Standards 2 & 3

METAS DE APRENDIZAJE Y PLANES DE CLASES

The following document will refer to the decisions I took before planning a unit for my

students at The Pacific School in Chiguayante. These decisions were taken in terms of

school and students’ context. Also, at the end of this essay, I will reflect on the process

of planning my classes when it comes to strengths, weaknesses and challenges.

I must admit that whenever I have to prepare a class, and mostly when I have to decide

on how I will plan a unit for my students, I take into consideration their background

knowledge. When I mention ‘background knowledge’ I do not mean just previous

contents seen in English classes, but what they know about life itself.

After developing Standard 1, I realized I had a big challenge in front of me which was

the fact that I would not be able to use ICT’s most of my class, or that I did not have to

follow the national English syllabus and that there were some of my students who were

not exposed to the target language in classes, because the teacher spoke in Spanish

during class periods. In order to improve my student’s learning of the English language

and my performance as a teacher, I had to come up with some other techniques inside

and outside the classroom; for example, I dared to talk to my students in English when

teaching them a lesson and also when they talked to me during breaks. When it comes

to replacing ICT’s inside the classroom, I had to create flashcards, board games,

worksheets, drawing and do mimics. After a couple of lessons, I asked to some teachers

who had their own data projectors and I managed to get their consent to use them in

some of my classes.

Creating materials to develop my lessons was the easiest part of the job; maybe because

I like to create new things and I want my students to enjoy and have fun with the

learning process; I want them to learn English by discussing things they love and

appreciate, that is why creating flashcards, worksheets and Power Point presentations is

the most fun part of preparing a lesson.

When it comes to the hardest part of planning a unit or a lesson, I think that creating

activities that are suitable for all students as a group, as a whole, was the most

challenging part; this area of the process was the most difficult for me, because I have

students who are exempted of the course, others who are special needs students, boys

and girls who love English, and a group who feels that learning another language is a

waste of time. In order to face these adversities, I came up with the following plan: I

gave each of my students a piece of paper; they had to write the things they loved the

most, things they felt were relevant for someone their age to know about, and issues

they thought were interesting to talk about during English class. The results I got were

very diverse, from touristic areas around the world to superheroes. After taking notes

about their preferences, I classified the concepts they wrote into groups, and I prepare

lessons using those areas they wanted to discuss in class. The positive outcomes of this

plan were that my students got the opportunity to learn English by speaking, reading,

listening and writing about the things they want to discuss. In terms of negative

outcomes, some concepts were difficult to include in the lessons since they were too

odd for me to include them.

Thanks to the members of the special needs department at the school, I had the

opportunity to show them my activities, which they accommodated for students who

need support when learning; they gave me advice on how to approach to them.

Brown (2004) refers to the concept of Authenticity as a real world use of the language,

which for me has been a main focus when preparing the lessons for my students; since I

truly believe that when learning a new language, the purpose of studying that target

language should be communicating with other people in the real world; maybe

discussing global warming, having a conversation about a movie you saw last week, or

making plans for the summer break.

Kolb (1984) addresses learning as a process where concepts and experiences are

integrated, which is the main basis of my approach towards the teaching process; for

me, it is fundamental to take the student’s everyday experiences and beliefs as the step

one in my list of what to consider before developing a unit plan for my students.

References

Brown, D (2004). Language Assessment Principles and Classroom Practices. Longman

Editorial

Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and

development (Vol. 1). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.