Recommendations and Curricular Foundations of PRONI and the Use of Project Based

Learning

• One of the recommendations is to ensure that when teachers cover PRONI topics, they relate these
as much as possible to the themes presented in Project Based classes with scientific content. For
example, if the Science Text talks about Living Things and the PRONI chapter talks about pets, then
the teacher should ask questions on how these two topics are related.

• It is also important that teachers continuously evaluate how effective their teaching strategies are.
They should implement fun ways in which to apply formative student assessments – these can include
that students describe their work on projects, use rubrics to evaluate their own participation during
experiments in English, or that students as teams answer quizzes and/or write up a short essay.
Formative assessments must be adapted to students age, grade level and level of English fluency. They
should be easy for teachers to apply and not require substantial additional time for teachers to grade.
Remember that they help teachers to determine if their strategy worked – although an activity
provides excellent results with one group, it may not be equally effective when working with another
group.

• The essential pillars of the PRONI structure for English teaching can be summarized as teaching
students:

Concept Application Tools

To know how to DO with the
language
To know ABOUT the language
Communicative actions that are
developed around concrete
interactive situations
Aspects and themes that promote
reflection about the language and
its characteristics and components
LabDisc – hands-on
activities
LabDisc – when students
are asked to discuss and
work on projects; PBL

To know how to BE with the Implied attitudes and values found LabDisc – when students
language in written and verbal language use are asked to research
concepts and must work in
teams to achieve an
outcome

These objectives are sub-divided into the following skills and competencies that students should
acquire:

o Understand the role played by language in the construction of knowledge and of cultural values
 o Use the language to analyze and solve problems through projects
o Use the language to organize thoughts and presentations – when using a PBL approach, it is
important that students have to demonstrate their results to their peers and/or to other groups
of people – they should be allowed to choose the way in which they wish to synthesize their
results and to summarize their experience (presentations, graphs, texts, and/or performances,
etc.)
o Develop an analytical and responsible attitude toward the problems that affect the world –PBL
should always be used to solve real-life and relevant problems – this will help students develop
an affinity to relate English to the circumstances and realities they and their communities face
o Use the language to gain access to different cultural expressions of one’s own culture and of
different countries – an excellent complement to PBL is if teachers can connect with students in
classrooms in different countries who are also learning English and interchange viewpoints and
experiences

• Overriding objectives include that students, at the end of the day, be fluent in the three main
categories that languages are divided into:

Structural Functional Socio-Cultural

Knowledge of the system’s
components: phonological units,
grammatical units, grammatical
operations, and vocabulary
Emphasizes the semantic and
communicative dimensions and
focuses on the organization and
conceptual understanding of
learning contents by categorizing
them under meaning (importance)
and function.
Focuses on the processes of social
practices of the language in daily
usage through interactive
exchanges and discussions
(negotiation) of meaning within a
variety of different contexts.

Through a PBL approach when combined with the regular PRONI program, teachers ensure that
students achieve structural, functional and socio-cultural fluency.