Chapter 12: Contextualizing..... my thoughts?

“…Framing curriculum around essential questions as opposed to content, makes connective, thought-provoking and recurring inquiries more appropriately central to the learning experience…It is very difficult to go back to creating disconnected activities or covering facts without a broader context when using UbD…”

I have been thinking about terms such as big idea, getting the picture and contextualized learning. Ideally, that all is supposed to happen if you plan your lessons well enough, right? I think we all agree that this way of teaching is much more appropriated and ´provide students with new opportunities to develop high order cognitive skills like critical thinking or problem-solving procedures. And What I liked about this book and this chapter is that by considering such important elements for lesson planning, not only students but also teachers can get the most out of it. The Brightside I see from all of these ideas is that they help both students and teacher think outside the box since they are compelled to try and respond to more challenging tasks: teachers are challenged to think about meaningful essential questions and how to frame curriculum around them and students are able to experience new ways of understanding and to really show what they have learned by transfer experiences, not by isolated tests.  The great thing about this whole UbD proposal is that is represents a challenge to both teachers and students to work around.

However, I keep wondering whether is it really plausible to actually contextualized foreign language learning – no matter how good your curriculum and essential questions are- if students are not able to experience what it means to actually learn a language and all the elements that involves? For me, learning a language goes hand in hand with learning about a culture and the people it belongs to. Like how contextualized our curriculum can be if our students are not meant to interact with the target language culture or native speakers? Can we really talk about “contextualizing” learning or are we trying to make our lessons a little less behaviorist-like?

Can a language be learned just by an awesome curriculum design? Although I have to recognize that UbD has a significant amount of great ideas I did not think of, I am a firm believer that in the case of language learning, one must be as close to the culture as possible… Does that make me a super bad teacher? I do not know.  Do I believe that the target language to be learned is meant to be spoken only by native speakers? No. Do I believe you need to come closer to the culture to grip the essence of the language? Yes.

And finally…Can we really contextualize the learning of something that involves not only expression, idioms, grammar and phonetics but also a way of life in a curriculum? 

Chapter 9 - Planning for Learning: a matter of making choices...at least for me

“…what exactly do we mean by a good plan for learning, in light f goals….what must any plan be to be a good plan? Our simplest answer: it must be engaging and effective”

A good lesson plan has always been a major worrying for teachers who want their students as active as possible in the teaching learning process. Even before reading UbD, one as a teacher knows that engaging and effective are the key concepts whenever you plan your lessons, although I tend to think about the words “fun” and “meaningful”. However, all teachers agree that a successful lesson plan has to include some fun and effective activities so that the lesson itself fulfils a real purpose.

So, that is why I thought it was worthwhile to stop and read closely the WHERETO elements in an instructional plan. As part of a recap, WHERETO stands for:

W: students understand where the unit is headed

H: hook students and hold their attention

E: equip them with all that is necessary to meet the goals

R: reflect, rethink and revise

E: evaluate as in self-assess

T: tailor students to appreciate individual talents

O: be organized to optimize deep understanding

Now, the requirement that caught my attention the most was the one referring to students understanding where the unit is headed and why. Usually, when you teach a lesson to students, you never stop and think about giving explanations to students in terms of why are they learning and why it is meaningful for them. I have to confess that as a teacher, I got so used to teaching what is in the book in an automatically way, hoping that students will learn the most in such a short period of time that important details as providing students with the rationale of their learning is completely overlooked. As a teacher I tend to maximize the teaching time or raw content teaching time since the amount of hours I get are not as many as I would like to. And probably that is why students approach tasks so unenthusiastically: because they feel that they are supposed to learn English just because.

 Perhaps forgetting the constrains regarding time and providing students with purposeful work where the goals to be achieved are known by the students makes a lot more sense. Personally, I have always felt that school students do not see a real purpose about learning English, at least where I teach since I am asked to cover a certain amount of contents throughout a year. So, sometimes I wonder whether is it truly that important to fulfill an amount instead of achieving quality of learning? Is it possible to balance the lack of time we always have when dealing with contents and the requirements of your institution and those little details, such the WHERETO elements that will probably make your students a lot better learners –but take some time to add them to the lesson daily dynamic?

Right now, as the year comes to an end I am having that dilemma….what should I do next year? Trying to find a balance or just fulfilling the requirements of the institution as fast as I can, overlooking such important elements that make teachers best designers?

Questions....

“…good questions are not answered with finality in a brief sentence, and that’s the point. Their aim is to stimulate thought, to provoke inquiry and to spark more questions, not just pat answers. They are broad; full of transfer possibilities…they enable us to uncover the real riches of a topic obscured by glib pronouncements in texts or routine teacher-talk…”

As I read Chapter 5 and the importance about essential questioning within the classroom, I started to think about the kind of questions my students are used to responding in a very brief and poor way. After doing not quite a lot of thinking I realized that the questions asked were literal topic-focused text questions that admit one answer only. And even that type of questions students are not able to answer.

First I thought it was a matter of English language handling; that –of course- students would never answer in the right way because they can barely verbalize in English. So it is not about the question, it is about the students’ lack of English Language knowledge. But then I had second thoughts. It is not about a language barrier thing. It is only about us and our role as mentors and creative-thinking enhancers. It seems to me that we as teachers sometimes are so under-prepared in fostering critical thinking skills in our students since our programs and their specifications revolve around matters that do not any enquiring further than locating a good answer in one of the paragraphs the questions is based on and teachers have lost the power they had over the curriculum for reasons such as school constrains.  The curriculum must tell teachers exactly what to do, when to do it, and in what order.

Fostering essential questioning and answering in our students is part as our role as educators since we are not here to transfer raw knowledge, facts, dates or pronunciation. A big part of being a teacher involves shaping free-thinking and creative individual who are able to see things beyond definition and tradition. Individuals that are able to make themselves as well as other see the world with new eyes.

Trying to understando how to....understand?

As I read Chapter II and analyzed the subtle differences among the concepts discussed, I started to think that the problem of us teachers when developing and applying curriculum, programs and syllabus is that we are lacking clarification on those key concepts that need to be handle so as both students and teachers are able to pursue same goals in similar ways.

The concepts I’m talking about are of course knowledge, understanding and transfer. I got so used to repeat those two first words on my programs, to my students in the classroom and to myself whenever I planned a lesson for them that somehow I never considered all of the important perspectives and meanings they have regarding education. And I never took into account the idea of transference as a vital part of a meaningful learning process! As I was writing this, I came across with the concept of intelligence on the internet, which is defined as the ability to adapt one’s knowledge to different situations and contexts. Part of our responsibility as teachers is to develop and increase intelligence in our students but to do so without having the slightest comprehension about the cycle that transfer, understanding and knowledge form.

There cannot be transference of the skills that need to be learned without having a proper handling of the facts and then grasping the essence and meaning of those facts, allowing the student to discern which knowledge should fit best when facing new situations and contexts. That’s the aim of teaching! Helping our students to internalize that cognitive cycle will provide opportunities for teachers to develop goal-oriented design that mean more to students that just developing one activity after another without any apparent purpose; to really take in the importance of this cognitive cycle will provide both students and teachers real opportunities to transfer knowledge. The students will be able to put their skills to effective use and the teachers will be able to transfer what they have learned from goal-oriented design to different teaching contexts and make them work.     

UbD Chapter I: Is there really sth wrong about...?

Hands-on learning has become quite popular as it provides teachers with creative, engaging and flexible learning programs allowing students to reconnect to meaningful learning experiences which were somehow forgotten while more structured and teacher centered approaches were seen as a means to educate students effectively. And since the latest approach seemed unsuitable for students as they became passive receivers of information instead of individuals who were supposed to be able to bring something personal to the whole learning-teaching process, activity-oriented educational design became a trendy tool for teachers everywhere.

However and in spite of having countless advantages regarding students’ participation in the lesson, it never occurred to me that engaging students with numerous activities might cause some sort of accidental as supposed to well-thought and sure to get learning. This is described by UbD as part one of the “twin sins” of traditional design and there were some statements that really caught my attention since they challenge the one thing you are taught while being an undergraduate student: hands-on learning allows students to manipulate a series of element belonging to real experiences situations in order to simulate real life events, engaging students in the search for enduring learning and meaning. It is in that way most of today’s traditional design is based on those kinds of activities so as to allow students to be active participants of the lesson while having a nice time doing fun activities under the “learning by doing” motto. The more activities you have for them, the better.

Activity-oriented design is something I always try to aim at while teaching a lesson for the same reasons I set out previously. Doing activities just because, that is purposeless! In my personal opinion, any activity should fulfill a minimum require which is helping students so they can acquire the wanted set of skills. Well thought out hands-on learning let students observe and understand phenomena while searching and learning the procedure of the situations they are involved in….What’s the harm in that?  

                                                                                                                             Karla....out

Probandoo----probandooo--- xD

Y simplemente probando esta cosa