Instructional Materials

Instructional material design guide
Paola Keller
s213675
Due Date: 13th December 2010
Instructional material design guide
Paola Keller
s213675
Teaching material is an important part of most Languages Other Than English
(LOTE) programmes. From textbooks, videotapes and Internet resources, teachers
rely heavily on a diverse range of material to support their teaching and their student’s
learning. However, despite the current rich array of language teaching material
commercially available many teachers continue to produce their own material for
classroom use. According to Richards, J. (2001) many teachers underestimate how
commercial teaching materials are developed and the developmental process that are
normally involved.
Preparing effective teaching material is similar to the process involved in
planning and teaching a lesson. It starts with a learning goal in mind and then seeks to
create a set of activities that can enable that goal to be achieved (Richards, 2001).
This paper looks at an instructional material produced to teach Italian at the middle
school level (Eighth Grade) in a Tasmanian Catholic school. The instructional
material designed is a visual aid, consisting of eleven (10) flashcards, created to
improve students’ pronunciation and to assess their knowledge on gender and articles
in a Language other than English.
St. Mary’s College in Hobart
At St. Mary’s College, teachers have a syllabus and textbooks they need to
follow at a set pace to ensure consistency and to satisfy the requirements of
Tasmanian Curriculum framework. The style of presentation, however, is left up to
the teacher. They write lesson plans adding their own activities or additional material
as they see fit to complement the lesson. The school encourages a personal approach
to teaching rather than straight textbook study.
Class description
The group of students is made up of 30 keen girls who study Italian as a
compulsory subject. This is their second year of Italian but based on limited allocated
time in the timetable, their level in the target language is at Standard 2, Stage 6, which
corresponds to Fourth Grade of the Tasmanian Curriculum (Department of Education,
2009),. Most of the girls are very mature students for their age who are tackling their
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work with proficiency and eagerness. They are usually full of energy; however, they
have a short attention span for anything that they consider boring, useless or too
difficult.
The students also learn another language; this can become difficult when
having to cater for all the diverse language levels in the classroom. Although there is a
student in the class where English is not her first language, her proficiency and
literacy levels are extremely good for an ESL student. There are times when it
becomes difficult for this student when translating pieces of work into English as she
does not have all the necessary vocabulary. This is easily overcome with teacher
assistance and by the use of created material (textbook or handout) with topic
vocabulary at the bottom of the page. There are a couple of students that come from
Italian backgrounds and offer a wealth of knowledge on some areas, especially
cultural. These students have a very keen approach to their learning and are mature
enough to understand the different type of culture and the varying levels of learning in
the classroom and accept these differences.
According to Piaget (1986-1980), students around the age of 13-14 develop
the capacity for abstract, systematic and scientific thinking. For example, adolescents
find it easier than children to understand the sorts of higher-order, abstract logic
inherent in proverbs, metaphors, and analogies. The adolescent's greater facility with
abstract thinking also permits the application of advanced reasoning and logical
processes to social and ideological matters. The development of complex thinking
leads to dramatic revisions in the way adolescent see themselves, others and the world
in general. Their ability to reflect on their own thoughts, combined with the physical
and psychological changes they are undergoing, means that they think more about
themselves (Inhelder & Piaget, 1955). Piaget's theory assumes that all children go
through the same sequence of development, but at different rates. Planning lessons for
these different levels of learning is often difficult; the need to be organized is
extremely important as some students need extra work and others need more time to
work on tasks that have been set. This not only includes their different learning needs
but also takes into consideration of their different cultural background.
Curriculum connection
The aim and the scope of the new instructional material created are to provide
all students with knowledge and understanding of the specific vocabulary of items of
clothing, the pronunciation, gender and articles in a language other than English. It
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will also access and integrate knowledge and ideas from Literacy The learning
opportunities developed by the material are in line with the requirements of
Tasmanian Curriculum at Standard 2, Stage 6:
Pronunciation and Intonation:
1. Pronunciation of letter combinations of consonants and vowels e.g. ba, bi, bo,
be, bu, da, di, do, de, du
Articles:
1. Developing an understanding of gender and forms in definite articles
Nouns:
2. Incidental use of gender and number e.g. il papà, la mamma
3. Incidental use of simple plurals e.g. il bambino, i
At Standard 2, Stage 6 of the Tasmanian Curriculum Framework for Languages
other than English (LOTE), students engage in language tasks that are tightly
scaffolded and sequenced and use the language in everyday contexts. They read, view
and enjoy a range of familiar, predictable and / or simple texts. Students are
developing an understanding of language used in simple, repetitive sentence
structures that are heavily dependent on context, visuals, gestures and intonation for
understanding. Students recognise and assign meaning to short, familiar texts they see
around them, such as classroom signs and labels (Tasmanian Curriculum).
Design Guide introduction for a LOTE lesson
Learning a foreign language is a cumulative process. Each chapter or lesson is
built on all the ones that came before it. The vocabulary and grammatical structure
learned in one textbook’s chapter will recur in the next section. Therefore, in order to
facilitate and retain students’ previous knowledge, I modified the activity of Unit 7 in
the textbook “Pronti Via” on pg 54 and converted the page content into 10 flashcards.
The reason for the changes was to create tasks that actively engage students in
exposition and assimilation of classroom material. This engagement directly supports
my specific learning objective, which is the further introduction of a new grammar
structure and facilitate the passage from an activity to the other. As part of such an
activity, students would be active – moving, standing, talking and working with props.
I believe that the use of flashcards is especially useful for students with visual
learning channel or modality preference (Gardener, 1995). Furthermore, an activity
with flashcards is valuable for visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learners. In fact, it
engages visual learners because they relate to pictures and need the support of
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diagrams, video or flashcards. It engages auditory learners because they enjoy
listening activities and they usually spell a word by sounding it out first. Finally,
kinaesthetic learners will enjoy the flashcards game because they may find it hard to
sit for long periods of time.
In order to introduce the new language grammar I need to reinforce students’
prior knowledge. The flashcards give me the opportunity to assess not only their
pronunciation but also their knowledge on articles and gender in the target language.
As Piaget (1954) states, students’ or pupils' cognitive ability develops sequentially adapting new experience before modifying schemata to accommodate it. As a teacher,
I will affirm, complete or correct a variety of existing schemata. This requires a link
between the new learning and prior knowledge. Moreover, the flashcards are a valid
material and can be used also as a brainstorming and warm-up activity at the
beginning of the next lesson to review previous material.
The language context chosen was strictly based on the course book, “Pronti
Via”, for Unit 7. All the pictures of the clothing items are represented on pg.54 of the
course text.
Material designed
The material consists of 10 flashcards, designed with Cunnigsworth’s
principle (1995) in mind, where activities have to lead to personal involvement and
“self-investment” in the learning process, and should include a competitive or
problem-solving element. Each card is double sided and shows the word and the
article of the item on one side and just the item’s picture in the reverse. Symbols and
pictures drawn on the cards facilitate students’ recall. According to O' Neil (1992),
picture associations make bridging the gap between the concrete to the symbolic state
easy.
The idea of double sided flashcards is for different scopes:
Flashcards without words

Stress the pronunciation and assist in remembering the clothing item's word. The
accent on the CDs that accompanied the textbook is Australian/Italian and this has
a detrimental effect on the pronunciation. As I am a native speaker, and can
model perfect sounding Italian pronunciation, I say the words first and students
repeat them. This enables my students to associate my pronunciation with word
and image and gives them an authentic experience of the language they are
learning.
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Flashcards with words

Review gender and articles. I highlight the masculine and feminine articles, and
the endings of the word (noun) with different colours (blue for masculine and
pink for feminine). It allows students to easily associate that feminine words in
the target language end in "a" and are preceded by the article "la" and masculine
words end in "o" and are preceded by the article "il".
According to Goldstein (2002), encoding and retrieval are enhanced with the use
of colour coding (Goldstein, 2002). Colour coding functions to identify important
information, indicate relationships among different pieces of information, organise
information, and provide a schema for encoding and retrieving information to and
from memory. According to Mastropieri and Scruggs (1991), visual materials help to
organise information in a way that enhances encoding and retrieval. The amount of
information per card is limited in order to permit students to take a mental “picture”
of the information.
.. And evaluation:
My major aim in producing the flashcards was to transform the book's content
into something more appropriate for students’ knowledge and more student-centred.
In a Piagetian framework, an acceleration approach may result in superficial and not
real learning (Piaget, 1986-1980 It is only when the student has acquired the mental
structure to assimilate the new experience that true learning takes place. Moreover,
making classes students-centred means thinking about how students are learning and
putting them in the role of active participant rather then passive listener (Dewey,
1938-1997).
I hope this visual aid will help students master the language forms. I expect
also that flashcards produce a few "Aha! moments", derived from the association of
the item's article with the item's gender. “Aha! moments" are products of insight
teaching, where learning involves a period of mental manipulation of information
associated with a problem (Kohler, 1925). The flashcards are stimulating students to
notice similarities and differences in the target language patterns. According to the
Tasmanian Curriculum, students at Standard 2 are able to implement this mental
process. Moreover, Piaget (1886-1980), asserts that in this stage (13-14 years old),
intelligence is demonstrated through logical and systematic manipulation of symbols
related to concrete objects.
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Use of the Flashcards in class
The flashcards are introduced to students once they have completed the
listening and the reading comprehension activity for Unit 7 of the Italian textbook
"Pronti Via" (pg.52-53) and they have recorded the new structures and vocabulary on
their exercise book. I show the labelled flashcards first and ask to stress and repeat
after me the sounds and the pronunciation of the words. Then I present a game with
the flashcards without the label:
Activity with Flashcards with words:
The activity created with the use of the new instructional material should
motivate students to improve in the use of three of the four skills, reading, speaking,
and listening. According to Wade, Buxton and Kelly (1999), in fact, motivation acts
as a drive to perform and to be engaged in a cognitive or physical activity.
To comply with the principle of Learning, Teaching and Assessment
Principles included in the Tasmanian Curriculum, the flashcards activity is organised
reflecting the concepts of Gardner's Multiple Intelligence (1995) and Bloom's
Taxonomy (1956). However, it engages students only in lower-order thinking. In fact,
the activity explores Level 1 of Boom's Taxonomy in which students do not go
beyond simple reproduction of knowledge. Bloom’s taxonomy is a hierarchy of
questions which breaks down critical thinking skills into different levels. It is usually
depicted as a triangle with six levels (Bloom, 1956).
LOTE students need more work at the bottom of the triangle. They need
practice asking and answering simple questions first and to understand when and how
to use the sentence frames. The flashcards focus just on basic questions such as
"Where is…?", where students are asking to simply recall information. In this specific
activity much of their work consists of memorization. In general, any information or
piece of content that learners or users recollect, identify, and define is at the
knowledge level.
Activity with Flashcards without words:
I invite students to form 5 small circles and I put the set of cards without labels
in the centre of each. Then a student asks another, stressing the pronunciation: “Dove
e' la giacca?" (Where is the jacket?) The students answer: "La giacca e' qui" (The
jacket is here). Then she takes the flashcard with the jacket and gives it to the first
student repeating: “Ecco la giacca” (Here is the jacket). She asks her to stick the card
on the board. When all the cards are on the board, the group that guesses all the
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clothing items first, wins. I do not take part in the game but observe the students. As
Phye (1997) suggested, observation is the central component of performance
assessment.
Subsequently, I work with all the class and invite a student to leave the class.
Then another student takes a card and hides it. After that, the class asks the student
who was out of the room, “Cosa manca?" (What is missing?). The student has to
guess it.
Comments on activities and material
The material is designed, then, not only for challenging students but also to
generate participation. In fact, it is designed to allow students to work as a class as
well. From this activity I might elicit further information about the students’
understanding of basic grammar structure in the target language. I will decide at the
end of the game if it is time to proceed with the next activity or focus more on these
grammar concepts.
As Vygotzky (1978) states, students are able to do tasks at a higher level if
they are given assistance to get them past the zone of proximal development. As a
teacher I should provide instruction at a level just above a student's independent level
of functioning but not so high that it becomes frustrating for the student. The teaching
methodology and learning activity chosen must be those that are appropriate to the
cognitive developmental stage of the learner.
Moreover, developing new knowledge based on background knowledge
(scaffolding) helps to ensure success, motivation and enhance self-esteem (Maslow,
1943). Students gain confidence from practising and repeating familiar language
items, and are primed for learning new language later on in the lesson.
According to Huitt (2003), the key to learning and remembering new
information is repetition. However, in order to be effective this must be done after
forgetting begins (Atkinson, R., & Shiffrin, R. 1968). This new instructional material
will help students to construct knowledge based on memorization. According to
Wright and Haleen (1991), a great variety of language can be conceptualised through
the use of these kinds of visual materials.
Both the activities with flashcards promote a state of relaxed alertness and a
balance of low threat and high challenge which are the ideal elements for higher order
functioning and the optimal emotional climate for learning (Caine & Caine, 1994).
Most often, students who participate in these innovative instructional approaches
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perceive a more meaningful learning experience and in some cases actually learn
more than students in conventional learning situations (Stage, Muller, Kinzie and
Simmons, 1998). Enjoyable activities that require communication between students
can foster interaction and friendship in the classroom. Cooperation between students
will create a more positive learning environment in which individuals work together
to improve their knowledge in the foreign language. Creating a positive learning
environment allows the connections to be made within the learners’ brains and,
consequently, learning flows (Weare, 2000). According with Maslow (1943), in fact,
developing a classroom environment where students are positive and employ
cooperative learning methods helps to raise students’ motivation to learn.
Employing the Flashcards in learning activity, and engaging students in group
activities allows me to stay in line with the requirements of Tasmanian Curriculum
framework, which asserts that cooperative learning enables students to gain a much
deeper understanding of the different perspectives on contested ideas and issues.
In conclusion, this paper presents the modification of instructional materials
used to teach Italian as a Language other than English ( LOTE) to a Grade Eight class.
I integrated 10 flashcards as a new teaching component to a learning unit of the Italian
commercial textbook. The flashcards have been produced in order to help students to
review basic Italian grammar concepts and build the necessary knowledge to begin
the next textbook activity. They have been developed in accordance with the
requirements of Tasmanian Curriculum framework and some of the most important
learning theories.
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