Textbook Adaptation: All-Star 3, Unit 4: Money and Consumer Issues

Lita Brusick Johnson LING 583 - Materials and Curriculum Development April 21, 2013

This paper describes an adaptation of All-Star 3, Unit 4, and is based on the following assumptions about context and constraints: Class and Students. The students are parents of elementary students who have limited English language proficiency and attend ESL classes during regular school hours (9:15-11:45 a.m., Tuesday/Thursday). The 15 mothers are 18-40 years old; the majority speak Spanish as their L1. Program. This outreach program of a local elementary school is coordinated by the schools ESL coordinator. While it receives minimal financial support and is volunteer-taught, the two courses (this intermediate course and one for beginners) are strongly supported by the administration. Classrooms are equipped with whiteboards and overhead projectors. Goals. The programs overarching goal is to increase parents communicative competence in English so that they can engage more confidently in community life and provide a positive learning environment for their children. The instruction focuses on English for life skills. Approach. An integrated four-language-skills approach is buttressed by learning and critical thinking skills elements; particular attention is given to enhancing vocabulary acquisition. The All-Star scope and sequence forms the backbone of both classes, within the context of a learner-centered approach that takes seriously students needs and interests. Teachers are generally expected to follow All-Stars sequencing of skill development (listening/speaking, reading/writing, critical thinking, and grammar skills). However, teachers have substantial latitude to adapt, replace, and supplement textbook activities, particularly at the unit and the activity level (Graves
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2000, p. 188 ff.), in order to meet learning goals and respond to parents interests/needs. The following are unit-specific goals and objectives.
Unit 4 (Money & Consumer Issues): Goals and Objectives Reading & Writing Vocabulary Grammar Improve reading comprehension. Focus: Warranties Banking documents Improve writing skills. Focus: Writing questions Writing advice on children and finance Learn words related to everyday finances Major purchases Warranties Banking Money management Word Family vocabulary building: form shifts (suffixes) Recycling to enhance fluency New focus: Gerunds Recycling: Present progressive Simple past

Listening & Speaking Engage in increasingly fluent and meaningful conversation. Focus: buying/selling discussing purchases warranties/ consumer rights avoiding scams/ identity theft children and finances disagreeing politely

Learning Strategies Enhance abilities to: Use context to discover meaning Focus on: main idea/ details Take notes Advanced planning: outlining (with cluster diagram)

Critical Thinking Make Inferences Analyze/ Synthesize Evaluate Provide reasons for opinions Solve problems

The unit is taught over a 2.5 weeks period (five 2.5 hour lessons). Within the thematic syllabus, the unit plan features elements of both cycle and matrix organization. Some activities/processes are recycled (pair, group work; task work with specific outcomes; competitions); some are new. A balance is sought between meaningful reception and production; functional use of language and attention to language forms (explicit and implicit, inductive and deductive); and skill-getting and skill-using exercises, activities, and tasks (Nunan 1989, p. 61). By this fourth unit, students have experienced unit cycles (theme introduction, vocabulary and grammar input, progressively more complex speaking, reading, and writing activities/tasks) as well as week and lesson cycles, enhanced by threads (described below). These routines have clear pedagogical purposes (e.g. lessening students cognitive load, enabling them to marshal attention to new elements).
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The thematic content and graphics provided by All-Star are fully exploited, and some learning activities are embedded in the unit plan or are expanded. Others are rejected and replaced by more contextually appropriate elements; changed (content or procedures); or supplemented by activities and materials from authentic sources (McGrath, 2002, pp. 60 ff.). This adaptation seeks to fills cognitive and affective gaps in order to meet unit learning goals and respond to the needs and interests of the students though the following key elements: New Threads. Several threads (Woodward 2001, p. 55) linked to specific learning objectives run through the unit in predictable and systematic ways; they build skills and integrate form and meaning, supplementing the textbook. They provide additional opportunities for meaningful student-centered input/output, skill-building and fluency enhancement (while also providing informal opportunities for addressing accuracy issues that can undermine intelligibility) . These threads enable the adaptation to more closely approximate Paul Nations (2007) four strands approach to language learning, a balance among meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output, language-focused learning, and fluency development. Vocabulary learning is intentionally integrated into this frame, as Norbert Schmitt advocates, providing both an explicit, intentional learning component and maximum vocabulary exposure and use (Schmitt, 2008, p. 329). These important threads include: o Introductory activities. These alternate-day threads focus on fluency, recycle forms learned earlier, and build community: (1) Since Last Time (recycling in meaningful speech the past tense form, providing opportunities for natural

pronunciation feedback on final consonants). (2) Whats New with the Children? (recycling in meaningful speech the present progressive). o Focus on Form: Teaching about Word Families (as advocated by Schmitt, 2008b, p.3). This thread provides students with immediately applicable metalinguistic vocabulary-building hints. Elements present in All-Star are extended in the adaptation (Lessons 1.11, Handout #3). o Unit Learning Log. All-Star provides a learning log for unit-end student selfassessment (AS, p. 71). However, this checklist is repurposed, and is used briefly at the end of each day to help students chart their learning progress. o Language Journal. Students are asked to notice interesting, difficult, funny,

or perplexing elements of English. At the end of every Thursday class, students hand in a paragraph describing an element and then share what they observed in cocktail hour exchanges (meaningful output about language awareness/fluency building). This sequence creates a natural pre-planning (writing) phase that undergirds informal oral production. Activities and tasks that engage interest, respect experience, and provide choice. Adaptation decisions reflect a commitment to the principle of providing as much student input and choice as possible. The adaptation is structured to enable replacement of sections, should students identify more relevant sub-unit thematic content. (Lesson 1.4 provides an intentional opportunity for students to identify such areas.) Included in the current adaptation are replacements/supplements/adjustments that embody the underlying principle:

o Lesson 5.5: The AS final reading text (a business success story about a wealthy immigrant) might not connect with financially strapped mothers who attend class. So the class will read instead authentic (or minimally adapted) texts that in the areas of interest they identified (in Lesson 1.4). o Lessons 2.8, 2.9. 3.7: Content on scams (including identity theft) with authentic listening (video) resource is added. o Lessons 4.4.a, 5.4: The major summative writing task in the All-Star unit (focus: major purchase; diagramming/outlining strategies in preparation for paragraph writing) is enhanced by new scaffolding that begins in a previous section (teaching children about money). The arc of instruction begins with affirmation of student experience in a new Learning from Experience task. Students financial experiences (smart things and not so smart things they did) are shared and categorized before students read and evaluate the advice of an outside expert. Prior to the Dear Abby writing task, students are exposed to the first level of writing strategies (diagramming). Then the advice letters, typed overnight, provide written, class-generated financial advice which provides input into the final writing task about how to go about making a major purpose. Elements of this expanded arc are carefully sequenced and scaffolded, moving from schemata activation to simple activities to more complex tasks. Students have a choice on what issues to address. And throughout, student views are valued as (or more) highly than outsider input. Task and Project Work. All-Star generally does not include tasks, so additional tasks are added in five of the six lessons, offering increased opportunities for meaningful speaking and listening with an outcome that often becomes the scaffold for

future activities. Also included is a major four-skills project element that is a regular thread not only within but between units: a Storycorps project that allows for both the authentic input (the voices/stories of everyday people, told in their own words) and authentic, personalized, and highly relevant output. Every Thursday, the final half hour of class is devoted to this project and efforts are made to utilize computer technologies (despite classroom limitations). Assessment. This school does needs assessments with each class of learners/mothers at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year. Since there are no external funders, the program can choose to do assessment as it deems best; it need not utilize All-Stars standardized testing formats. The adaptation anticipates a unit-final quiz that documents student learning (summati ve assessment); such an assessment would be carefully crafted to avoid demotivating learners. However, such an end-of-unit quiz provides an incentive for students to review, helps them chart their progress, and provides teachers and administrators information needed to assess whether learning outcomes are being realized. Summative assessment is augmented by ongoing formative assessment (in particular relating to speaking). The end-of-theunit writing tasks/activities provide a blend: a structured way to assess learning and a non-test-based vehicle for learners to receive written teacher feedback. The attached unit plan recognizes the strengths of All-Star 3 even as it identifies areas where teacher creativity, context-sensitivity, and respect for learners needs can complement it. Together, the two elements contribute to a roadmap for learning that can assist learners to achieve specific language learning outcomes and thus contribute to the fulfillment of their broader life goals.

References

Graves, K. (2000). Designing Language Courses: A Guide for Teachers . Boston, MA: Heinle Press. McGrath, I. (2002). Chapter 4 Coursebook-based Teaching: Adaptation. Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching. Edinburgh , Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Nation, P. (2007) The Four Strands. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching. 1(1):1-12. Nunan, D. (1989). Chapter 3 Task Components. Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schmitt, N. (2008). Review Article: Instructed Second Language Vocabulary Learning. Language Teaching Research. 12(3):329-363. Schmitt, N. (2008). Teaching Vocabulary. Pearson Education, Inc. Accessed online, April 2013. Woodward, T. (2001). Chapter 1 How Long is the Lesson? in Planning Lessons and Courses. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press.