I.E.S “Juan Ramón Fernández”
TEACHER: MARÍA LAURA GARCÍA STUDENT: VANESA JULIETA BUTCHAKDJIAN November 2019
Coursebook evaluation ……………………………………………………………………………. 2 Visuals ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 6 Cultural aspects ……………………………………………………………………………………. 6 Adapting an activity ………….................................................................................................8 Minority groups……………………………………………………………………………………....8 Content curation tool ………………………………………………………………………………..9 Webtool review ……………………………………………………………………………………...10 Article based handout ………………………………………………………………………………11 Final reflection ……………………………………………………………………………………….18 References ………………………………………………………………………………………...... 19
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The chosen coursebook for analysis is called Smarty 5 (2017) by SM. As for the macro-evaluation, the blurb claims that the book allows learners to use English to explore new topics and the world around them. The chosen approach is collaborative work, while speaking in English is the focus. Learning about other subjects through English is the overall goal. The intended audience is primary school students. The proficiency level is not mentioned in the blurb.
Cover of chosen textbook
Blurb of chosen textbook
The layout is clear, but as Tomlinson (2003) suggests, we must include clarity of instructions when we assess the overall layout of the materials. What I find in some cases, as in the picture below, is that instructions are not that clear in the sense that they do not always follow a cohesive path. For example, within the same lesson students are required to read and write the names of some insects at the beginning of exercise A. Towards the end of the same exercise, the instruction is the same, but there are options below each picture. What would be the sense in “writing� the answers on their binders, if students can circle the answers right there in the book? In addition, asking a 5th form student to draw their favourite insect and tell their friend about it, as it is stated in part b, does not seem an appropriate production activity.
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Examples of written instructions at the end of a unit
Because of the grammar and vocabulary items mentioned in the table of contents and the blurb, it appears that this textbook is aimed at false beginner – lower intermediate students who are in primary school, in 5 form. The layout and the presentation is clear, meaning there the pages are not crammed with exercises, which makes it reader-friendly. Despite this, it does not appear that this book successfully reaches all the learning styles, since that out of the four skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), speaking is the one that is mainly tackled and chosen as the main focus. If adaptations are not included, visual – spatial, musical, kinesthetic, intrapersonal, linguistic and logical- mathematical students may be not included. th
Within the evaluated aspects, I also took into account Tomlinson (2001), who poses a four-way distinction or roles that materials play , which are called: instructional, because they inform learners about language; experiential, meaning they provide exposure to the language in use; elicitative meaning they stimulate language in use and exploratory, because they facilitate discoveries about language in use. I believe that this book is mainly instructional and intends to be elicitative but in a context where language does not appear up-todate and natural. The dialogues do not portray spontaneous, true-to-life interactions and they refer mainly to the grammar content that is revised, as in the case of the first picture below, or content that is new, as in the case of the second picture below. As for the internal analysis, the table of contents or content map, as it is called in this book, includes a welcome back unit to do some revision and six units that develop different topics. Vocabulary, grammar and functions are very briefly depicted. Each unit presents the following structure, with subtle variations in the different units: a) Listen and read b) Choose the correct option a) Listen and sing b) Point and name the odd picture
c) Listen and match
d) Speaking
CLIL: a) Read and look b) Put pictures in the right order c) Look and listen d) Choose the correct option 3
a) Writing (read and write)
b) Draw
Round up: a) Listen and read I can (students tick options of self-assessment)
Table of contents
There is an extra column called “CLIL”, which stands for Content and Language Integrated Learning. At the end of each unit. Particularly within unit 2, there is a reading comprehension about “The clinical history of a fever” and according to the table of contents, this content is integrated with both Natural and Social Science.
Example of CLIL text and reading comprehension activity
Touching the topics of skills, there is a tendency to provide much emphasis on reading skills development while at the same time not giving students the opportunity to learn those skills on more extended 4
reading passages. As for listening skills, the recordings are artificial. They have been specially written, which make them lack spontaneity and fillers, which are typical features of speech. As a result, the dialogues sound quite artificial. The same happens with songs: it shows that the lyrics were written exclusively to create the song for students to recognize the items that are mentioned there. Below, there is a picture that depicts how this book typically works with songs: after listening to it and singing it, the students are required to point and name the odd picture. So as to supposedly clarify the instruction, there is a picture of a boy and a bubble speech that includes the beginning of a sentence on how to name the odd picture. However, this boy is not pointing at any of the pictures of food and insects, there is a speech bubble containing the beginning of a sentence that illustrates how students should start their sentences in order to point out the odd item according to word categories. Examples of reading and listening skills As for visual material, the book contains real pictures and drawings. In most cases, the pictures are meaningful because they illustrate what the text means. Below, there are some examples of injuries mentioned within a context in this unit. However, there are some instances of cosmetic pictures (Tomlinson, 2003), as in the one that is supposed to illustrate “to be/feel fine”, which is part of the lyrics to a song. Here, the meaning of “to feel/be fine” is not clearly illustrated. You can just a see a smiling boy sitting down cross-legged. Also, in some part of the text the sentences “stay in bed” and “stay at home” appear. There is no picture depicting the sentences and, if there were any, they wouldn’t be purposeful to the activity, since students are required to listen and sing.
Visual material with cosmetic value. In order to do the activity, the students do not need the pictures.
With reference to cultural aspect, in Intercultural reflection in EFL coursebooks, López Barrios and Villanueva de Debat (2007) state that “materials should make the learner reflect critically rather than simply make him or her consume unquestioned facts about a “superior” culture to the detriment or the learners’ source culture”, which is usually deemed to be inferior or subordinate to the target language”. I do not see that this book aims at fostering critical reflection. Moreover, López Barrios (2014) states that a contextualized book should be personalized, connected to students’ real lives. Despite the fact that the book was printed in Argentina, it is not consistently contextualized, The culture of the country is not present in the book, even if some of the contents are aligned with the national curriculum. 5
For example, within the book there is unit that is called Kids around the world (Unit 4). Supposedly, this unit promotes cross cultural confrontation, but this does not happen. At the beginning, there are drawings depicting the story of children who live in Holland. We get to know that only because the text says so. The only hint that the characters are from another country is the typical Dutch hat that girl is wearing. Supposing the learners did not know that in Holland, women who live in the field area tend to wear this type of hat, how would they know that she is Dutch? And what about the boy character? Just by looking at the drawing and reading the text, he could also live in any country, not necessarily Holland. At the end of the story, there is an activity to recognize linguistic items (Picture 2 below). What LĂłpez Barrios and Villanueva Derbat (2007) pose as an optimal situation, does not happen here: learners are not invited to compare and contrast their own culture with that of the target language, there is no linguistic contrast, they are just required to complete a dialogue with given words and to label parts of a map, again, with given words, and also, to give directions in order to get to a city (in the case of the map activity). There is a minimum attempt at inviting students to include a symbol (a flag) that represents their culture (Picture 4 below), but the instruction is not accurate enough. It says: “Choose a country in South America. Draw its flagâ€?. Why would students choose any country from South America? How does that exercise relate to their culture? What is the purpose of this activity?
Pictures 1 and 2 showing visual material integrated into the text but not offering cross-cultural confronting
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Pictures 3 and 4 showing visual material integrated into the text but not offering cross-cultural confronting There could be possible adaptations for the activities above depicted. For example, if students were invited to explore sociocultural differences and similarities through role-plays of characters from different countries. The characters could mention different habits they have or their daily routines, including meals they take, hobbies, music they listen to, sports they practise, etc. A good idea is to include a reading comprehension accompanied by a listening exercise that includes authentic spoken texts. Then, after doing some recognition activities such as listen, read and answer the questions, the students can be asked questions that trigger critical thinking and tackle intercultural reflection. For example, in a text, two teenagers are talking about their musical tastes and they ask each other about their favourite bands, then agree to go to a live show together after one of them invites the other. After reading, listening and answering questions, the adaptation could include brief questions for learners to think and answer according to their own experience as native speakers of a different language, such as: “Do you know hip-hop music? Do you listen to hip hop? What type of music do you like?”. After answering these questions, the students could exchange their answers and then create a playlist of the course on Spotify. This would have the purpose of sharing their likes and dislikes, getting to know about a type of music representative a foreign culture and relating it to those belonging to one’s culture, respecting each other’s opinions and believes and reaching an agreement in order to create a collaborative playlist that represents the whole group and that may include different music genres in the mother tongue as well as in the foreign language that is being learnt. With reference to minority groups, there is an intention of representing them at the beginning of Unit 2 Stay Healthy. The doctor is a woman, and there is a child, a girl, who is interviewing her about. However, this happens only at the beginning of this unit. Towards its end, one can see that the doctor is a man, as it usually happens, in a reading passage about the history of the thermometer (CLIL visual, page 5 of this handout).
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Minority groups in the textbook: Dr. Parks, a woman doctor is interviewed by Susan, a pre-teen girl.
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I chose “Pearltrees� because I believe that it may be an enhancing visual literacy-learning tool. Moreover, it can be helpful when working with projects in order to keep the materials you visit at hand and organized.
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A great tool would be a word cloud generated on Wordclouds.com. Bearing in mind Goldstein’s theory about multimodal narrative forms, this tool may be useful and engaging to work with in projects. For example, while doing a whole class brainstorm, so that students can see the process and the final product at the same time they are participating, instead of the typical passive role of copying the brainstorm cloud from the board. According to Goldstein in “Visual literacy in English language teaching” (Goldstein, August 2016), there is a new multimodal narrative form, which ensembles text, image and audio in a way that is non-linear, participatory and quite often, game-like. That is why the combination of text and image is crucial. Moreover, today’s participatory culture requires people to contribute actively in their own digital experience. This is the way our students interact online, whether they play videogames, communicate through social media, such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook or react to videos on YouTube. I find that what by including a webtool or app in our lessons, we are making learning more meaningful and accessible to our students. I agree with Goldstein on the concept that by making “unfamiliar” the familiar, one can engage students on a more cognitively challenging level, because curiosity and creativity are triggered. Below, there is an example of the brainstorm activity that I have included in the lesson plan that is included in the handout. The shape is that of a leaf because it represents the importance of trees in our lives and how the excessive felling of them entails a great risk to the environment. In the cloud, there are also verbs related to actions that humans can do in order to help the environment.
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I chose this article called “Earth in Danger” because it paves the way for critical thinking about environmental issues and actions that can help prevent natural disaster due to global warming. As this topic is barely dealt with in unit 5 from the textbook Smarty 5, I believe that by working with this article, students will have more chances to have a deeper look at and understand more thoroughly the topic of the environment and ecology (within the area of experience called “The world around us”, according to the DCLE (2001) As for context, the course is a 5 form course that includes 19 students, whose language level is A2 (according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages). They have 3 weekly contact hours of English as an EFL language. In relation to reading skills suggested in The Classroom Key (Braun, 2015), students will have to use their background knowledge, visualize, identify the main idea, make connections, compare and contrast, make inferences and summarize along the proposed activities (pre-reading, while-reading and postreading). Because the original article is rather lengthy and includes some grammar tenses and vocabulary my students are not yet acquainted with, I have decided to adapt it. Other reasons I find valid in doing so are that summarized in Mc Donough and Shaw (2003). The authors state th
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that adaptation is a process that is related to what Madsen and Bowen (1978), cited in 2003 by the previously mentioned authors, refer to as the principle of “congruence”: a set of several related variables, such as teaching material, methodology, students, course objectives, the target language and its context, and the teacher’s own personality and teaching style. In my case, I am seeking to enlarge the original teaching material -because I find that the coursebook is scarce with respect to how it deals with the topic- by creating the handout. I’m planning to include more options of dynamics (individual, pair, groups) and given that for the intended audience I have in mind the reading passages contain too much unknown vocabulary, I’m going to adopt some techniques suggested in Adapting Materials (McDonough and Shaw,2003). Within the category of deleting or omitting, the authors mention “subtracting” as the literal action of reducing the original text. As I stated above, the original text is longish compared to the types of texts that my students are used to reading in that course. That is why I intend to subtract bits from it, but I am also going to modify it by “rewriting” (McDonough and Shaw: 2003) it in order to make it more communicatively accessible to my students. The last technique suggested by the aforementioned authors and that I am using to adapt the original text is called “simplifying”. The purpose in doing so is to make the text more reachable for students by simplifying sentence structure (length, and replacement of complex sentences by simpler ones), lexical content (so that the number of new vocabulary items is controlled by reference to what students already know) and grammatical structures.
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Adapted text (original on PDF format.) 1 version. I took this first version to class last week .According to the feedback I received and discussing briefly some of the principles in the “Dyslexia friendly style guide”, the font must be 12, 14 point, or equivalent and readable, without looking “crowded”. The headings and style must be consistent in order to help people navigate through content. As for colour, there should be a single colour background and patterns, pictures or any distracting surrounds should be avoided. Furthermore, the colour of the text should be dark if the background is light. With respect to layout, the text should be broken up into regular section headings. Finally, when it comes to writing style, the sentences must be short, simple and in a direct style. The text can be supported by pictures. Bullet points and numbering are recommended rather than long prose. Bearing in mind tis feedback, I have edited this first version of the adapted text. Below, you can find the second version of the adapted text.
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Adapted text. Version 2. Course information: Setting of the project: Primary school – Students’ homes Age group: 5 form (10 – 11 year olds). Language level: A1 / A2 Main objectives: -Encourage students develop their critical thinking skills -Motivate them to identify and express their views on climate change, pollution and the preventive measures they can take to avoid contamination - Engage them into collaborative multimedia work Number of students: 19 Duration: 4 lessons th
Objectives: GENERAL
Raise awareness on the topic Foster respect for diversity of thoughts Encourage group relations and collaborative work
SPECIFIC
Develop and apply critical thinking skills Boost interpersonal relationships Incorporate the suggested multimedia tools
Key skills (along Bloom’s Taxonomy, from bottom to top): Creating (Producing new or original work): assembling, constructing, producing inventing Evaluating (Justifying a stand or decision): valuing, supporting, judging, testing, detecting Analyzing (Drawing connections among ideas): deconstructing, comparing, experimenting, contrasting Applying (Using information in new situations): implementing, using, doing, scheduling Understanding (Explaining ideas or concepts): classifying, interpreting, paraphrasing, explaining Remembering (Recalling facts and basic concepts): recognizing, listing, naming, locating
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Activities Lesson 1: (remembering – understanding) Before reading the text: At school, students will be shown the following images related to the topic of the text we are going to read later. They have to arrange the visuals according to the level of danger they imply for the environment. Instructions: 1) Look at the pictures. What are the picture about? Does the text mention them? Why?
While reading the text: After reading the first paragraph of the adapted text “Earth in Danger”, students will be asked to make a list of the human actions that contribute to climate change. Then, after reading the second paragraph, the teacher will ask: “What can we do to help the Earth? “ Students’ answers will be recorded on a Google Drive document After reading the text: Students will be asked to answer the following: 1. What does contribute to climate change? 2. Can we help to stop climate change? How? 3. Think of more actions to help the environment.
In groups (5 groups of 3 and 1 of 4 students or 4 groups of 4 and 1 group of 3), students will engage in a brief discussion. Then, students will think in the small groups about five simple actions they can do in order to help the environment and write nouns, adjectives and verbs that arise from the debate on Wordclouds. Students will create interactive the word clouds that include their ideas. Lesson 2: (applying – analyzing) At home, the different groups will think of questions for surveys to carry out at school. They will use Survey Monkey. They will have to think of questions related to everyday actions that we can do in order to help save the Earth from being in danger. At school, students will do the surveys, share the results and opinions and then create a bank of environmentally friendly actions that we can all do within and outside school. Then, they will create personalized gifs on Giphy to illustrate the actions. This way, the students will work as one big group at this stage, with the aim of improving the social interactions within the classroom. They will create, edit and share during the whole lesson, adopting different roles. Lesson 3 (evaluating – creating): 15
The groups of students will work on a collaborative digital portfolio by resorting to Evernote. Then, each group will choose one of the choice board activities and work on it. The implementation of a choice board is to provide students with “flexible learning paths to the learning goal�, as it is suggested by Kasey Bell (2019). Also, by giving students choice, we are allowing them to have a voice in their own learning process. Students will be encouraged to think critically how they felt working in small groups and how they came to taking decisions fairly. They will be able to post their ideas and feelings as they prefer: in charts, sentences, just brief audios, quoting lyrics that they feel represented by, sketches, etc.
Verbal/linguistic
Logical/Mathematical
Visual/ Spatial
Create a TV ad
Design a map. Include recycling centers.
Create a poster
Interpersonal Role play a situation
Body Kinesthetic
Free
Conduct a hands-on experiment (recycling paper or other)
Choice
Musical Rhythmic
Naturalist
Intrapersonal
Create a rap
Adapt materials to a new use
Keep a personal journal
Lesson 4 (socializing. voting) In this last class, there will be a presentation of the projects to socialize them within the classroom before doing so with the rest of the school community. Students will also upload the recorded process on Evernote to the school blog as well, to socialize it digitally. After the socialization process, the students will vote for the group activity they liked best. 16
Final products:
Word cloud after lesson 1 Bank of environmentally friendly actions after lesson 2 Digital portfolio after lesson 3 Chosen activity from the multiple intelligences choice menu Oral presentation to socialize the chosen activities from the choice board
Evaluation:
Constant assessment process with feedback. Formative evaluation. Peer assessment.
Resources and ICT tools:
Wifi Laptops/computers Interactive screen Student’s binders and notes Piktochart Giphy Evernot School blog Survey Monkey
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At the beginning of the course, I thought that we were going to create games, activities and tasks by implementing different materials, such as cardboard, wool, buttons, glue, etc. and then we would create a digital version of characters, poems and so on. I did not know what exactly to expect apart from this. Then, as lessons went by, I started to discover a wide variety of online tools that helped me little by little to depart from the very traditional approach I tend to follow for lesson planning and the creation of activities. I liked the fact that the atmosphere in the lessons was relaxed and that we talked about our daily queries with respect to tools and specific bibliography. There were times when I went off-focus, for example, when I misunderstood that we had to include our chosen tool to curate content throughout the course within a mini plan and then evaluate a digital app. Some other times, I found myself enjoying course, particularly when we dealt with Intercultural reflection and context-sensitive materials. Apart from the content, I really liked that fact that we tweeted Tyson, the author of a text about LGBTQIA2 inclusion, within the lesson and we thought of ways of including this ESI content, amongst others within our units of work. All in all, I liked this course very much because it gave me updated digital tools to enhance my lessons and a fresh view on topics that are part of our everyday reality, such as dyslexia in the classroom and how to go about it when working with texts, the effective inclusion of minority groups and working with gender stereotypes. Last but not least, I appreciated very much the theory on the external and internal analysis of books. Even if there are some aspects that one learns to pay attention to, such as content, layout and rubrics, the texts by Tomlinson and McDonough have really been enlightening to me.
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Bell, Kasey (2019). The Teacher’s Guide to Digital Choice Boards. Braun. H. (2015). Reading Skills. Retrieved November 10 , 2019, from https://www.theclassroomkey.com/ Diseño Curricular de Lenguas Extranjeras (2001). Gobierno de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires. Dyslexia Style Guide 2018: Creating Dyslexia Friendly Content (2018). Retrieved November 2019 https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/advice/employers/creating-a-dyslexia-friendly-workplace/dyslexia-friendlystyle-guide Hill, D. (2003). The visual element in the EFL coursebooks in Tomlinson (ed) Developing Materials for Language Teaching. London: Continuum López Barrios, Mario Luis & Villanueva de Debat, Elba (2007). Intercultural reflection in EFL coursebooks. In Cultural Awareness in ELT (pp. 79-86). Córdoba AR: Comunic-arte. McGrath, I. (2013) Materials, the roles of teachers and learners, and teacher education in Teaching Materials and the Roles of EFL/ESL Teachers McDonough, J. & Shaw, C. (2003) (2nd edition) Adapting Materials in Materials and Methods in ELT. A Teacher’s Guide. Malden: Blackwell. th
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