LESSON 6.

THE ENGLISH CURRICULUM IN PRIMARY

EDUCATION. LESSON PLANNING. RECOMMENDED
METHODOLOGY. TEACHING UNITS: STRUCTURE AND
COMPONENTS, TASKS AND EVALUATION CRITERIA.

6.1. THE ENGLISH CURRICULUM IN PRIMARY EDUCATION

The law which establishes and regulates the English Curriculum in Primary
Education is the Decree 103/2014, on 10th June, for the Community Autonomous of
Extremadura. (http://edulex.net/?noticia=577)
The English curriculum for Primary Education is included in the annexes I, II
and III of this Decree. The Annex I includes the curriculum of the areas belonging to the
core subjects1 specifying the contents, the evaluation criteria and the standards to be
evaluated, as well as an introduction and a sequencing for courses. The Annex II
contains the curriculum of the areas belonging to the specific subjects in the same terms
as in the Annex I. Finally, the Annex III makes reference to the curriculum of the areas
belonging to the autonomic elective subjects2.

6.2. THE LESSON PLANNING

A lesson plan is a teacher’s plan for teaching a lesson. Its purpose is to outline
the “programme” for a single lesson. That’s why it’s called a lesson plan. It helps the
teacher in both planning and executing the lesson. And it helps the students by ensuring
that they receive an actual lesson with a beginning, a middle and an end, that aims to
help them learn some specific thing that they didn’t know at the beginning of the lesson
or practise and make progress in that specific thing.
In very basic terms, a lesson plan is the teacher’s guide for running a particular
lesson, and it includes the goal (what the students are supposed to learn), how the goal
will be reached (the method, procedure) and a way of measuring how well the goal was
reached (test, worksheet, homework etc).

6.2.1. Parts of the lesson plan

Each lesson plan should contain the following elements:
1. An introduction, where the topic you want to develop must be clearly stated, as well
as the title you want to give to your lesson plan, although this is not necessary. Then,
the teacher must indicate the level, the age and the timing, making reference to the time
that each activity within the lesson planning is going to spend. Also, when working with
lesson plans in an isolated way, the teacher is asked to include some contextual
information about the school, as for example, the number of students, their motivation,
their attitude towards English, their level of English, what they already know about the
topic we have chosen, the reason(s) why the teacher has chosen this particular topic and
the lesson aims that are pursued.

1
Core subjects means “asignaturas troncales”.
2
Autonomic elective subjects means “asignaturas de libre configuración autonómica”.

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2. The different phases to develop the lesson plan. There are five different phases
when developing any topic within a lesson planning:
a) Phase 1: Warm-up / Review Activity (greetings, songs, games such as ‘Last letter,
First letter’, ‘The supermarket game’...).
b) Phase 2: Introduction / Presentation Activity (Flashcards, pictures, real materials,
puppets…).
c) Phase 3: Controlled or Guided Practice Activity (Worksheet activities...).
d) Phase 4: Free or Communicative Practice Activity - Follow-up Activity (Role-plays,
interview questions, compare and contrast, class discussions and debates, predictions
and guessing...).
d) Phase 5: Assessment Activity.
e) Ending activity: include an activity for fast finishers students.

For each of the phase, the teacher must include the following aspects, except for
the activity for fast students, in which time is not necessary:

- Goals - Description
- Skills - Time
- Groupings - Materials and resources

One important thing that teachers should take into account when planning a
lesson is the time. If the lesson lasts 50 minutes, all the activities planned must cover
that period of time, without including, as we have stated before, the activity for fast
finishers. In such a way, the teachers will know in advance the exact amount of time
that he/she has to devote to each session.

6.3. TEACHING UNITS

Teaching units begin with identifying the particular content to be taught and the
goals for learning outcomes. Goals are about the purposes or aims and they are related
to the rationale for teaching the particular content that the students will study.
Goals help set the stage for study and typically are written as broad statements.
Often they are tied to state or national curriculum standards. It is important to always
remember that the goals should go beyond the basic cognitive or knowledge domain
(knowing and understanding). Therefore, there are other more domains that we should
take into account, such as the affective and psychomotor domains, educational domains,
the creative domain (imagining and creating), the attitudinal one (feeling and valuing),
the process domains (exploring and discovering), and the application domain (using and
applying or connecting).

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 The introductory lesson to the unit should be given extra attention. This lesson
will grab the students’ attention and stimulate them to want to know more. There are
many exciting ways to begin a new unit, as we have already studied. Likewise, teachers
should also give attention to the culminating lessons. They will want to wrap up the
teaching unit by helping students reflect upon and synthesize the content that they
studied. If there is to be a final test or exam, teachers might also plan a review activity
that is also fun. A way to wrap up a unit is for students to present individual or group
projects.
Probably the most typical way teachers plan their classroom curriculum is in
terms of instruction in units organized around a single topic. However, there are some
schools which are developing the curriculum according to thematic units, that it to say,
thematic units use a single topic to address several subject areas.
Instruction through thematic units assumes students learn best when the
curriculum is a coherent whole and when they can connect their studies to the real
world. The challenge for the teacher is to integrate content from many subjects, all the
while being specific enough to be practical yet broad enough to encourage creativity.
Instruction in a unit organized around a theme integrates, for example, Reading, Maths
and Science through the study of a broad area, like, for example, “energy” or
“exploration”. The rationale for the thematic approach is that it demonstrates the
interdisciplinary nature of learning itself. Thematic planning lets teachers use
collaborative and cooperative learning, as well as classroom computers. Further, you
end up with a more compact curriculum—with less content overlap and simpler
organization of the content.
Often, thematic units are team taught, and several teachers work together to plan
and teach the unit. Either way, teachers begin by selecting an appropriate theme
reflecting the curriculum, students’ interests, experiences, issues, or problems, by
identifying the goals they wish their students to accomplish by the end of the unit.
These can be related to state and local standards and competencies. Also, teachers must
select and organize content-rich and challenging activities to use, which could be broad
based, integrating many subject areas.
As regard the goals and objectives, the objectives for a daily lesson plan are
drawn from the broader goals of the unit plan but are more specific and often stated as
learning outcomes that are achieved over a defined time period. In writing lesson
objectives, teachers should consider firstly what they want their students to be able to do
as a result of the lesson. Also they must consider the conditions the students will work
under to accomplish the desired outcomes and the criteria teachers will use to judge a
satisfactory attainment of the objectives; in other words, how the students will
demonstrate that they have met the objectives of your lesson. Also, teachers have to
consider if the students are ready for the new material or if first they will need some
prerequisite knowledge or skills to succeed. This step allows teachers to factor in any
needed preparatory work so that the necessary prerequisites are attained and students are
able to meet the objectives. Finally, based on the unit goals, teachers have to decide
how many lessons will cover the unit and write a specific objective for each lesson. In
general, teaching units will have goals, which are more general statements of what is to
be accomplished, while lessons within the unit will have more specific objectives.

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 These are the elements which are common to most lesson plans:

o Objectives (sometimes combined with the state standards being addressed)

o Activities (read-alouds, investigations, role-plays, WebQuests, homework, etc.)
o Time estimated
o Materials needed
o Alternatives (for students who may be absent during a lesson, or for
differentiating instruction for different ability levels or interests)
o Assessment

Sometimes teachers also include prerequisites that indicate what the students
need to know or be able to do to achieve the objective(s). It is always important to
consider prior knowledge and skills when you are planning instruction, since
researchers have found that most learning, more than two-thirds, is dependent on how
prepared the students are for the instruction.
Activities are the “meat” of the lessons and should be carefully planned, but
don’t include activities just to keep students busy. Each activity should contribute to the
students meeting the lesson’s objectives. Teachers vary a great deal as to the level of
detail they create in their lesson plans, and this typically changes with years of
experience as well. Some will use an outline with times indicated to help keep track,
while others will write out detailed notes on the content.