Our Curriculum Rationale
With the conclusion of our needs assessment, we found that the nature of this project lent itself to a curriculum based on three distinct themes: language, culture, and content (science). We hope to integrate these themes using the best practices of content-based instruction and interactive learning. While language and culture-based curriculums are often the focus for English language learners (ELLs), content-based science curriculums that focus on environmental education have been slow to garner interest with ESL/EFL instructors (Nkwetisama, 2011). However, this does not mean there is a lack of demand: through our needs assessment, instructors in both Salinas and Yaoundé have expressed great interest in having an environmental education curriculum based around global water issues through which they can also improve students’ English. Hopefully, our adaptations to Project WET’s existing mainstream curriculum will help fill this void (DeYonge & Eten, 2008). In keeping with Gibbon’s (2002) proposition that language and content scaffold each other, we have designed task-based, authentically communicative materials that will not only encourage a deeper scientific understanding of water, but, on a larger level, will strengthen ELLs’ linguistic, academic, and cultural expertise so that they feel empowered throughout the rest of their education.
First and foremost, at the heart of any good content-based instruction is a proliferation of tasks emphasizing communicative competence (Hymes, 1966). In order to promote this competence, our activities will be designed in keeping with the idea of task essentialness rather than collaboration simply for the sake of collaboration (Keck & Kim, 2014). As the curriculum designers, we will find gaps where there might be an opportunity to practice the target language in a collaborative way (Gibbons, 2002). For example, students will make scientific discoveries through differentiated instruction and paired problem solving, because the tasks we design will make practicing the language of scientific and academic exchange essential to completing the activity (Gibbons, 2002; Blaz, 2006). More specifically, we will provide the teachers with materials ranging from podcasts, video clips, news and magazine articles, as well as academic texts, so that one student may listen to a passage or watch a film clip and another might read a text on a similar topic; then, they will collaborate to solve a problem or produce a project. In short, there should be few activities done in class that do not necessitate some sort of exchange of ideas or production with and through the target language. In this way, each student will learn by sharing and collaborating. After all, learning is cyclical, not linear, and a good educator knows that just because something is taught, it does not mean it is necessarily learned (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). The materials provided to the teachers will promote review and reiteration of ideas to promote understanding.
We will also be providing the teachers with materials that guide students’ language learning through an integration of bottom-up and top-down skills such as phonics, grammar, spelling, pragmatics, register, and schematic knowledge while always keeping the larger context of science and water in mind (Hedgcock & Ferris, 2009; Gibbons, 2006). As students move through middle school, this reading and writing instruction should become increasingly disciplinary, reinforcing and supporting student performance with the kinds of texts and interpretive skills that are needed in content areas (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008).
Furthermore, Students’ acquisition of both content and language will be directed through ongoing formative assessment. We hope to emphasize that assessment is not done in order to prove but to improve, for as Short asserts, “The heart of instruction is learning, and the heart of assessment is to ensure learning is happening” (1993). Student progress will be monitored in a number of ways to ensure maximal learning both leading up to and during assessment. For example, through self-reflection in projects such as student portfolios, presentations, guided discussion and other interpretive and presentational activities, both students and teachers will be able to take pride in their improvement and learn from their mistakes. By teaching language skills through the frame of the Project WET science content, this curriculum aims to “...be meaningfully connected to the things that have happened, that are happening, and that may happen in the life of the students” (van Lier, 2011, p. 392).
Finally, because of the international collaboration present in Project WET, teachers in classrooms around the world have a unique opportunity to check comprehension and language acquisition by observing students with different L1s teach each other their newly gained scientific knowledge while also practicing target language. This collaboration further benefits students because it will give them a unique window into a culture they might not have come to know otherwise. Not only will learning through Project WET teach students the sanctity of water and the environment, but also the importance of intercultural communication and how to be citizen ambassadors of the world.
As Nkwetisama (2011) states, “we [English teaching professionals] should embark on the use of the English language teaching and teacher training profession not only to develop the communicative skills of our learners but also to empower them with knowledge, know-how and attitudes that would impact on the world’s problems in general and on the protection of the environment in particular” (2011, pp.110-111). As such, Global Water Link will approach this design process to create an ELL environmental education-based curriculum to benefit both learners and instructors. This curriculum will be designed to promote critical thinking within learners who will be able to not only localize current water issues in their community, but also have the opportunity to extend their understanding to other students across the globe while improving their proficiency in their second or additional language. For instructors, this curriculum will be designed to build upon current teaching methods through local and international collaboration, differentiated tasks and materials, and provide perspectives on language learning in various environments and contexts. Through this holistic collaboration, students and teachers will be able to learn and create new knowledge that benefits both them and their respective communities.
References
Blaz, D. (2006). Differentiated instruction. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.
DeYonge, S., & Eten, J. (2008). Project WET: Water education for 21st century global water challenges. Retrieved on April 21st, 2015 from http://www.projectwet.org/resources/materials/water-education-21st-century-global-water-challenges
Gibbons, P. (2002). Reading in a second language. In Gibbons, P., Scaffolding language, scaffolding learning. (pp. 77-126). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Hedgcock, J. S., & Ferris, D. R. (2009). Teaching readers of English: Students, texts, and contexts. New York, NY: Routledge.
Hymes, D. H. (1966) Two types of linguistic relativity. In W. Bright (Ed), Sociolinguistics (pp. 114-158). The Hague: Mouton.
Keck, C., & Kim, Y. J. (2014). Pedagogical grammar. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins.
Nkwetisama, C. M. (2011). EFL/ESL and environmental education: Towards an eco-applied linguistic awareness in Cameroon. World Journal of Education, 1(1), 110-118. doi:10.5430/wje.v1n1p110
Shanahan, T., & Shanahan, C. (2008). Teaching disciplinary literacy to adolescents: Rethinking content-area literacy. Harvard Educational Review, 78, 40-59.
Short, D. J. (1991). Integrating language and content instruction: Strategies and techniques. Washington, D.C.: National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education.
van Lier, L. (2011). Language learning: An ecological-semiotic approach. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of research in second language teaching and learning Volume II (pp. 383-394). New York: Routledge.
Wiggins, G.P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.