easy, since we are used to working with a more static modality in the classroom regarding activities; however, while we were thinking about how to adapt this task, our ideas flow and it was not as hard as we expected. Nevertheless, since the UDL principles are so important in our context due to "Decreto 83" is very important that in the future we continue adapting material following these 3 principles in order for us to get used to working in this manner.

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Allison's Reflection:
In general terms, we decided to add, change, and adapt the post reading task of Unit 3 in order met the student’s context, interests, and learning outcomes. In the original version, thepost reading task consisted of a set of questions with the aim of making students use the information from the text; however, we considered that this set of questions was not enough for the students.

At the beginning of the post-reading task, we added an activity, in which the students had to match the images with its correspondent type of advertising. When we analyzed the original task, we realized that the images were not very representative of the topic, and therefore, did not allow students to check their previous knowledge, or did it more difficult for them to relate the new content with what they already know.

In the case of the second activity, we decided to maintain the set of questions of the original version; however, we made some changes, in order to adapt it to their age, and context.

Finally, we added a new activity in order to wrap up the task and generate discussion among the students. In this way, students have to look at a set of adds that purposely show stereotypical representations of women with the aim of raising students awareness of how these kinds of adds represent women in a shallow and offensive way, using them as objects in order to sell products.

In terms of strategies, questions were used in order to incentivize the discussion among students. Besides, the task provided different instances in which students are able to work individually and in pairs. We believe that these strategies are going to be the most useful in the long-term since we will be considering all the students in the classroom.

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Reflection
María Fernanda's:
For this challenge, we decided to adapt and potentiate a section of the book where, we believed, there were different issues to tackle related to advertisement.

Personally, I believe that considering the age (17-19) and academic level of the students (senior year) there are certain topics, such as discrimination, sexism, homophobia or racism, that should be covered in any class to a) foster student's awareness on how advertisement can perpetuate certain ideologies and b) promote critical thinking. This is why we decided to adapt the original version of the book by expanding the post-reading section related to advertisement in order to make room for different topics related to this issue. In order to contextualize the material, I thought it would be important to add Chilean examples of how ads had sometimes sent wrong messages to the audience.

I immediately recall controversial propaganda from companies such as WOM or Old Spice, where women were extremely sexualized and seen as an object or inferior to men.

Considering that the most important factor to adapt material are students, as teachers we can not turn a blind eye on what social input our students are receiving from the media and how this can affect their development as members of this society.

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                                                                CHALLENGES

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                                                                CHALLENGES

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Hello E-learning buddies! Down below you can find our different challenges! So please, feel free to leave  your comments and enjoy our different sections : )

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"What have you learnt from your classmates' portfolios?
Firstly, it is important to say that  all our classmates were very creative and everyone had a unique way to develop their ideas and present them to us. As we discuss in classes, each Padlet can describe perfectly who did it, and its creators' personality, which allows to know a little bit more about them and who they are.  Secondly, we could also learn how to use Weebly, which was a challenge for us, but some of our classmates managed to make us see that using Weebly is not as complicated as we thought.

What are some things your classmates have done that help you learn?
The videos were a great help for our understanding of the different chapters since they were very concise and didactic, regarding the different topics.
Moreover, some of our classmates included a very useful list of Do's and Dont's, in which they described what features should be present in our national textbooks. This list is very simple and easy to follow that's why is a great way to learn!.

To what extent has the portfolio showase helped you reflect on your own learning about ELT materials development?

While we were doing our presentation, we took a moment to think about the process that we had  gone through during this year with this course and what we lived in our practicum. We realize that it's shocking how we usually take for granted  certain details or characteristics of coursebooks that are actually very stereotypical when showing the different cultures. It is very important that we start reflecting on this issue and also  that we raise awareness on our own students, for them to be capable to distinguish these features.
In addition, we also realized that we are learning more with this new format than with the "traditional method", of reading and take notes.

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Hello buddies!
In case you need it, here you can find the link to have direct access to the Chilean National English Curriculum from Freshman to Senior year.

http://www.curriculumenlineamineduc.cl/605/w3-propertyvalue-77540.html

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We are two EFL training teachers who will be uploading our experiences and knowledge about materials development with you every week! So keep up with us!

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#Challenge 4                                                           Our first E-Learning video!

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#Challenge 4                                                           Our first E-Learning video!

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Hello everyone! welcome to our first E-Learning video, feel free to share your comments and opinions with us

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Created using PowToon -- Free sign up at http://www.powtoon.com/youtube/ -- Create animated videos and animated presentations for free. PowToon is a free tool that allows you to develop cool animated clips and animated presentations for your website, office meeting, sales pitch, nonprofit fundraiser, product launch, video resume, or anything else you could use an animated explainer video.

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#Challenge 3                                                              Hello everyone!

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#Challenge 3                                                              Hello everyone!

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The topic of this week is about how to select the most appropriate material for your lesson. Here you will find a very useful framework to solve that important issue.
Click below!

Allison Ramírez

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#Challenge 2                                                     Why is materials development relevant for English teachers in Chile? 

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#Challenge 2                                                     Why is materials development relevant for English teachers in Chile? 

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Click here to find out!
Kind regards,
Allison Ramirez

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Why is materials development relevant for English teachers in Chile

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This is a learning website created with the purpose of sharing our ideas and learning processes throughout the semester.
We will be more than happy to hear your opinions so please feel free to be part of this website by commenting or reflecting with us.

Kind Regards,

Allison & María Fernanda