TOPIC 2O: EL ÁREA DE LENGUAS EXTRANJERAS EN EL CURRÍCULO.

CRITERIOS A REFLEJAR EN EL PROYECTO

EDUCATIVO DE CENTRO Y EN EL PROYECTO CURRICULAR DE CENTRO.

2. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CURRICULUM.

After having given some background information about the relevance of this topic, I will start the essay providing an
overview of the official curriculum and its organization. The curriculum is open and flexible, as there are four main
levels of concretion.

 At a national level, the Organic Law for Modification of LOE (LOMLOE 3/2020) December 29th and the Royal
Decree 157/2022 March 1st, establish the teaching requirements for Primary Education in Spain.

This national law puts a special emphasis on aspects concerning

o continuous and diagnostic assessment,

o preventive and reinforcement measures to attend to students with learning difficulties,

o the criteria for student’ promotion, the conditions for accessing the educational stages and the organization of
Primary Education in three stages,

o the inclusion of cross-curricular aspects in all areas of Primary Education,

o and aspects related to inclusive education, among others.

 This nationwide legislation is contextualized in any Autonomous Community. In our case, it is done by the Decree
81/2022 July 13th, which specifies the curriculum for all areas in Primary Education for the Community of CM.

 Thirdly, the concrete characteristics of a school have to be taken into account, so the official curriculum is put into
context. In order to do so, the School Educational Project is created. It includes a curricular concretion for any of
the subjects and any of the academic years.

 Finally, taking the curricular concretions as a base, teachers have to create their own didactic program, specifically
addressed to cater for the needs of the concrete group of students.

This fact requires to analyze the educational situation we are going to deal with. For that purpose, it is necessary to
reflect on some important issues.

 The particular traits of the students in your class have to be considered: their educational and personal needs,
their previous knowledge and experiences, their interests, their family backgrounds, their social origin and their
learning styles.

 Moreover, we need to take into account the resources we have at our disposal for the development of the
syllabus design.

 A didactic plan includes key decisions about what, how and when to teach and assess. This document is crucial,
since it sets the basis for efficient teaching.

 Our programs have to be created according to the official prescriptive curriculum.

 In order to be adequate, it is essential to understand some premises about the process of learning:

o Children learn using specific experiences and putting into practice their cognitive and meta-cognitive abilities.

o A foreign language is mainly acquired by being exposed to it, and by practicing it.

o For the purpose of keeping pupils' active participation, motivation and concentration, it is necessary to use a
varied, flexible and attractive methodology.

Once teachers have reflected on these essential features, they are in disposition to elaborate the didactic program,
which can be defined as a set of didactic units that mainly contain: objectives, key competences, specific competences,
contents, pedagogical principles, tasks and learning situations, assessment criteria and measures for attending the
diversity.

Related to the former component, a didactic plan must also include Individual Curricular Adaptations, which adapt the
teaching plan to the specific situation of the students who have special educational needs. They adapt objectives and
contents for those specific cases, and they can be considered the last level of concretion of the official curriculum.

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Just to finish this part of the essay, I would like to point out that creating a teaching plan is one of the most relevant
responsibilities that a teacher needs to face. A good syllabus design in accordance to the standing legislation helps
teachers to face the lessons in a coherent manner, facilitating every-day work.

But it is necessary to understand a teaching program as a flexible and adaptable tool. Teachers cannot be completely
submitted to a fixed plan. On the contrary, they need to adapt it when necessary. This implies extending the length of
the units, creating reinforcement tasks, revising previous contents and preparing additional and remedial work for both
students who are not achieving the objectives, and for those who are able to get the aims faster than expected.

3. CRITERIA TO BE REFLECTED IN THE SCHOOL EDUCATIONAL PROJECT AND THE CURRICULAR CONCRETIONS.

In this part of the essay I am going to focus on two key organizational documents, which have to be designed by any
school.

o The Educational Project of the school is meant to specify the main decisions taken by the educative community and
the general organization of the school, so it defines the identity of the center. It includes basic information, like a socio-
cultural and economic context, the main teaching objectives and priorities, and a brief analysis of the pupil's needs. In
addition, some specific plans and documents are included.

 The General Annual Plan, which contains decisions that will change every year and the ones which will result from
the revision of the Educational Project. It includes supplementary activities, timetables, reports, etc.

 The 'Attention to Diversity Plan', which provides specific measures for attending to the necessities of all the
students, putting a special focus on those with special educative needs, students with high abilities, and students
who have incorporated the school later than expected.
 The 'Tutorial Action Plan', whose main objective is to support the teachers who act as tutors in the school. The
plan covers some guidelines for the accomplishment of their responsibilities: assessment, orienting and informing
pupils and families, communicating with other teachers who work with the group etc.
 'Internal Regulation Document' and the 'Plan for Coexistence' set up basic rules for organizing the school,
managing behavior and preventing conflicts.
 'Reading Plan' and 'ICT Plan', which promote the use of new technologies and reading among the pupils.

o The curricular concretions compile the specifications of the curriculum for any of the areas and any of the
academic years. They are made by the teaching staff, they make the teaching practice more consistent in the
school and they adapt the curricular basis to the specific context of the center. These concretions are the basis
used by teachers to create their own annual teaching plan for a particular group of students. This is the most
concrete degree of specification, and is going to be analyzed for the area of English in the next point of the essay.

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4. ELEMENTS OF THE AREA OF ENGLISH IN THE CURRICULUM.

In the following point I am going to focus on the main elements and principles for planning the area of English in
Primary Education according to the official curriculum.

 The objectives are the achievements that the pupils are expected to accomplish at the end of a didactic unit, a
course year, and even after the whole educational process. In our current legislation, we can distinguish between
general objectives for the whole stage of Primary Education; and specific objectives for each area, called specific
competences. The main global aim of the area of English, which is objective F, is to get the capacity to
communicate effectively using the four basic skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) in common situations.
This is to say, to promote the progressive acquisition of communicative competence. Due to the importance of this
concept, I am going to present a brief explanation of it. Communicative competence.

 The second element to analyze is the key competences. They can be defined as the capacities to use your
knowledge to solve real situations effectively. A competence combines knowledge, skills, values and attitudes.
There are eight of them: linguistic communication; multi-lingual; mathematical, scientific, technology and
engineering; digital; personal, social and learning to learn; citizenship; entrepreneurship and cultural awareness
and expression competences. All of them have to be promoted in a global and transversal way, so all the areas
must contribute to their development. In relation to this element, it is important to highlight that LOMLOE has
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 incorporated a new concept, called the output profile, which encompasses a link between Primary and Secondary
Education. It defines the capacities related to the key competences that students are expected to achieve at the
end of the whole stage of Primary Education. These abilities are specified for each academic year throughout the
specific competences.

 The contents or basic knowledge can be understood as the knowledge and abilities that are required to achieve
the objectives. The standing legislation divides the curriculum of the area of English into four main blocks of
contents: communication; multilingualism; intercultural aspects and syntactic and discursive elements.

When planning how to organize the objectives and contents of a didactic program, I would personally point out
some important factors to bear in mind.

o The previous knowledge of the students should be taken as a starting point.

o Contents are submitted to the cognitive development of the students . They cannot interiorize certain
concepts because of their age and maturity.

o They need to be developed from basic and concrete to more complex and abstract ones, and respecting the
natural order in which the basic skills are acquired, since reception comes before production, and oral skills
precede written ones.

o The topics of the units have to be built around meaningful realities for the children, close to their
experiences and interests.

o It is important to organize the contents in a cyclical way, giving the students the opportunity to revise them
periodically.

o Finally, I would highlight integration of skills and integration with other areas of the curriculum as key
factors for the sequence of contents and objectives.

 Concerning pedagogical principles, it is crucial to establish a set of strategies, procedures and techniques in order
to facilitate the teaching-learning process and the achievement of the goals by the pupils. Our educational system
advocates for the implementation of a communicative approach in the area of English, which implies setting up a
varied, flexible and integrated methodology. Some relevant issues are the attention to the diversity of the
students, the prevention of learning difficulties, the inclusion of information and communication technologies and
education in values.
Apart from these general guidelines, I would personally point out the necessity to follow the methodological
principles stated by Richards and Rodgers regarding activities: task, meaningfulness and communication.
Similarly, the sessions can be organized according to a scheme presented by Brewster, which is composed of four
stages: warm-up (preparing students for further work), presentation (introduction of contents), practice
(assimilation of contents focusing on accuracy) and production (free communication focusing on fluency).

 As far as attention to diversity is concerned, it is also necessary to include ordinary measures for a proper
attention to all students’, which will mainly be methodological and organizational adaptations. On another note,
pupils with special educative needs will require extraordinary measures, which can even require individual
curricular adaptations.
Regarding this important issue, I would personally highlight following an approach called Universal Design for
Learning (UDL), specifically mentioned in LOMLOE, and supported by several pedagogues such as Meyer and
Rose. It makes special emphasis on variety and flexibility, giving all students an equal opportunity to succeed by
providing them different ways to learn; and it is based on the following main principles.
Representation: presenting contents in a variety of ways and formats to support comprehension.
Action and expression: giving children more than one way to interact and work with the materials and to show
what they learn.
Engagement: stimulating and sustaining motivation and effort among pupils, by setting up safe, relevant and
engaging learning environment.

Taking into consideration those principles, I would personally like to present some specific techniques and
resources to include within a communicative syllabus design.

• Songs, used for presenting and revising the contents in an appealing way. They facilitate memorization and
reduce the affective filter of the students.

• Games, which incorporate fun and variety to the class, promoting participation and motivation.

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 • Drama activities, like simulations and role-plays, which allow teachers to set up a contextualized
environment. They are a great opportunity to experience the language in a meaningful way.

• Literature, which can be used in many different ways (story-telling, reading, writing poems). It promotes the
cultural awareness and expression competence of the students since it introduces the poetic function of the
language.

• Pair and group work, it encourages the children to communicate with their partners while they learn to work
in groups, promoting the personal, social and learning to learn competence.

• Projects, they are long-term activities that involve putting into practice cognitive and metacognitive abilities
(resourcing, summarizing, elaborating, planning…).

• Information and communication technologies: blogs, wikis, interactive activities and games and other
computer-based materials are beneficial since they promote of the digital competence, but also because they
engage students into working.

 Self-access corners, such as a listening, reading or a games corner will give students the opportunity to
practice autonomously. They are especially useful to provide additional work to fast-finishers, as well as treat
the diversity of the class with revision, reinforcement and extension activities and tasks.

All the techniques mentioned above should be included in the classroom dynamics with the purpose to set up
meaningful, active and contextualized tasks based on students’ interests and experiences. They will make students put
into practice key and specific competences, as well as working on the contents and constructing their own knowledge.
This is to say, they are useful techniques to use within learning situations, which are established in the Decree
157/2022 as the basis of the teaching-learning process from a methodological point of view.

 Regarding assessment, we must follow the premises stated in the current legislation, so it is necessary to set up a
global, systematic and continuous process with the intention to make the necessary adjustments of the teaching
process in order to increase its overall quality. Evaluation depends on several factors.
o Depending on what to asses, both learning and teaching processes must be analyzed.
o Depending on who assesses we must use hetero-evaluation, but we should also promote co-evaluation and
self-evaluation among the students.
o Depending on when to assess, there are three main types.

 Initial evaluation (to determine the previous knowledge of the students).

 Formative evaluation (to find out aspects to improve during the lessons) and
 Summative evaluation (to check if the students are achieving the goals).
o Depending on how to assess, we can use a variety of tools and techniques like systematic observation, a
classroom diary, worksheets, projects, rubrics, tests and homework.

The main components for evaluation are the assessment criteria. By using them, students' progress can be checked in
terms of the acquisition of contents and competences (both key and specific ones), in an observable, measurable and
objective manner.
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