TITLE: Placed based education: a way to raise consciousness on EFL students

towards their rural surroundings through modeled writing poetry activities.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS
How place based education approaches A1 English level students not only to
English Language, but also to their rural surroundings?

OBJECTIVES
General

To implement a place based pedagogy that approaches students to English

language and their rural context.

Specific

To use modeled poetry writing activities to develop students vocabulary

and English writing skills.
To raise students awareness for their rural surroundings and the
importance of taking care of them.
To create a poetry book that shows both, students English progress and
their appreciation towards the rural surroundings.

THEORETICAL CONCEPTS
Place based Education

Rural Education (community based pedagogies)

CLIL

Modeled writing

Poetry for children

Project based Learning

Chapter I

Introduction
From our experience as practice teacher, and during the process of carrying out our
thesis project, we have found that talking about the pedagogic University of Colombia; it is
the first time that its language department has practice teachers doing an English practice in a
rural school. This is why; it can be deduced that little has been said about EFL students in a
rural context.
The rural context in which this project takes place is the Village of Quiba Baja,
located in the rural side of the City of Bogota, more specifically in Ciudad Bolivar. From
what we have observed, researched and experienced while doing our teaching practice, the
rural context in which the school is located has environmental issues that affect the rural area.
Talking about the immediate context of the school, the most evident issue is the garbage. Due
to this fact, we would like to use English teaching as a way to raise consciousness on students
towards their rural surroundings and the importance of taking care of them.
This consciousness is planned to be achieved by using Place Based Education, as way
to connect EFL students to the rural surroundings while learning English through modeled
writing poetry activities. Place Based Education is defined by Sobel (2004) as the process of
using, not only the community, but also the environment as the beginning to teach concepts
related to language arts and other subjects from the curriculum. Sobel (2014) also refers to
Placed Based Education as an approach to education that will help students to appreciate the
natural world, and also to develop stronger bonds to their communities.
Taking all this into account, this study is aimed to develop writing skills in EFL
students, through the implementation of poetry modeled activities, along with place based

education which would lead students to have a consciousness of their rural surroundings, in
order to create a sensitivity to take care, not only of the context in which education takes
place (the school), but also of the rural surroundings.
During the first stage of this research, which is the observational stage, Community
mapping was performed.

Community mapping is defined by the Huairou Commission

(2007) as a participatory process for assessing the situations in a community and

documenting the knowledge of community members The way in which community mapping
was done within this project, was by means of interviews to students and pictures of the
village. After the mapping of the community, this study takes on the belief that even though
students are aware of the characteristics of their rural context, they have little or none
knowledge regarding the rural context of their school, and in addition to this, they are not
conscious of the environmental issue that affects this immediate context. We find in Place
Based Pedagogy, a way to raise consciousness on students towards their rural surroundings to
help to overcome the immediate environmental issues while learning English as a foreign
language. As mentioned by Smith (2011) In addition to nurture a connection between place
and classrooms, Place Based Education develops in students and teachers, the ability to
develop contributions to solve issues that are close at hand.

Modeled poetry