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Have you ever thought about what it would be like to
be one of the incredible researchers who made available to humanity the
theories necessary to achieve quality education? Just analyze, education has
been indispensable for people in Costa Rica, one of the countries that give it
a priority. Based on this, many things have changed in the educational system,
one of them was the Teacher’s guide for the new English curriculum (Eighth grade).
Firstly, it’s necessary to know "Why they did
a new curriculum?" It's an interesting question because as human
beings, we're in constant learning in our life and we're improving the
knowledge acquired, so for that reason, Costa Rica thought that It was
essential to have a new curriculum in this country because with that, teachers
can improve their teaching techniques and enrich the knowledge of the students.
Based on the Teacher's guide, there are some other aspects of why is important
to have a new curriculum:
•
Learners
require a restructured curriculum that reflects the skills, aptitudes, and
capacities needed to succeed in the future.
•
Secondary
school´s curriculum required a modernized in order to have more relevant object
content.
•
Students
who receive English lessons in high schools aren’t getting the projected
English proficiency levels.
Another important point is the teacher's profile.
It's not a secret that teachers are an essential part of their students' lives
because many of them follow in the teacher's step. This is why a teacher must
be someone who facilitates knowledge and guides students to become better
citizens. Also, teachers need to follow or have some requirements to work,
create a better perspective of education, and expand the knowledge of learners,
such as:
•
Teachers
certificated with B2/C1 English language.
•
Know
approaches to solve issues and improve teaching practices.
•
Have
an update on English.
•
Implementation
of didactics units.
•
Promote
learner’s high expectations with inclusive.
In addition, the teacher's
guide highlights its objective, its new vision of students. Many Costa
Rican students have graduated without having a basic level of English, that's
because they don't leave their institutions with the necessary bases to
communicate in their second language. It's truly surprising that students in
their last year of high school don't have a B1 or A2 level as the guidelines
say it should be. For this reason, a new guide was created, and now the vision
is to have new students with a good English profile (better skills and
abilities), achieving that the students get out of high school with an
excellent level of English B1 or B2.
Moreover, this eighth-grade
guide talks about some dimensions of learning that help to the
educational process, and also about how the students will be able to become in
good citizens, those are The ways of living in the world, ways of relating with
others, tools for integrating with the world, and the last one, ways of thinking.
These dimensions have to be complemented starting by a local belonging, then in
education, and the last one, with the help of technology (ICT).
Additionally, many pedagogical
techniques contribute to education, but which pedagogical trends influence
the teaching practices in this guide? Well, MEP presents three of them: socio-constructivism,
holism, and critical pedagogy. The first one talks about the responsibility
of the learner as a member of a world community. Holism refers to a set
of systems or a network of connections that are affected and interdependent, as
Ralston (2011) stated more specific in his article:
The
notion that all of the elements in a system, whether physical, biological,
social, or political, are interconnected and therefore should be appreciated as
a whole. Consequently, the meaning or function of the total system is
irreducible to the meaning or function of one or more of the system’s
constituent elements. (p.01)
So, all these elements
together as one can contribute to education. About critical pedagogy,
the MEP’s guide said that this is when the learner or student becomes a
producer of knowledge to share it with others, not only for that person.
Ministerio de Educación
Pública, for their English guides, decides to follow the instructions of The
Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) because they describe proficiency
levels based on accumulated evidence gathered over time from learner
activities, tasks, or projects. For Costa Ricans learners, according to CEFR
English proficiency bands, they have to pass by a process from A1, A2 to B1 in
their school life. In A1 the student can introduce him/herself and others about
their lives in the lowest way. In the
second level that is A2, the learner can communicate in simple and routine
tasks requiring a simple and direct exchange of information on familiar and
routine matters more than A1. The maximum level that students can acquire in
high school is B1, with it, they can deal with more situations at a medium
level of English.
Now that we now important
aspects such as the teacher’s and student’s profile, the dimensions and
pedagogical trends and even a little bit about some of the English levels,
let´s move on to an interesting approach that this teacher’s guide use, The
Action-Oriented Approach.
MEP has the vision to bring
students to their highest level of knowledge and skill development. Within this
new way of teaching English, the objective of them is for students to be more
humans, autonomous; have the critical thinking, a desire to investigate, and
that through all the tools provided, plus their prior knowledge, solve
different problems. On the other hand, the teacher in this approach must be the
guide, observer and resource person, allowing the student, through a real-life
classroom environment, to develop a successful oral and written communication.
Yes! maybe you're thinking,
now that I know all this theory, how should I plan a real class for
eighth-graders? This complete and understandable Teacher’s guide stated
that we need to be focus on important elements to plan a class, some of them
are the level of the group, the units that teacher will develop (1-6,
questions, assessment, mini-project, goals), 4 domain (Socio-interpersonal,
socio-transactional, academic and professional), the scenarios that teacher
will provide to their students to have more knowledge about reality (Real-life
context) and themes (those that are going to have your attention for each week).
Units are basically the main
point of the plan that you’re going to develop, why? Because in eighth grade we have six units and
every class is going to have a purpose according to it. Every unit has six
weeks in where the teacher can combine oral or written comprehension with oral
and written production, plus the vocabulary of the unit, phonology, syntax and
some warm-up activities that you as professors are able to do at the beginning
of the class to try to connect in a good way with them and have a successful
class. The teacher needs to give them some extra minutes per class to plan,
discuss, prepare some brainstorming, practice it, finish the project to get
feedback and present the mini-project that the teacher gave them at the final
of each unit to reinforce their knowledge. Finally, the Eighth-Grade exit
profile is to have an A2 as a minimum. To conclude, MEP is trying to
support students with this new constructivism guide, showing how important it's
to build critical and creative students with the capacity to communicate in
their second language.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES
MEP (2018). Teacher’s guide
for the new English curriculum Eighth grade 2018. Retrieved from: https://recursos.mep.go.cr/teachers_guide8/
Ralston, S. (2011). Holism.
SSRN Electronic Journal. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259673427_Holism
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