REFLECTION ON TEACHING MATERIALS

Teaching young children is complex work. Every day as teachers we face many challenges,
planning and providing an engaging curriculum, communicating with families and
coworkers, and responding to the growing pressures for outcomes, assessment, and
documentation to demonstrate children's learning.

These pressures compete for teachers' attention, making it difficult to keep the joy of
being with children at the heart of our work. We can turn to the many resources available
to learn about guidance techniques or use a published curriculum to help with planning.
But to truly share meaningful experiences with children, we must learn to become
reflective teachers.

Our work is an ongoing process of closely observing and studying the significance of
children's unfolding activities. Rather than just following preplanned lessons and
techniques, as reflective teachers we consider what we know about the children in their
group and about child development theory to better understand and delight in what
happens in the classroom. Reflection allows us to make effective, meaningful decisions
about how to respond to and plan for children.

McDonough and Shaw (1993) list elements of context related to learner characteristics,
and the language program.

Learner characteristics include the age, interests, level of proficiency in English, aptitude,
mother tongue, academic and educational level, attitudes to learning, motivation, reasons
for learning, preferred learning styles, and personality.

Educational settings content the role of English in the country, the role of English in the
school, the teachers management and administration resources available, the number of
pupils, time available for the program, physical environment, the sociocultural
environment, the type of tests used, procedures for monitoring and evaluating the
language program itself.

A significant feature of textbooks in the 21 st century is that they have often been based on
multisyllabi that mainly focus on communicative approach. Any teacher interested in
evaluating existing materials will want to be able to distinguish between the main types of
syllabus evident in language programs and published textbooks, and to assess their
suitability for curricular situations. A brief glossary of the main syllabus types found are:

Grammatical or structural, functional-notional that refers to what people do through

language, situational, topic-based, process syllabus that recognizes the learning of a
language as indivisible from its use, procedural syllabi and task-based syllabi that list the
types of tasks to be attempted in the classroom, and content-based.

Donald Schon (1983) was an educational theorist who observed that effective teachers
are able to reflect quickly and naturally in the moment as they work with children. He
called reflection-in-action and believed it was so important because each child and
teaching situation is unique. No one strategy or technique works for all teachers, with all
children, or in all circumstances. Instead, teaching is complicated work and requires
constant, sensitive, skillful, and reflective decision making.

The emphasis on higher standards in our profession carries the goal of improved quality.
Becoming reflective teachers can help us keep track of what we are doing and what each
child is learning and, in turn, help children meet the learning standards. We should help
us slow down and take time to notice and enjoy the amazing things children do each day
and the important ways we contribute to their learning.

Personally, I sometimes feel stress due to prescribed approaches to meet the

requirements, when I would like to advocate for the support and resources that I need to
become a more reflective teacher. On this hand, reflection can be seen as a responsibility
and a right of teachers, too. As rising learning standards bring changes, we deserve to be
seen as active collaborators. We have the right to time, support, and opportunities for
ongoing reflection, enjoyment, and dialogue in our work. We deserve this and so do the
children.

References:

1) Arzamendi, J. (2010). Materials and resource in EFL. IEXPRO Anthology.

2) Schon, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New
York: Basic Books.