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This is a presentation to convince the school administration of using the textbook English 8 Básico (from MINEDUC) instead of English Zone 4 (Oxford University Press).

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Recently, we have been presented with a sample of the textbook English Zone 4, published by Oxford University Press. If we buy the textbooks for both eigth grade classes, that is,  around 70 textbooks, the bookstore offers us a 50% discount.
Up until now, we have only received two copies of the MINEDUC textbook, and we're uncertain of how long we will have to wait for the rest.

The school's income has increased a little so the administration can afford the books--it would be certainly good for all kids to have a book of their own. But that would also result in lower funds for printouts, stationary, craft supplies, diplomas, and whatever paraphernalia we want to use in our lessons.

Even though it is an interesting proposal, I think we should make do with the books we have. The MINEDUC textbook includes more learning strategies and has a greater communicative focus than English Zone 4. If there is something useful from any book, we can give it to students (in nice full-color materials, of course).

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Recurring characters

English 8 Básico encourages students to familiarize with the book. It includes a guide at the beginning in which it explains the organization of the content, promotes extra practice, and, most importantly, it introduces us to the book's characters.

They appear throughout the book offering help on reading/listening and learning strategies as well as clarification of language components.
They are helpful for students, and they can lead to reflection on their own learning strategies.

Since we do not have the book yet, we can scan and print the pop-ups in a bigger size. They can be located at different parts of the classroom according to the type of help they bring. You can also have some with the dialogue-bubbles cut out for students to share their own strategies.

Students should agree with the teacher on the classification of the strategies, and they could be useful for keeping the class in movement and to help students struggling with task completion.

For example, you can give the whole class 1 minute before/in the middle of an activity to stand up and look at the hints, and in other activities they can request permission to consult the messages.

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This book includes activities to practice all skills. Unfortunately, not all of these activities are originally designed to be communicative, however, we can take advantage of having limited copies to include communication in our lessons. At the end of this presentation, I will show you an example of that.

Also,  the language studied increases in complexity gradually, and, as the book progresses, there are numerous revisions of previous content.

Values and attitudes are considered as objectives, so the teacher can include them into their lessons.

The content studied connects with other subjects. That way, the input in the second language has less knowledge gaps to fill, and the the contents are not learned in isolation.

This book also emphasizes on the promotion of extensive reading and listening, and could be useful to encourage students to share their own sources of additional input.

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This book also offers questions that can bring reflection and discussion to our lessons. In these activities, students can be guided to a discussion on gender inequality accross career fields, the students' multiple intelligences, and unhealthy eating habits, for example.

Some of these questions are designed to be answered individually, but we can use them as topics for conversation to warm up before the reading/listening task. That way, we can also clarify possible misunderstandings that could derive from lack of previous knowledge.

These questions allow students to express their own opinion on controversial topics, and give the teachers an insight into their individual interests and backgrounds which should later be considered in the design of lessons, activities and assessment instruments. (MINEDUC, p. 18)

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Since the textbook has been specifically designed to teach English in Chile, it includes cultural aspects unique to our context. These aspects make students value their local culture, attractions and traditions, and makes material relatable to the students' backgrounds.

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There are many questions in which the previous knowledge and opinions of the students are addressed. They can be used to guide discussions and gather information about the students that will be helpful for the planification and development of following lessons.

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English 8 Básico also proposes activities in which students use non-linear language to organize their knowledge through mind maps/comparative tables and gives them instances to identify words in English in puzzles.

Mind map activities can be adapted and turned into communicative tasks by making students share their work with the rest of the class.

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This book organizes the contents into 4 modules with 2 units/each. Each module covers several topics that are related (to greater or lesser degree) with one another.

Each session of project work is designed to last from 15 to 45 minutes and includes a final instance of teamwork evaluation. If it is possible and students agree to, (some of) these projects can be adapted to become a sumative evaluation of process.

Students can also check their development of  collaborative work skills by keeping record of teamwork evaluations and conducting self and peer assessment periodically.

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None of the aspects mentioned above are recurrent or present in this textbook. This book does not account for learner differences nor does it promote active communication in the classroom. However, it has a great focus on practice of the same language components (the same language structures and similar vocabulary is covered in English 8 Básico) and the development of receptive skills.

Therefore, I think that we can use this book as a source for extra input with the comics at the end of each unit. They review the language and diverge from the topic being covered, so students can refresh from being exposed to a single theme.

Also, this book has many colorful illustrations that you can use in creating handouts or presentations for your students.

Finally, this book has a strong focus on language practice. They can be offered to students for differentiation. Students can complete them for extra points of commitment in the case you use process evaluations.

You can print out individual exercises in small pieces of paper and give them to students who finish early and want to keep working.

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Adapting an activity from English 8 Básico

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Adapting an activity from English 8 Básico

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Apart from adding clues and reformulating the activities from the textbook, we also need to discard the contents from the book that won't be suitable for our class(es). Many topics from textbooks, in general, fail to arouse any interest some groups regardless of their presentation.

For example, the first lesson from Unit 4 deals with the topic of Multiple Intelligences.

This topic can transform a regular lesson into a great instance to promote metacognition. It is extremely important for students to be aware of their multiple intelligences; it helps them understand more about their learning processes and recognize their strengths and skills that need improvement.

However, the textbook focuses mainly on reading comprehension and does not integrate all skills communicatively. Also, although it practices the recognition of text types, it presents one (fact file) that may not arouse students' attention, nor be meaningful for students.

In order to focus attention on metacognition and make students use the language communicatively, we can use only the activities highlighted and discard the rest.

This is only an example of how to use the textbook as a guide for adapting material. The amount of adaptation needed for the activities you want to use depends on the interests of your students, their levels of proficiency, the classroom environment and, obviously, your time availability, among other things. Also, there can always be new changes in your adaptations, most of your success in implementing activities depends on trial and error.

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I identified that the only instance of interaction from the original activity was the first question of the Pre-Reading section, and it depended on the implementation of a previous lesson.

Most of the times we will skip lessons from the textbook, and even if we don't, we won't always have enough time to complete all tasks.

For that reason, I decided to arrange students into 9 groups. In large classes of 40~45 students, groups should have 4-5 members.
Students will carry out a collaborative task, both with their group and the whole class, and also have instances of individual work.

The textbook reduced the types of intelligence to 7, probably due to the cognitive effort it would take to learn more by working individually.

Instead of using that text, then, I adapted the information from this website. It has an infographic that syntesizes the content from the longer descriptions, and has easy-to-remember synonyms for each type of intelligence (nature smart, sound smart, number smart, digital smart, etc.) that can be used to wrap up and review the activity.

So, I replaced the original explanations of multiple intelligences from the textbook for a set of cards with more detailed descriptions and the infographic with the names missing.

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The adapted activity could be something like this:

1. First you get your students form 9 groups.

2. Then, give them a set of cards with the definitions and the infograph.

You can adapt the length and difficulty of the text according to their levels of proficiency, and direct focus to language if necessary.

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3. Later, you assign each group one type of intelligence. They will have to sinthesize its definition and identify 3 examples of professions/hobbies/occupations related to it.

In this part, you can give a longer description to some or all of the groups (you know your students.)

4. Then they will share that to the rest of the class. Depending on your time/space/materials resources, you can:

Have students create small posters and hang them on the classroom/school yard. One or two of them will stay at their workstations while the others explore, then rotate.

Have students present the description and their examples in front of the classroom or from their workspace. Encourage them to enact if they want.

5. Then you can use some of these questions to lead a discussion or you can have students answer from their seats.

6. Finally, identify the types of intelligence present in the classroom by making students raise their hands. Draw a graphic on the board while asking them, then take a picture to save that information.

This activity also helps gather information on the interests and aspirations of your students, being useful for planning future lessons.

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All in all, I think that we should not spend funds on buying a textbook for each student. When we receive the textbooks from MINEDUC, they will have a book of their own, but meanwhile we can make do with what we have, and even have more personalised materials than if we used the books without adaptations.

The most important thing is that we use the activities from the textbooks as references for developing our lessons, not as fixed guidelines that diminish our roles of educators to that of implementators.

If we follow a textbook blindly, we cannot address all the needs of our students; for that reason, we need to use the textbooks as sources of topics of discussion, language practice and  development of strategies instead of as course plans.

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Gustavo Valdivia: 50%
Ignacio Vásquez: 50%