Curriculum Framework

The seek of achieving  efficient, coherent and effective learning seems to be  an overwhelming situation that comes to overload the existing multiple tasks that educational programmers and  lesson planners already have.  However, the solution though not simple, lies on the fact of  being clear that convenience or desired goals must be focused and based on the students´  interests and needs. Interests and needs will be fulfilled once the schools tasks address learners not anymore towards content as the outmost target point, but towards the acquisition and development of their capabilities and competences to deeply and comprehensively understand and use what they are learning.
Understanding, on the one hand, will be reflected on the ability to answer big and essential questions, to do complex tasks and solve problem creatively, whereas on the other, may be also reflected on the depth and way of thinking, defining, critizing,  revising and organizing the acquired input that will be used to produce expected and appropriate outcomes lately.
Diferent ideas regarding the use of textbooks and approaches for curriculum frameworks have been suggested to achieve this purpose.
Dewey(1938) claims for the spiral curriculum to describe how subject matter should be organized to move from problem to problem causing knowledge to increase in depth and breath. In this way, coursework could develop student thinking and interest in a purposeful and ystematic way, pointing toward the full fruits of each discipline.
If we take this suggestion or any other included in this chapter, in connection with the type of curriculum framework and ideas about the ways of asking essential questions or presenting challenging situations to students I think we will be able to do a better learning process in our classrooms. Enthusiam and optimism might help.


      

planning for learning

Planning a lesson is not more the simple answer to the question...what am I going to teach? No, things are different now.  The question does not strictly consider my intentions, but the especific purpose and ways to accomplish the learners´ final goals. And, which are the learners´ final goals? The  answer depends on the learner´s age,  and age comes to imply multiple interests, needs, styles, previous knowledge, profiles, etc,. aspects that determine the great heterogeneity that we find in our classrooms. Then, one of our challenges through planning is to engage these heterogeneous groups, motivate them and address them towards an effective learning process. Effectiveness that, on  the one hand might come to meet all those aspects mentioned before that make the students every different individual, whereas on the other might be reflected on the development of skilfullness, competitiveness and productivity at worthy work as well as mastery on demostrating understanding and proficiency on the use of resources available to support their learning and tranferring their knowledge when performing in the real world.
It seems that clearest goals on what desired learning outcomes refer, the simplest, achievable, aplicable and successful the learner´s task will be. Ours also.

understanding

Let´s start a new year at school.
How much English do students remember? or how much English do they appear to have learnt the previous year? -  Probably  a few words or rather poor phrases to decribe holiday or an interesting summer experience.
This is the most frequent complain that teachers are used to sharing among them.
Why does this happen?
Teachers perhaps have failed in helping the students to get skillfully developed on the appropriate and significant aspects of the language they needed.
However, in my opinion this is not the explanation for this situation. I think the most important FACT,( because it is  real)is that the majority of the chilean students,  especially adolescents do not understand why they have to studey and hence why they have to learn a second language. They are unable to grasp the advantages that           being english skilled means and will mean in the future.                        

Clarity on Goals

Big powerful and meaningful ideas make education easier.
Designing  lessons is not just generation of ideas for learners to accomplish or apply without having a clear notion of the purpose or the way of doing it. On the contrary, desired results should be based on the principle that learners must know and understand exactly what to learn and why it is important for they to acquire that knowledge. If students are aware of the final goals they are expected to achieve and why, they will most value the important rol they have on the purpose of getting developed the required skill or ability and on the procedure to get it. This is not easy.
Thus, designing lesson implies outmost teachers´capability to develop in learners their major potentials and desired skills in order to achieve their goals successfully with little or nobody´s dependance in future life. Teachers must pay attention to more important ideas, tasks, procedures and processes to develop the learners´skills.  

Backward Desing

To design is not a simple task. Working hard to do it, does not mean, neither guarantees an effective job either, especially when the objectives or final goals are not clearly set.

 Designing teaching lessons implies a thorough consideration of a huge variety of aspects and factors that takes the teachers from the mere process of teaching the contents of the different units from a textbook to a major purpose concerning final results that match with the learners´ goals and needs. A deep study regarding the appropriacy and meaningfulness of the text  must be done. For example, reading and understanding a text should not be the final goal for both the teacher and the learner, if the contents in the text do not appear to be important or relevant to be used in real situations.  After the learning process, students should be able to effectively produce, to use their knowledge thoughtfully according to required standards.

The Backward design suggests teachers to make a shift in their thinking about the nature of their job.  This means letting aside the old practice of assessing the meaningless activity oriented design and the aimless coverage approach that make the students march page by page through a textbook with no further significance.  Textbooks are to be considered and employed as a resource but not the syllabus. All this implies on one hand, a guiding role from teachers toward the students´ learning process,  and a change of methodology on the other.   Teachers should concentrate their attention on the results sought by answering questions about what the students must learn and how to do it to make it significant and useful. The learning strategies and activities have to be planned in order to develop and enrich the learners´ output.

The Backward design presents three stages:  Identity desired result, Determine acceptable evidence and  Plan learning experiences and instruction. Through the first stage we can clearly understand how important  priorities, regarding the learners´ needs are in the design process. The second stage describes  what and how to assess the learning process, what  and how to validate the knowledge that the learners could have attained. The third stage presents the different aspects regarding activities, strategies, procedures, principles, facts, resource materials, etc., to bear in mind in order to accomplish the process that effectively and successfully leads students to skills development and knowledge.  

To understand more the backward design and its three stages, a backward design template and a set of design standards for teachers are presented.   They clearly and explicitly drive educators to focus on the desired results and criteria to work the units of a textbook, in an understanding, meaningful, appropriate and durable way. Bob James, enhances these  ideas by describing his experience with backward design. When he got the templates into practice, he found how important was for him to consider what the students want and need to take away from the unit he was designing. Consequently, the assessment of  that unit was also based on the seek of evidence or any type of performance to demonstrate the achievement of the learners´ wants and needs. This implies the process of selection of resource materials and skills or competences that the learners have to develop in order to show meaningful understanding and learning.