What would you do without curriculum?

The older interface of Children's books (The Guardian)

The curriculum has advantages and disadvantages. For example, it helps us to know what children have to learn in each level but, at the same time, it can “oblige” to follow them.

Nevertheless, if there wasn’t curriculum, in Secondary School I would try to think what is necessary that pupils know. I would plan that and I would show them. I would explain them that I think that the presented information is what I need that is necessary but that we have to think about a project to make them in each trimester. One of them could be a cultural magazine where we write about all that we have learnt.

For instance, we can be inspired by The Guardian’s childhood and youth section. It is a section where we can find all kind of information about infancy reading. It is made up of different sections with a big amount of information, activities and literary suggestions. It had different parts as 

• Top topics: an espace where you can find the most popular topics.

• Interactive Story: a section where you can participet in the story creation.

• Latest readers reviews: an espace dedicated to readers.

• The book doctor: a part where you can find the experts' opinions.

• Latest quizzes: the best interviews.

• Meet members: to connect with other members.

• Video and audio: a section where you can watching videos or listening records about books or literary activities.

• Parents zone: the parent's area.

• Etc

Although it has change a little bit, we can take excellent ideas from this allocation. I think that we can use this idea to adapt it for our subject. For example, we can create a website or a blog with the contents worked in class. In this way, children will be more motivated because they have to follow these steps:

In addition, they will look information up in their classmate’s sites or entrances in communal site. Therefore, this can increase the feedback between pupils and strengthen their best side.

 

Regarding to assessment, I would make a rubric where the criteria were detailed. In this way, pupils could know the objectives and what I hope of them. I really like that in this project we work CLIL and we can assess the knowledge of contents and the expression. 

Link: The new children's books page   (I think that It was better the oldest page).

The European Language Portfolio (ELP): advantages and disadvantages

In this post, I am going to speak about the European Language Portfolio. Firstly, I will define it and I will explain which its parts are. After that, I am going to think about its advantages and disadvantages.

The European Language Portfolio (ELP) is “a document in which those who are learning or have learned a language - whether at school or outside school - can record and reflect on their language learning and cultural experiences.” It is composed of three parts: the Language passport, the Europass Language Passport and, finally, the Language biography.

If I would use the European Language Portfolio in class, I think that it will be useful because: 

•  It is a public tool, useful in all the European community.
• It let teachers to know the language knowledge of their pupils. It is especially interesting in multicultural or bilingual societies. In this way, teachers can get benefit from this situation to turn language class into a multilingual experience.

• It let parents to be conscious about their children improvements. Sometimes, children are exposed to other languages because they have friends, classmates, teachers who speak or teach them another language.
•  It let children valuate their language knowledge and reflect on their language experiences.
• It increases the children’s motivation to learn more language.

However, it can imply some disadvantages:

• Children can be of the opinion that European Language Portfolio is not useful.
• The process can be a little complicated or confusing.
• Some teachers are not prepared to use European Language Portfolio because they don’t know it. For this reason, someone have to prepare them if, finally, we considerate the European Language Portfolio Useful. It means that someone have to spent time and money doing it.

To sum it up, I think that the suitability of the use of the European Language Portfolio depends on the teacher who has to use it. I personally consider that this tool should be used if pupils are going to get benefit from it. I think that this tool have to be a way because if we assume it as a purpose we are really wasting time.