Didactic Guide of English - Middle School Year 1 Notes

Presentation

• The didactic guide for the first year of middle school (M.S.1) is a crucial and essential document in education.

• It serves as a comprehensive resource to support practitioners in delivering yearly syllabi effectively and enhance learner-centered teaching practices.

• The guide provides clear strategies and methods tailored to middle school learners' specific needs and age-group characteristics.

• The first year of middle school is a transitional year to help learners consolidate their pre-requisites and favors adaptation in the new cycle.

• The focus during the previous three years of primary school was primarily on oral communication, approached in an interactive and playful manner.

• At the end of primary education, learners interpret oral messages and interact orally, decode short simple messages, and produce very short written messages.

• English in primary school aims to develop basic competences in oral interaction, written comprehension, and written production.

• As learners transition into middle school, the emphasis shifts to more advanced target competences, expanding their knowledge, skills, and values.

1. General Orientation

• After reforms, the Algerian government opted for the Competency-Based Approach (CBA) to enhance the quality of education and improve learning outcomes, and make education more relevant to society and economy.

1. The Approach

• The Competency Based Approach (CBA) focuses on the development and assessment of specific knowledge, skills, and attitudes required to achieve desired outcomes and ensure effective performance in practical settings.

• The competency-based approach is based on Constructivism and Socio-Constructivism, providing a shift from teacher-centered delivery to learning outcomes and learner-centered educativos objectives.

• Robert M. Gagné emphasized that competences should be clear, measurable, and relevant, with instruction designed to guide learners through defined steps toward achieving these competencies.

Key Characteristics of the Competency-Based Approach:

• Learner-Centered: Focuses on what learners can do, considering their needs, interests, experiences, and environment.

• Outcome-Oriented: Aims for specific, measurable learning outcomes.

• Flexible Pace: Learners progress at personalized learning speeds, demonstrating mastery before moving on.

• Assessment-Driven: Ongoing assessment based on meeting specific competences or criteria.

• Integration of Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes: Competence is a combination of knowledge, practical skills, and attitudes, enabling effective application.

• Learner Motivation and Engagement: Encourages active participation and responsibility for their own learning.

2. Children Growth

• When children are around eleven years old, their perceptual cognition starts transitioning from concrete thinking to abstract thinking, significantly influencing how they learn.

• This phase marks the formal operational stage of cognitive development (Jean Piaget), characterized by deductive reasoning, abstract thinking, and logical problem-solving.

• Children develop metacognition—the ability to think about their thinking and adjust it to improve learning and problem-solving.

• Lev Vygotsky focused on the socio-cultural aspect with the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), highlighting how children's learning is facilitated by peers, teachers, and parents through scaffolding and social interaction.

• For Maslow, children around eleven focus on higher-level needs such as physical and emotional security and social relationships.

• Friendships become essential to shaping their sense of identity, seeking acceptance, recognition, and respect from peers and teachers.

3. Characteristics of Young Learners

• Young teens undergo puberty, resulting in rapid physical growth and hormonal changes, leading to temporary clumsiness and mood swings.

• They are digital natives, prefer communication through digital means, and need training to analyze information and verify its authenticity.

Intellectual and cognitive development

• Rate of knowledge acquisition increases rapidly.

• Able to group, categorize, and form vocabulary.

• Achieve better learning through practice.

• Curious and imaginative, inclined to ask questions and favor fairy tales.

• Accept questions and respond convincingly without resentment.

• Able to find relationships between things and classify them.

• Make logical comparisons and understand transitions and changes.

• Technologically savvy, gaining information from various sources.

Emotional/social development

• Develop a greater sense of responsibility and emotional connection with others.

• Crave for independence, especially in choosing personal items.

• Seek self-esteem and need to be praised for their skills and achievements.

• Make new friendships and become more influenced by peers.

• Keen on playing new games for longer periods and need to organize their time effectively.

• Often keen to negotiate expectations and regulations.

• Aware of community standards and discriminate many ethical standards and values.

Linguistic/communicative development

• Able to coordinate and connect meanings.

• Language becomes socialized rather than egocentric.

• Express themselves freely and fluently.

4. Learning/Perceptual Styles

• Learning/Perceptual Styles refer to how a person learns, remembers and understands best. The basic types of learning styles are visual, auditory, kinaesthetic and tactile (VAKT).

  • Visual learners: Get information best by seeing it.

  • Visual verbal learners: Like words/written language.

  • Visual non-verbal learners: Like graphic forms (charts, tables, graphs, pictures, symbols).

  • Auditory learners: Get information best by listening, collaboration in group settings, reading aloud to themselves.

  • Kinaesthetic learners: Hands-on, thrive when engaging all of their senses during course work.

  • Tactile learners: Get information by touching and manipulating objects.

• Many young teens are multimodal learners, adapting their learning strategies to fit different tasks and environments.

Teaching strategies for different learning/perceptual styles:

Visual:

• Visual verbal: Write instructions/questions/answers on the board, let learners read silently, give examples of finished assignments.

• Visual non-verbal: Show assignments/activities/tasks, use visual aids like diagrams/pictures/charts/graphic organizers, introduce new words/ideas using examples/images.

Auditory:

• Read instructions aloud, describe information on charts/graphs/diagrams, ask learners to discuss in small groups, let learners ask/answer questions, give oral summaries, let learners present/listen to presentations.

Kinaesthetic & Tactile:

• Use role plays/simulations, let learners work with models/different materials, visit places connected with the topic, organize group/pair work that involves movement.

  • Some activities cater to multiple styles (e.g., flash cards are visual and tactile).

5. Classroom Management

• Classroom management involves skills and techniques used by teachers to organize work in class and keep learners engaged, attentive, and focused, enhancing learning and reducing disruptive behaviors.

• Effective teachers demonstrate strong classroom-management skills.

Key aspects of classroom management:

Planning work

• Essential for successful teaching, considering lesson objectives, activities, time, materials, and interaction patterns, and the connections among them.

• Preparing a sequence of lessons that develops a topic or language area over a period of time.

Varying the seating arrangements

• Alters the traditional setup and creates a change in the routines altering the seating arrangements-roundtable, horseshoe, semicircle or pods, etc., provides opportunities for children to participate and share knowledge, experiences, and skills..

Encouraging participation

• Promotes short exchanges between teachers and learners for specific purposes.

• Teachers need to cultivate a convenient and supportive atmosphere, where errors are accepted and indicate that learners are progressing towards the instruction goals..

Providing Feedback

• Information given to someone about their performance, learning, skills, or attitudes, described by John Hattie (2012) as “information about how we are doing in our efforts to reach a goal”.

• Feedback is effective and ongoing from the beginning to the end, guiding learners' progress and must be:

  • Targeted and purposeful: in line with the stated objectives or goals.

  • Clear and meaningful: using age-appropriate language.

  • Feedback Timing: could be immediate or delayed depending on the stage of the lesson and whether the objective is fluency or accuracy.

In conclusion

• Teachers should know when, how and why to give feedback, employing the concept of a feedback sandwich (compliment, correct, compliment).

Classroom Rapport

• Building a good rapport with learners based on mutual respect, influencing their attitudes and sometimes their whole life, created by identifying learners' interests, preferences, backgrounds, and learning styles.

• Teachers have to set clear rules right from the beginning. Humour is an important factor to build bonds with learners.

Maintaining discipline

• Creating a positive community by planning step-by-step work and setting clear rules created and explained to all learners, equity is a key element to avoiding misbehaviour

Managing mixed ability classes

• Involves using inclusive strategies (flexible grouping, differentiated instruction, scaffolding, personalised feedback).

Giving Instructions

• The instruction should be clear, brief and accurate. Teachers should explain and demonstrate the instructions and check learners’ understanding through ICQs (Instruction Checking Questions).

• Good class managers demonstrate "withitness"—the ability to be aware of everything happening in the classroom at all times.

2. Classroom Guidelines

• In MS1, the emphasis shifts to more advanced target competences, building on previous years with deeper development of listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills.

Key areas of focus:

1. Teaching Listening

• Listening is a receptive skill and needs to be developed because no one can say a word before listening to it. It involves a conscious and dynamic activity of receiving a stream of sound to construct meaning.

• Listening is a complex active skills since it entails understanding a message and responding to it appropriately.

Challenges:

• Pronunciation, accent, unfamiliar vocabulary, background noise, no gaps between words, length/speed, and learners feeling they must understand every word.

Solutions:

• Ensure favorable conditions, prepare learners, develop listening comprehension skills, provide age/topic-appropriate and authentic input, teach phonological features, use visual aids, ensure audible voice and appropriate speaking speed, encourage anticipation, provide multiple listenings.

2. Teaching Speaking

• Speaking blends grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and fluency and requires fluent language users who can pronounce phonemes correctly and use appropriate stress and intonation patterns.

• Teachers should consider learners' backgrounds, knowledge, motivation, expectations, and different learning styles.

• Listening and speaking are two sides of the same coin, with listening preparing for speaking.

Challenges:

• Reticence, simultaneous thinking and speaking, some learners dominating, use of the mother tongue.

Solutions:

• Anticipate reluctance, create a safe/supportive atmosphere, allow pair/group work, create a participation plan, praise participation, and ensure topics are rooted in the syllabus.

3. Teaching Reading Comprehension

• In MS1, teachers build upon previous skills (phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary) and lead learners to discover text features (title, graphic features, source…) in two different text types: descriptive and narrative.

Challenges:

• Limited word knowledge, difficulty grasping new concepts, mispronunciation, lack of interest in the texts.

Solutions:

• Assess reading ability, pre-teach vocabulary, use visual aids, select interesting texts, assign fun games, check understanding, implement reading for leisure, and support struggling readers with audiobooks.

4. Teaching Writing

• The writing skill is a continuum. It starts with writing for literacy, followed by writing for reinforcement and ends up with writing for communication.

  • writing for literacy involves recognizing and forming letters then combining them into words.

  • writing for reinforcement includes different techniques such as: copying words, sentences and texts, filling in blanks, writing captions or labels for pictures, changing texts grammatically, and taking dictation.

  • writing for communication comprises expressing ideas accurately, organizing ideas into recognizable written forms and writing well.

  • In MS1, learners are expected to produce simple written messages of predominantly descriptive and narrative types of about 35 words related to the learners‟ interests, daily concern and environment using the reading message as a model and writing skill.

Challenges:

• Lack of vocabulary, time constraints, difficulties engaging learners.

Solutions:

• Plan work, monitor learners' work, evaluate it, use all sessions as conducive to writing, prepare learners through reading comprehension, improve writing sub-skills through dictation and grammar games, promote cooperative writing initially, and use individual writing for assessment.

5. Teaching Grammar

• Grammar comprises word order (syntax), tenses and different word classes and serves, supports and facilitates both oral and written communication

Challenges:

• Grammar is abstract, teaching it in isolation can be irrelevant, complexity can be overwhelming, varying levels of understanding, lack of motivation, extensive content, and difficulty with freer practice activities.

Solutions:

• Make it less abstract using visual aids and stories, teach in context, engage with interactive tasks, simplify/scaffold concepts, focus on reinforcement/constructive feedback, provide meaningful practice/guidance.

3. The Syllabus

1. The Framing of the Syllabus

• The syllabus consists of two main parts: the exit profile and a description of the syllabus content.

 The exit profile

• The exit profile describes what learners should be able to do by the end of the cycle and the year. It includes the global competence, the values and Cross-Curricular Competences.

  • The global competence defines concisely what is expected from learners and what they are able to do, according to their age, needs and immediate environment, at the end of the year, the key stage or the cycle to ensure the vertical coherence in the curriculum.

  • The purpose of education is to instil the values that a society has chosen for itself.

    • Values common to all its members: political and social, cultural and spiritual whose objective is to consolidate the national unity.

    • Individual values: emotional and moral values, aesthetic values and humanist values opening onto the universal.

    • Missions of school in terms of spiritual and civic values are: - Assertion of the Algerian personality and consolidation of the unity of the nation through the promotion and preservation of the national values. - Training on citizenship, promoting and developing human resources; - Openness to the world; - Reaffirmation of the principle of democratization. *The cross-curricular competences complement each other and are of four different types: intellectual, methodological, communicative and personal and social.

      • Intellectual: refers to the basic competences (using information, exercising critical thinking, solving problems and using creativity) that can be mobilised as resources in the development of competences.

      • Methodological: is the combination of skills and procedural knowledge that are mobilized to solve problem situations, to adapt procedures to the resolution of specific situations, or to develop new procedures to solve new situations.

      • Communicative: concerns all areas of communication, expression and verbal and non- verbal interaction. Languages and the various conventional languages are considered to support the development of communicative competences.

      • Personal and social: these are all the integrative skills that can mobilise the individual and/or collective resources of a group to carry out a project.

      • Domains: there are four domains: oral comprehension, oral production, written comprehension and written production.
        *Target competences: there are four target competences. They serve the global competence

      • Resources: they are of two types: Linguistic resources and Cross-curricular resources

4. Planning

Planning learning

Time Allocation:

• MS1 learners study English for one hour twice a week in addition to one hour per two weeks devoted to tutorial sessions.

• Yearly timing: 28 weeks

• Weekly timing: 2hs /week 1 h tutorial session/ 2 weeks

• Annual amount: 70 hours

• N.B. Time alloted to summative assessment is four (04) weeks.

1. The Teaching / Learning Framework:

• Along MS1, the global competence is segmented into 03 levels of achievement. These levels of achievement are developed through three (03) sequences which are dealt with along the year regardless of the terms.

2. The Sequence Layout:

• The sequence in MS1 consists of sessions of 1 hour or more each.

3. The Sequence Components:

• In MS1, the sequence comprises the following rubrics:

 Get Ready (at the beginning of each sequence)

• Its main objective is to put learners in a problem solving situation. In order to deal with this situation, learners need to mobilize the appropriate linguistic and cross- curricular resources that learners are not equipped with yet. Teachers should motivate learners and encourage them to express their representations regarding the proposed tasks.

Listen and Interact

• This session is devoted to listening to a short message and interacting with peers and the teacher

• The learners listen to a message and identify the gist, i.e. the general idea of the listening message and specific information using the appropriate activity.

 Listen and Consider

• Involves retaining chunks, recognizing and using the target language forms in context (from the listening script already dealt with in „Listen and Interact‟), and practicing pronunciation (sounds, intonation, stress placement)

 Read and Interpret

• Understanding a written message involves the abilities to read a text -decoding symbols- and process information so as to understand its meaning.

• Involves reading a simple message of about 55 words, recognising and using reading skills: skimming (to get the general idea) and scanning (to get specific information) and instil values.

 Read and Consider

• Targets language forms in context (the previously read text in „Read and Interpret’). Learners recognize and use target language forms through exposure to context/ written texts

 Write together

• is conducted collaboratively so as learners benefit from one another and from the teacher‟s instruction and feedback.

• Teachers guide learners in their writing by first engaging them in listening, speaking, and reading activities related to a specific topic

 Write Alone

• Learners work individually to produce a written message of about 35 words using the text a model and the writing skills