Teachers' Information

The idea behind

As a teacher I like to integrate my own ideas in my teaching, even when I have a teaching material at hand that fits my understanding of teaching very well.

I have analysed the book series Pit Stop #7 for 7^th grade (age group 13-14 years). It is a set produced for ESL learners, where English is taught from 3^rd grade onwards. At that time the pupils usually are 8-9 years old.

The language spoken in our country is Danish. English is only heard in class, on TV and in music and games. This means that the English language proficiency of the pupils is diverging immensely.

To give pupils the possibility to communicate in English within the class setting, but also with classes from around the world, I want to invite teachers to contact me and join this collaborative site, teaching pupils with a contemporary media and creating bonds around the world.

One important issue for me is intercultural understanding. Choosing topics from the Pit Stop #7 that can be related to around the world and that pupils have their view and understanding on, will hopefully give a meaningful exchange of knowledge and views. Intercultural competence is even a compulsory part of the curriculum for English as a subject. According to Annette Søndergaard Gregersen "it is the goal of teaching language and culture, to give the pupils competences in language and cultural knowledge on a local classroom and school basis, thereby achieving intercultural competences". This is giving them a save ground to start from, evolving their skills in a safe learning environment. From there the pupils should achieve competences in connecting with pupils from other countries, to build up their understanding for and knowledge about other cultures and life-situations. A competence that is highly prioritised in the globalised World.

Pit Stop #7

In my analysis I focused on a chapter with the title: “Footprints of the English”. This chapter gives the pupils some information about the period of colonisation by the British, from a British point of view. Included in the chapter are personal stories about Captain James Cook, Mary Brown, and Dr Livingston as well as informational texts about Australia, The Falkland Islands and Gibraltar. 

I would like to go more into detail with the topic, and create awareness in the pupils as to the background for the colonization, and what impact it had on the colonised people.

Lastly I want to draw a line to the situation today for the countries involved, but also to similarities between the British and the Danish colonialist approach. 
Both countries still have tight bonds to some of their colonies today. 

Arguments according to the national curriculum

I have chosen a few of the aims set for pupils of the 7th grade. They relate to the ability of communicating with others, using IT-resources for informational and communicative purposes and achieving cultural competences growing towards the aimed at intercultural competence.

The final aims for English after 7th grade indicate that the pupils should be able to:

Communicative competence:

• ask questions and exchange information and opinions about central positions and themes.

• communicate in writing via digital media in simple, prepared courses

• use English as a means of communication with pupils from other countries

Culture and society:

• know about cultural conditions and environments in English speaking countries 

• draw comparisons between English speaking cultures and their own.

Evaluation

Here is a link to the English-page, with some tasks and ideas for more into depth work.

The setup of a blog provides me with a tool that can be used as a direct evaluation tool, as I can interact with the pupils within their discussion. I can put up extra posts to draw attention to a specific point I want the class to focus on, and I can communicate with each pupil individually about certain problems if that should be necessary.

Other tasks will provide concrete material to evaluate in class, discussing the results or with the need to give written feedback.