Chapter 4 Conceptualizing Content
Graves (2000) mentioned about the process of conceptualizing content as below;
1.Thinking about what you want your students to learn in the course, given who they are, their needs, and the purpose of the course
2.Making decisions about what to include and emphasize and what to drop
3.Organizing the content in a way that will help you to see the relationship among various elements so that you can make decisions about objectives, materials, sequence and evaluation.
When designing a language course, there are a number of features which you can choose to highlight or to include in your map. What you choose depends on the constraints and resources of your context, who your students are, their needs, why they are taking the course, and whether and how the course has been described to students or the public, as well as your own experience and preference (Graves, 2000, p.39).
If I want my students learn about wild animal in the course for example, I would like to make mind map with graphic organizer as below;
Topic: Wild animal
I would like to choose the topic by asking children’s opinion which would be a way of involving them in the learning process. One of the most important preliminary steps to one of the students involved in this project, is to read, to understand, to interpret, to establish a pleasant relationship with the text (Graves, 2000, p.63)
Chapter 8 Developing Materials
As per my understanding, materials are including anything which can be used to facilitate the learning of a language. They can be visual, internet or any other sources for teaching. Decisions about developing materials are rooted in your beliefs, understandings, and experience. They also depend on your goals and objectives, the way you conceptualize the content of the course, the way you organize and sequence your course, and your understanding of your students’ needs (Graves, 2000, p.166).Graves(2000) also summarized fifteen considerations for material development and they are very useful to know.
1. Make relevant to their experience and background
2. Make relevant to their target needs
3. Make relevant to their affective needs
4. Engage in discovery, problem solving, analysis
5. Develop specific skills and strategies
6. Target relevant aspects
7. Integrate relevant aspects
8. Integrate four skills
9. Provide intercultural focus
10. Develop critical social awareness
11. Aim for authentic tasks
12. Vary roles and groupings
13. Vary activities and purposes
14. Authentic
15. Varied
Chapter 9 Adapting a textbook
In the classroom, teachers are using textbook as a teaching material. Graves(2000) mentioned that there are advantages of using textbook such as it provides a syllabus for the course, a security for the students, a set of visuals, consistency within a program across a given level. However, in spite of those advantages, there exists some disadvantages such as the content or examples may not be relevant or appropriate to the group, the content may not be at the right level, there may be too much focus on one or more aspects of language and not enough focus on others.. etc. Due to some disadvantages of using a textbook, teachers need to adapt a textbook for the students.
Also teachers may be in a situation where they need to create their own activities or are encouraged to do so. In case that teachers do not have experience of creating their own materials, a good way of beginning is to adapt those they find in textbooks.
In my case, I often simplify the language of the descriptions to suit the level of my students. Because when I use the authentic book, the content is very easy
,but sometimes they are using their own languages which foreigners do not understand. Also I change the game rule and make them more exciting for each grade level. These kind of adapting process enables me to stand back from the routime of my daily teaching and consider it from a different perspective, which may give me new insights into my teaching.
It is my belief that curriculum must stimulate interest and motivation of students. In this sense, your mind map includes a lot of activities for students to involve in with designing various subjects like math, geography, environmental science, and expressive arts. I think, for sure, that teachers can quickly identify and understand the structure of a subject, and the way that pieces of information fit together through visualizing concepts. I like your work.
ReplyDeleteMy Comment Mod 4 Young Ran Song:
ReplyDeleteGood reflective work. I like the way you share your experience. Please clarify the following statements:
1. “I would like to choose the topic by asking children’s opinion which would be a way of involving them in the learning process.” How to involve students in the learning process, is your job as professional not theirs. That’s why we learn teaching strategies, methods, and techniques. However, you can involve your students to make informative choice by giving them options. For example, Wild or farm animals?; Field trip to a farm, or a zoo, or a museum to explore the animals they had chosen; To write a description of one animal, to compare two from the same group, to compare animals from different groups, etc.
2. “In the classroom, teachers are using textbook as a teaching material.” Not always, right? Many teachers do not use textbooks because of different reasons: speaking classes with accent on interaction; learners can be small children who cannot read; the class might be in a poor country where the textbooks are simply not available, and so on.
3. “Due to some disadvantages of using a textbook, teachers need to adapt a textbook for the students.” This sentence sounds like contradiction; please revise.
4. About our mind map, I did not understand, did you draw it just as an example to illustrate your point regarding reading, or you are going to use it for your language course design. In both cases language objectives are missing. Even when you teach a subject or a topic (or as in your mind map – unit), you need to design a language curriculum in other words, to look at the content you are teaching from a language prospective.
When you clarify the last question, I will give you feedback again.
Good luck!