TOPIC 21: LA PROGRAMACIÓN DEL ÁREA DE LENGUAS EXTRANJERAS: UNIDADES DE PROGRAMACIÓN.

CRITERIOS PARA LA
SECUENCIA Y TEMPORIZACIÓN DE CONTENIDOS Y OBJETIVOS. SELECCIÓN DE LA METODOLOGÍA A EMPLEAR EN LAS
ACTIVIDADES DE APRENDIZAJE Y EVALUACIÓN

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2. FOREIGN LANGUAGE PLANNING.

Once I have provided some background information about the topic, I will start the essay presenting the principles to take
into consideration when planning the area of English in Primary Education.

First of all, it is necessary to understand how the curriculum is organized in our current legislation. It 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 continuous and diagnostic assessment; preventive and
reinforcement measures to attend to students with learning difficulties; the criteria for student’ promotion, the
conditions for accessing the different educational stages and the organization of Primary Education in three stages; the
inclusion of cross-curricular aspects in all areas; 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
61/2022 July 13th, which specifies the curriculum for all areas in Primary Education for the Community of Madrid.

 Thirdly, the concrete characteristics of a school have to be taken into account, so the official curriculum is put into
context. For that purpose, the School Educational Project is elaborated, which 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, including Individual Curricular Adaptations for
students who have special educational needs.

This fact requires to analyze the educational situation we are going to deal with. Now, I am going to present the main aspects
to consider.

 The particular traits of the students in your class need to be analyzed: their educational and personal needs, previous
knowledge and experiences, interests, social origin and learning styles, among others.

 Moreover, we need to consider 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 important to understand some premises about the process of learning. Some of the most
relevant ones are the following.

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

o A foreign language is mainly acquired by being exposed to it and 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 or basic
knowledge, pedagogical principles, tasks and learning situations, assessment criteria and measures for attending the diversity
of the class.

3. PLANNING DIDACTIC UNITS.

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In the prior point of the essay I have presented an overview of a whole didactic plan. Now I am going to focus on some
principles when preparing didactic units and lessons, by outlining some guidelines provided by pedagogues like Brewster.

 The main objective of the lessons is a key factor. She suggested organizing them around several possibilities:
grammatical structures, functions of the language, phonological points, lexical items, a skill or a topic.

 The materials play an essential role, so they need to be checked and prepared in advance. They must fit our students'
needs, promote autonomous work, include various levels of difficulty and present a link with the real world.

 The use of space in the classroom also conditions the organization of the sessions, so we need to decide the most
appropriate arrangements and groupings (whole class, individually, in pairs, in groups, U-shape). Similarly, a good
organization depends on the location of relevant resources (the blackboard, the teacher's desk or the reading and
listening corners).

 Finally, time has to be considered. It is important to set realistic timings, to prepare enough work for practice, and to
avoid rushing. Besides, we need additional materials for fast-finishers, a lesson should never finish in the middle of an
activity, and we must organize several short activities because pupils tend to lose their concentration.

Apart from these general guidelines, I would like to highlight that in order to respect the natural order in the development of
the language, the sessions of the didactic unit should move progressively from the receptive skills (listening and reading) to
the productive ones (speaking and writing); and from the oral abilities to the written ones. In a similar way, activities and
contents should progress from easier to more complex ones.

In order to realize these aims, we can follow the scheme presented by Brewster for the effective organization of lessons and
didactic units. They are divided into four stages.

o Warm-up, to prepare students for further work.

o Presentation: pupils receive the meaningful input as new contents are presented.
o Practice: students start assimilating the contents by practicing them through drills and code-controlled activities. They
produce the structured output and the priorities are accuracy and correction.
o Production: children use the language in a more freely way through tasks and communicative games. They produce the
communicative output and the priorities are communication and fluency.
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4. CRITERIA FOR SEQUENCING AND TIMING CONTENTS AND OBJECTIVES.

In this point I am going to present a deep analysis of the essential criteria for the organization of contents and objectives.

 First of all, it is necessary to consider the age and cognitive development of our students. Many pedagogues like Piaget
highlighted that the process of learning is conditioned by the overall maturation of the children, so it depends on social,
affective, motivational and cognitive factors. Any age has its own constraints and opportunities for teaching, and
programs have to respect that process of development.

 A didactic plan has to be organized according to the natural order stated by Krashen: from concrete to more abstract
contents; and from informal language to formal one.

 It is obvious that the progressive development of grammar points is another crucial aspect, as any grammatical structure
cannot be learnt until more basic ones have been acquired.

 Following constructivist ideas, it is essential to build the didactic units around meaningful realities for the children, what
Freinet defined as the centers of interest of the students. Hence, the topics chosen must be interesting for them and
close to their realities.

 Similarly, the previous experiences of the pupils have to be taken as a starting point basing the lessons on what learners
have previously learnt.

 The contents of a didactic program must be organized in a cyclical way, ensuring that there is time for revision and pupils
have the opportunity to connect previous and new contents.

 In order to promote the general development of the children, we need to connect the program with other areas of the
curriculum. Cross-curricular (transversal) work is in accordance with the principles of the Multiple Intelligences Theory by
Gardner, who establishes that individuals can access to new information in various ways, as we all have a linguistic, a
logical-mathematical, a kinesthetic, a visual-spatial, a naturalistic, a musical, an intrapersonal and an interpersonal
intelligence.

 Integration is promoted from another point of view: the integration of the four basic skills (listening, speaking, reading
and writing). This is essential for the development of communicative competence.
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 Furthermore, it is necessary to consider not only what children must know and understand, but also how to use the
knowledge in a practical way, promoting attitudes and abilities. In our current legislation, this concept is developed
through the key competences, which have to be worked in a globalized manner. In relation to this element, it is important
to highlight that LOMLOE has 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.

Finally, concerning the creation of a teaching plan, I would personally point out flexibility as one of the most important
aspects. Planning is crucial, but our whole work cannot be submitted to a fixed plan. Teachers need to adapt the units when
necessary. If the objectives are not being achieved, the length of the units can be extended, reinforcement activities can be
set up and previous contents should be revised. On the other hand, we need to have extension and additional tasks for the
students who are able to get the aims faster than expected.

For those reasons, a teaching plan has to be considered as a helpful and necessary tool, but also as an open and flexible
instrument. By doing so, we will be treating the diversity of the class, taking advantage of a more individualized teaching
scenario.

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5. SELECTION OF METHODOLOGY.

In this part of the essay I am going to reflect on some important factors from the methodological point of view. For that
purpose, I am going to follow the principles of the communicative approach, which is advocated by current pedagogues and it
is stated in our current legislation.

The main goal of this approach is the progressive acquisition of communicative competence. This aim is achieved setting up a
balanced view between accuracy and fluency, by fostering both deductive grammar instruction and real language use; and
among the four basic skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing). As communicative competence is a crucial concept to
understand, I will provide a brief overview. (COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE)

In order to get communicative competence, activities must follow the principles stated by Richards and Rodgers:
communication, task and meaningfulness principles. Therefore, activities must convey real communication, they must be
based on seemingly real-life tasks, and they must include real and meaningful language.

Another crucial factor in this approach is the role of the students: they must participate actively, making decisions about their
own process of learning. In fact, according to the principles of the student-centered approach, pupils are considered the very
center of the teaching-learning process. Learning is achieved by self-discovery, and one of the main priorities is to promote
autonomy.

Related to the role of the teachers, we must adapt our role depending on the necessities. Hence, instead of being always a
controller, we can also act as an organizer, a monitor, a prompter, a resource or as a mere participant.

As regards materials, I can highlight that they must be varied (written, audio-visual, computer-based, task-based), motivating
and they should be connected to the real world. Following Candlin and Edelhoff, teachers can incorporate some authenticity
to the materials through the goal of the activities, the task, the environment or the text.

Concerning procedure, I can highlight two interesting methodologies that are commonly used within this approach. Firstly,
Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL): it consists on using the language not as a mere goal, but as a means to learn
other kind of contents (science or arts). This way, students are exposed to a large amount of language, and they use it in a
meaningful way.

Secondly, task-based learning, characterized by the implementation of meaningful and authentic tasks such as projects, which
are the core of the instruction and imply putting into practice cognitive and metacognitive abilities such as resourcing,
summarizing and planning.

As regards attention to diversity, 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. 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.

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Following these principles, some practical techniques and resources that I would persoanllhy suggest are: songs; games;
drama activities (role-plays, simulations); literature; establishing a reading and a listening corner; Information and
Communication Technologies through interactive activities and games; the inclusion of socio-cultural aspects of English
speaking countries through topicality and projects, etc.

This variety of resources involves a large number of benefits: they add variety; they increase motivation and participation;
they reduce the affective filter of the students as they create a more pleasant atmosphere in the class and they help us treat
diversity among the students, and so forth. But above all, they promote the development of the key competences.
What is more, 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 Royal Decree 157/2022 as the
basis of the teaching-learning process from a methodological point of view.

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6. ASSESSMENT.

The last part of the topic deals with the process of evaluating the teaching-learning process, which is another essential
component of a teaching program. We must follow the premises stated in the current legislation, so it is necessary to set up a
global, systematic and continuous process. It is meant to help us analyze all the aspects of the teaching process and to make
the necessary adjustments in order to increase its overall quality.
In order to get that aim, it is necessary to find out the reasons of underachievement among the students like boredom, lack of
interest or inappropriate contents or tasks.

Assessment depends on several factors.

 Depending on what to asses, both learning and teaching processes must be analyzed.
 Depending on who assesses we must use hetero-evaluation, but we must also promote co-evaluation and self-
evaluation among the students.