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INTRODUCTION:
The Organic Act 1/1990 of General Arrangement of the Educational System introduced some important
changes, aimed at improving the quality of education in Spain. Among these changes we can mention:
- The extension of compulsory education to the age of 16 years old
- The establishment of new educational stages such as: Infant, Primary and Compulsory Secondary
Education.
- These stages are organised in cycles, which is the period that should be considered for teaching
programs and promotion.
- The establishment of a curriculum which, in spite of having certain aspects which are compulsory for all
the country, is also open and flexible, as the different autonomous educational services could adapt it to
their real context. Then, each school should adapt the official curriculum to their real environment by
means of the design and development of the Curricular Project.
- Every teacher should design his/her particular teaching planning according to the decisions taken in the
Curricular project.
Then, taking into account these basic aspects of the Educational Reform, we are going to deal with:
- The elements and specific characteristics of foreign language teaching planning.
- The criteria we must take into account for the sequence of objectives and contents
- The methodological principles we should bear in mind to design the learning and assessment
activities.
2.-FOREIGN LANGUAGE AREA PLANNING:
As we have said before, our educational system establishes and open and flexible curriculum which must
be adapted to the particular needs of students through different levels:
The First level, refers to the official curriculum which contains the general objectives of each stage for
the different areas, their blocks of contents and assessment criteria.
The Second level, includes the Curricular Project of each stage, where each school adapts the elements
of the official curriculum to its particular context.
According to the R.D. 82/1996, the Curricular Project should include the following elements:
- The general objectives of the stage adapted to the socio-cultural context of the school.
- The sequence of objectives, contents and evaluation criteria of the different areas per cycle.
- General methodological decisions that affect the following aspects: Methodological principles,
groupings, space, time and materials.
- General decisions about the attention to pupils with special needs.
And finally in the third level of curricular development, each teacher should design his/her teaching
planning which consist of a set of didactic units, taking into account the decisions made by the teaching
staff in the Curricular Project.
Then the teaching planning is defined in the curricular material known as Red Boxes as: the process
whereby, starting from the official curriculum and the decisions taken in the Curricular Project, teachers
plan the work that is going to be developed in the class. As a result, we have a set of sequenced didactic
units for a given cycle.
Teaching planning should be:
Adapted to the context and pupils needs
Flexible, which implies that we must be ready to change any of it elements if we feel that they are not
appropriate for a particular group of students.
1
Concrete, as it should give clear information about the teaching/ learning process which is going to
be developed in the classroom.
Realistic, as the teacher should have the space, time and materials to carry out the activities he/she
has designed and this activities should be adapted to the students level.
3 .- Then, if we have decided to organise contents around procedures, we should not forget that the three
types of contents (concepts, procedures and attitudes) must be considered in an interrelated way. Then we
should relate them as in the following example:
Recognising the characteristic sounds, rhythm and intonation patterns of the foreign language, realising
the importance of being able to communicate in a foreign language
To see this relation more clear, the Resolution of the 5th of March suggests that we can display them in a
chart, as follows
EXAMPLE OF SEQUENCE OF CONTENTS FOR THE SECOND CYCLE
Procedures
Recognising
Identifying
Global comprehension
Specific comprehension
Concepts
Attitudes
-Characteristic sounds
-Rhythm and intonation
patterns.
-Words and sentences in texts
related to the context of the
classroom and daily life
of messages with the
following communicative
intentions:
*Greeting (hello!,good
morning...)
*Identifying oneself (I am. ,My
name is...)
*Giving and asking for
basic personal information
(using expressions such as:
Whats your name, How old are
you?...)
These
communicative functions should
be related to topics of general
use and wide notions, which are
interesting for children, such as:
*The school, family, friends,
animals, body, home, numbers,
colours...
Of information
previously required in
contextualised situations*
*For instance, we ask children to fill a chart about the favourite sports of different characters from the textbook. First, we tell them what they are going to listen to
a conversation where the characters talk about things they like and dislike and what information they should pay attention to. Then, we play the cassette or read
the text aloud and they should complete the chart, with the specific information we have asked them for (sports, in this case)
TENNIS
BASKETBALL
FOOTBALL
STEVIE
yes
yes
no
LUCY
yes
no
yes
ANNIE
no
yes
no
As we can see this task ask them to extract specific information (about favourite sports), previously required by the
teacher, in a contextualised situation,( as they already recognise the characters voices, and know what they are
talking about).
If we do this with all the general objectives we will have a list of the contents of each cycle including
concepts procedures and attitudes.
These orientations are quite useful to establish the sequence of objectives, contents and assessment criteria,
in the second and third cycle, but we must not forget that English has been introduced in the 1st cycle in our
Autonomous Community.
Then the Order of 30th of August published by the Department of Education, Science and Technology of
our Autonomous Government says in its article number 3 that:
The centres must change and adapt their Curricular Projects to this change as the objectives, contents
and evaluation criteria of the foreign language area, should be sequenced for three cycles, instead of two
Obviously, as we havent got our own curriculum yet, we must take as reference the objectives, contents and
evaluation criteria of the R.D. 1344/91 of the 6th of September, which establishes the national curriculum for
primary Education.
However, the Department of Education, Science and Technology of our Autonomous Government, has
published a document, made by foreign language teachers co-ordinated by the Technical Inspection Service
called English in the first cycle of Primary Education. This document is not a law, it has been published
just to help teachers. Regarding the abilities, skills and contents which should be worked in this cycle this
document says that:
In the FIRST CYCLE:
- The most important skill in the first cycle should be listening.
- We must not force children to speak until they are ready to do it. Then at the beginning they can show
what they have understood by means of non-verbal actions such as movements, gestures, drawing,
cutting, pointing, colouring...
- Total Physical Response ( TPR) activities and songs are a good way to help them link words and
actions, and express themselves in English in a funny and meaningful way.
- Written language should be avoided, especially in the first year of the cycle, because they are learning to
read and write in their native language and the complex English spelling could be confusing for them.
- Contents should be taught by means of didactic units, organised around meaningful topics such as:,
Family, Friends, Christmas, Things of the classroom, The house, Food, Toys, Clothes...
- Children must be already familiar with such topics in their native language. Then, the co-ordination with
the class-teacher is very important to establish the sequence of the different didactic units along the
cycle.
2.2.- DIDACTIC UNITS:
Now we are going to talk about the second moment of the teaching planning: the design and development
of didactic units.
Didactic units are defined in the curricular material known as Red Boxes published by the Spanish
Ministry of Education (1991) as:
A unit of educational action formed by a set of activities that are developed in an specific time, to reach a
set of didactic objectives.