Assignment - CCDPP

SUBJECT ASSIGNMENT:
CURRICULUM COURSE DESIGN PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICLES

Name and surnames:  Angela María Arroyave

Hernández
Login:          COFPMTFL1131170
Group: 2015-10          
Date:                                June 30th, 2017

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INDEX

INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………….4

COURSEBOOK TEACHING CONTEXT…………………………………………….5

TARGET GROUP TEACHING CONTEXT………………………………………….6

EVALUATING REPORT……………………………………………………………....7

ADAPTATION…………………………………………………………………………10

CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………………………….13

REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………….14

APPENDICES

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Assignment:

Study the materials from You! in the Assignment Materials section (at the
same place where you can find this paper), including the Introduction to the Teacher’s
Book, the contents pages, and the tenth unit of the Student’s Book. On the basis of this
material, prepare a report evaluating the usefulness of this course in a teaching context
that you are familiar with, taking into account the kind of audience it is targeted at.
What changes would be involved if you were to adopt it for your context, and how
would you recommend such changes were implemented? If you are not already
teaching, evaluate the materials according to your own criteria of what good classroom
materials should be like and/or according to the criteria the authors establish in their
introduction.

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INTRODUCTION

Effective teachers don’t cover the curriculum. they uncover it!

Anne parker

The class is beginning, today the plan points lesson number 5, what page were
we on last time? asks the teacher; it is still, common today, even at the universities. Of
course, it is not a sin to have a coursebook as our helper, but we cannot decouple the
program of our institution from the interests and needs of the students, after all,
Curriculum is the purpose of a journey, in words of Gurr: “Curriculum also needs to be
viewed as interactive process of designing, experiencing, evaluating and improving
what learners can do with what they know – this cannot be done by teachers alone, it is
(or should be) a true process of “co-creation”.

In this paper, the work will be, to evaluate the usefulness of the material entitled
YOU! in my teaching context, it is well known the course books are a significant part of
curriculum, when we select one of them, we must join the content and nature of
teaching and learning, bearing in mind the objectives of the schooling program. As
Thombury states; “Teaching does not exist in a vacuum “, everything is an integral part
of a lesson, to construct a lesson plan achieves a hard work, it is our task, to
understand all the factors involved in the teaching, and to routinely taking account that
the teacher’s knowledge of the entire class plays a vital role when the planning of class
is being done. Thereby the analysis of a coursebook will help us to improve the
structure of the classes and to make the necessary adaptations for our context, in this
point is crucial not to lose sight of contextual factors, and never forgetting the real
needs that the students have.

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TEACHING CONTEXT COURSEBOOK YOU!

CATEGORIES
Location Spain
Author Palencia, R & Driscoll, L
Year 1997
Mother tongue Spanish
Educational level (Secondary school) ESO
School grade First cycle
Age Kids between 12-14 years old
English level Two level
Teaching aids at Coursebook YOU
school -Student’s book
-Class cassettes
-Workbook
-Workbook cassette
-Teacher’s book (English)
-Teacher’s book (Spanish)
Teaching aids at Student’s book and Class cassettes
home Workbook and Workbook cassettes
Computer and Internet
Main Aim To enable students to develop their ability to communicate in English
Syllabus Notional and functional

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TEACHING CONTEXT TARGET

The importance of having a good well defined context for working with the
students support the process, and lead to create and improve the strategies, methods
and materials for learning and teaching, the table shows the main characteristics of the
target group.

CATEGORIES
Location Colombia, Pereira (Risaralda)
Mother tongue Spanish
School Centro Educativo Esperanza Galicia
Number of groups 14
Educational level (Elementary school)
School grade 2
Number students 22
Age Kids between 08-11
English level Total beginners
Teaching aids at 1 Computer in the classroom
school A system room (15 computers) It is authorized 2 hours per a week
Internet service (connectivity problems)
Teaching aids at No computers
home No internet
Some have access to a cellphone
Unit adapted Free time

EVALUATING REPORT COURSEBOOK YOU!

Throughout the appraisal about the coursebook, it may be assumed the book is
mainly person centred philosophy, since its syllabus is organized around a set of tasks,

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it is considered as a type B syllabus, which in turn implies a connection with

interpretation style teaching. At this point, it could be said learning centred approach is
really suitable for the target group, it is advantageous for the student, because the
activities were planned on their learning needs, and of course on their desires. Talking
about feasibility, it could be effectively adjusted and using most of the components
worked in the book, despite the course book is addressed to students from the first
year of secondary school, in the introduction is explained that it could be used by total
beginners, which is great for my students, who have not had the experience with the
English acquisition before. The target group do not have many resources and this is
not usual to manage a coursebook in the school, however it could be implemented; it
has been discussed a lot lately, the government policies are working about that, there
is a program called Colombia Billingüe (focused in English), notwithstanding the
foregoing, economic obstacles slowing the process, although the schools in my
country are more conscious about the importance of learning a second language since
the first grades, it is not easy to get material for each student and therefore, families
would have to pay the cost, or teachers must do some activities for acquiring the
material , it could be photocopied only black and white, and regarding the songs and
activities in the cassettes, which are could be replaced buying DVDs for recording.

Regarding the main aim of the coursebook YOU!, which is “to develop the
communicative competence, the ability to use language spontaneously and creatively
to achieve a communicative goal”, this is nothing less than the determination proposed
for the target group, just like the group of the students in Spain do not have immediate
need for English, neither they do not have chance to use English outside the
classroom, nor experience of communication in a foreign language, the population in
Colombia have exactly the same conditions, which is why the task-based approach
followed by You! is a beneficial tool for getting this objective, using task and activities
can help create a learning-centred environment; Taking advantage about it, the
activities provide by the coursebook YOU! can be used in the target group, since those
are creative and meaningful, it is strongly suggested by Willis and Wilis: “A task- based
methodology is compatible with the meaning-driven philosophy of their lexical syllabus,
but which adds an extra element of challenge for the teacher”. It is very suitable that
working throughout this kind of syllabus (type B) the students are forced to use more

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integrated language and they use their creativity and world-knowledge to complete
tasks, thus leading to greater learner autonomy.

At this point, scaffolding can be applied to help the students. The teacher would
provide enough information about the task to make the pupils understand what needs
to be accomplished, since young learners have a very limited worldview, they require
more support to complete the task, particularly, when doing speaking tasks, the teacher
must provide a good framework for a conversation to ensure that the students achieve
it. As teacher from second grade of elementary, it is essential bearing in mind that
there will be some quantity of L1 use in the classroom, of course they will need to
communicate with their classmates, so it is necessary to be patient with that, as well as
the conduct of the kids, doing tasks and projects with that kind of population requires
tolerance with the noise and discipline standards of this age. (Thomson, n.d)

The coursebook have a noticeable communicative approach, it is notable,

reading the main objectives, which are routed to develop skills such as: To understand
oral and written messages, to produce oral and written messages, to read and
understand English texts autonomously, those objectives can be adopted by the target
group, keeping in mind that needs of the learners had been already identified, the skill-
based objectives are quite appropriate for the group in context, which perfectly fit with
the grit that true beginners have.

Concerning to Syllabus, the coursebook YOU! uses a functional-notional

syllabus, this kind of syllabus is really helpful and works pretty well for second
language learners, As Wilkins (1976) cited by Thornbury states:
“The advantage of the notional syllabus is that it takes the communicative facts of
language, into account from the beginning without losing sight of grammatical and
situational factors. It is potentially superior to the grammatical syllabus because it will
produce a communicative competence and because its evident concern with the use of
language will sustain motivation of the learners. It is superior to the situational syllabus
because it can ensure that the most important grammatical forms are included and
because it can cover all kinds of language function, not only those that typically occur in
certain situations”.

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This kind of syllabus makes to You! be easily adaptable to more exactly fit
focus on oral production skills, based on the interplay of three establishing principles:
language tasks and topics, therefore the focused group can be benefited using this
syllabus, taking advantage of the way that the final tasks are sequenced according to
the processing demands made on students.

ADAPTATIONS

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The unit about Free time, is by all means an obligated topic, notably for kids,
which use to talk about this in their daily lives, talking about grammar, the use of
present simple: affirmative, negative questions, short answers; Like + ing Like + noun;
adverbs and expressions of frequency, are used on a daily basis, when expressing
ideas on certain circumstances, this point shows that it has been well-thought-out the
selection of the items in the unit and obviously in the coursebook, similarly the aspects
of range and coverage are well treated, with the result of the usefulness of items used
by the syllabus selected; concerning the structural and lexical aspects, for instance,
adverbs of frequency, are quite easy to establish by means of charts and time tables
etc. showing how often different people do certain things and then relating these to the
students themselves. It can be seen the syllabus of the coursebook considered, uses
easy terms and grammatical functions to learn, in view of the foregoing, the unit
structure of You! achieves a good grade in learnability, lastly something that is really
attractive, is the flexibility what offers the unit structure of You! it even suggests ways
for implementing the units, the route chosen this time could be:

In this unit
To make students conscious of the final task: “You are going to talk about what
you like doing in your free time”. Communicative tasks.
At the end of the unit you will be able to:
- Write a questionnaire and carry out a survey
- Record the survey results in a graph

Let’s Get Started

The lesson will be worked with warming up activities, introducing the new
vocabulary, the use of flash cards, students are encouraged to developed personal and
collaborative strategies for learning vocabulary and possibly some grammar functions.
(Appendix A, Appendix B)

Take a Look
You! provides in this section to the students with the necessary contextualized
language input. Students are exposed to language in use through oral or written text of
various types -letters, newspaper articles, dialogues, cartoons, stories. Task guide

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students to extract the key meaning in the texts, the target group the writings and
stories presented would be about free time activities and some sports, specially it could
be presented some common activities in the neighborhood and the country where they
live.

Over to you
The final task occurs in this stage, it provides students with tasks that will give
them direct experience of communicating in English in the classroom and will act as a
tool for the evaluation the teaching/learning process. It has a productive side and a
receptive said, those final tasks involve oral interaction, students will have to put both
their productive and receptive skills into practice simultaneously and interactively.

The tasks in this section are designed in such a way that students can do them
at their own level of linguistic competence. The great matter is the entirely class will be
benefited from the motivation generated by the feeling of achieving successful
communication.

Time out units

This section gives student an opportunity to see complete grammar, it is an
opportunity for the students work in their own, choosing which activities they wish to do,
correcting work with students in an earlier unit and doing the games as revision before
the tests. Incorporate homework, since that improves kids thinking and memory,
develops positive study skills and habits that will serve him or her throughout life,
regarding to this issue, particularly about Real -word task in English homework, Darn
(2007) utters:
“These involve seeing, hearing and putting language to use in realistic contexts.
Reading magazines, watching TV, going to the cinema and listening to songs are
obvious examples, offering the option of writing summaries and reviews as follow-up
activities. Technology facilitates chat and friendship networks, while even in
monolingual environments, walking down a shopping street noticing shop and brand
names will reveal a lot of language. As with extensive tasks, it is important for learners
to share their experiences, and perhaps to collect them in a formal or informal portfolio.
Real-world”.

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Thinking about that, it will be great to create a portfolio, taking advantage of

Internet at school, despite connectivity problems, using games online about free time
activities and sports.

Turning a coursebook activity into a task (adapted from Cameron 2001))

TASK Ask and answer questions about Free Time Activities
Preparation Core Activity Follow up
Language learning Activate previous Oral production of Written productions
goals learnt lexis. questions and sentences from task.
Practice expressing responses to express
wants to use: I like, I the kind of free time Written and/or oral
love, I hate. activities and sports productions of original
that learners spend sentences.
their time.
Activities Using flashcards of Whole class Speaking:
free time activities and introduction of the Teacher models
sports. graphic in the speaking and writing
photocopies student sentences.
Pair practice using and teacher modelling Learners write own
small flashcards questions and sentences with
throughout games. answers. teacher’s help when
Pair production of necessary.
language in a role play Role play or game
and toys using real using and building on
material. the language from the
core activity using
learners own words.

Demands on learners To recall on to re-learn To recall lexis and Speaking and some
lexis. sentence froms from writing in English.
To understand the preparation stage. Remembering words
concept of wants and Speaking in English. forms from core
language to express To understand the activity.
this. responses given by Finding words for own
partner. sentences.
Support for learning Flashcards Photocopies with Teacher modelling.
Stories activity graphic, Teacher provides new
Teacher modelling flashcards and toys word for learners own

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vocabulary and forms. items. sentences and write

Pair work. Preparation for stage words on board.
practice of forms. Teacher feedback
Teacher modelling. while writing.
Pair work. Pair work.

CONCLUSION

To select the best for having succeed classes requires a closely revision from
curriculum design, syllabuses, approaches, methods, after all it is the ground of our
teaching, and the responsibility with the students, there are so many resources to work,
that it is a challenge to determine how and when give response to the needs in the
classroom, all teachers are often asked to modify instruction to accommodate special
needs schoolchildren, it carries out a lot of work, that is why planning lessons must be
focused on the specific context, the knowing of the students, broadly speaking, it is

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crucial bearing in mind that every child or adult is dissimilar from others, therefore to
teach effectively is essential to know characteristics interests and necessities of the
learners, students who are interested in, connecting in and enjoy what they are
studying tend to make better progress and learn faster.

“Creating learning opportunities”, it sounds beautifully educative, it is what every

teacher wants to achieve, however it is a hard task; to elaborate this paper have been
really productive, curriculum and course design is an unavoidable subject for creating
our own adaptations, implementations and evalluations, especially the analysis of the
coursebook You! offers a learning process and a reflection about the planning lessons
and the real necessities of the children in class. During the development of these
studies, that has given renewed classroom projects syllabuses offers a lot of
advantages for the students, As Chard (2014) states: “the project approach builds on
natural curiosity, enabling children to interact, question, connect, problem-solve,
communicate, reflect, and more. This kind of authentic learning extends beyond the
classroom to each student’s home, community, nation, and the world. It essentially
makes learning the stuff of real life and children active participants in and shapers of
their worlds”.

REFERENCES

Ball, P. (n.d). Tasks and Projects Ball, P. (n.d). Spain: Fundación Universitaria
Iberoamericana FUNIBER.

Coyle, D. Hood, P. Marsh, D. (2010). CLIL (Content and Language Integrated

Learning). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Curriculum image (2017). Oak Grave Academy. [online image], Retrieved from:
http://www.oakgroveacademy.org/curricula

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Chard Syilvia, (2014). The project approach. Retrieved from:

http://projectapproach.org/about/project-approach/

Gurr, T. (2012). Althingslearning. Retrieved from:

https://allthingslearning.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/the-mother-of-all-
curriculum-myths/

Image curriculum retrieved from: http://www.oakgroveacademy.org/curricula

Thornbury & Ball, (n.d.). Curriculum and Course design- principles and practice. Spain:
Fundación Universitaria Iberoamericana FUNIBER.

Thomson, S. (n.d). Teaching Young Learners: Adapting the classroom for YELLs
University of Brimingham. Retrieged from:
http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/college-
artslaw/cels/essays/sylabusandmaterials/AWhiteCOURSEBOOKEVALUATION
syllmat.pdf

White, A. Evaluation of a ELT Coursebook Based on Criteria Designed by McDonough

and Shaw. Retrieved from: http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/college-
artslaw/cels/essays/sylabusandmaterials/AWhiteCOURSEBOOKEVALUATION
syllmat.pdf

APPENDICES
APPENDIX A

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Source: https://co.pinterest.com/pin/405816616402829079/

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APPENDIX B

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Source:
https://en.islcollective.com/resources/printables/worksheets_doc_docx/hobbies_and_fr
ee_time_activities/elementary-a1-worksheet/9656

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EXTENSION AUTHORIZED BY TEACHER VERONICA CABAÑAS

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