1

Developing

Curriculum Planning

and Teaching

Standards in

at

Nada International School

Kaleem Raja

2

Contents

Introduction 3

A Diverse Approach to Teaching and Learning 4

EFL 6

Reading 7

Writing 8

Spellings 9

A Model of Text Deconstruction and Reconstruction 10

Speaking and Listening and Drama 11

Differentiation 12

Final Note 13

3

Introduction

The best laid plans are ones that incorporate elements from all

extant and previous systems to concoct a greater composite

plan of action. A super hybrid, if you will. To this end, we

should certainly combine the best ideas from the American

curriculum and the British curriculum for teaching English as

a curriculum subject and feed this through the individual aims,

policies and needs of Nada School and pupils.

The path to educational progress should be a clear one but the

introduction of it a long term and gradual one so as not to

overwhelm any member of staff nor pupil or parent.

All of the ideas in this document are based upon my own

individual experience of teaching and CPD training in the UK

over 12 years across KS1, 2 and with some stints in KS3 and

4 with guidelines from various LEAs, Ofsted and HMI.

Some of these may not fit Nada in their purer form and are

only here being proposed as possible preliminary ideas and

not as infallible prescriptive recommendations.

I welcome suggestions for amendments to help me better

understand the needs of Nada and its community of staff,

pupils, parents and cohort committees.

4

A Diverse Approach to Teaching and Learning

The Language Art curriculum should perhaps aim for a broad

panoply on all levels.

Texts

Language Arts should span a broad range of texts for shared

and guided reading and shared and guided writing. This

should include a balance of fiction and non-fiction texts that

includes a broad range of different genres. Pupils should be

able to identify all the conventions for the writing of these

texts and taught how to and be given the opportunity to write

these texts.

Medium

The texts should be multi-media where possible and include

audio recordings and films and not just print texts.

Activities

Lesson activities should be diverse. Much more than just the

dated method of using text books only, it could include

making comic strips, posters, leaflets, booklets, guides and

manuals, videos, audio recordings, print, audio and video

adverts, animations, using cameras to make story boards, etc.

A range of activities makes learning fun and therefore more

engaging and prevents the curriculum from becoming staid.

5

Activity Models

For the purpose of catering for the needs of all the individual

pupils, activities should not always be limited to the pupil

working by him or herself.

All possible activity models should be deployed over the

course of a lesson and the week. This could include:

- Independent work

- Paired work

- Group work

- Whole class work

Different Learners

Lessons should be taught so that within them they cater for all

audio, visual and kinaesthetic learners.

Limiting teaching to any one of these will not meet the needs

of all the other pupils who learn in other ways.

Bloom’s Taxonomy

Teaching of Language Arts, as of any curriculum subject,

should be a conduit for pupils to go beyond the basic learning

skills of fact-learning, recalling and rudimentary

comprehension. Pupils need at all times need to be given

learning opportunities to explore the higher order thinking

skills of analysis, application, creation and evaluation.

6

EFL

The fact that for Nada pupils English is an additional language

has significant implications for teaching and learning in the

school.

Staff could be made aware of the issues regarding the teaching

of EFL pupils. Much research has been done into such matters

and intervention programmes for the teaching of EFL pupils

such as the First Steps initiative, to name but one, have

outlined how to best raise attainment of EFL pupils.

These recommendations include:

1. Multi-lingualism. Multi-lingual pupils learn best when

links are made between the languages they speak and the

additional they are learning. A multi-lingual approach

should therefore be taken with resources used in lessons

activities, reading and library books, display boards and

speaking and listening activities.

2. A visual approach to teaching. Posters, graphs, pictures,

animations, etc should be deployed as much as possible

as visual cues. Text heavy resources should be kept to a

minimum. Drama and the arts should be used to deliver

the curriculum.

3. Scaffolding. Activities should be aided with writing

frames, modelling of tasks by teachers and illustrated

texts.

4. Have spelling and vocabulary log books to broaden their

banks of sight words, phonics and vocabulary.

7

Reading

The promotion of reading should be paramount.

With exposure to greater reading, all the other elements

surrounding Language Arts

- Spellings

- Writing skills

- Reading skills

- Comprehension

- Creativity and imagination

- General knowledge and idea banks

are all improved.

Ergo, reading should take centre stage in the delivery of

Language Arts.

Pupils should

- Have a reading scheme that they are following and have

a reading book that they read at home everyday

- Take out library books regularly

- KG and Grades 1 – 5 read to an adult in school at least

once a week. Grades 6 – 12 should be encouraged to do

reading and research within and outside of the

curriculum.

- KG and Grades 1 – 5 do paired reading at home should

be done and parents given guidelines about paired

reading

- Do shared reading in lessons more regularly

- KG and Grades 1 – 5 have guided reading at least once a

week with follow up activities to enhance their

comprehension, vocabulary and spellings

8

Writing

Central to any Language Arts scheme of work is writing

which acts as a platform to demonstrate the stage in language

development that pupils are at.

Language Art should therefore allow for a lesson a week

where children can apply what they have learnt at the phonic,

lexical and syntactic level to produce a piece of writing. These

extended writing lessons should cover both fiction (prose and

poetry) and non-fiction.

Writing should be allowed to develop slowly and

opportunities be given for the children to redraft, edit and

improve work.

9

Spelling

Working at a phonic and lexical level, spellings are vital to the

development of reading and writing.

As well as being used to teach vocabulary, spellings should be

used to teach:

- Affixes

- Graphemes and phonemes

- Etymology

- Inflections

- Grammar

For effective spelling teaching, it is not enough to administer

a list of words.

Spellings need to be accompanied with the teaching of

spelling skills. Spelling skills should include a knowledge of

syllabication, common letter strings, mnemonic strategies,

finding words within words, suffixes and prefixes, spelling

rules and exceptions, and derivations.

In their writing key spelling mistakes should be highlighted

and the pupils to rewrite the corrections 5 times.

Spelling log books could be deployed for pupils to record

their common errors as well being used by them for asking for

help from adults with challenging words.

10

A Model of Text Deconstruction and

Construction

In order to cover all the higher order thinking skills, all units

of work in language art could follow the stages below:

1. Shared reading of text: pupils read a professional

example of a given text

2. Analysis: pupils deconstruct the text to learn the

conventions of that genre

3. Application: pupils find the identified features of that

genre in other examples of it

4. Planning: pupils begin to work towards writing their

own text in that genre

5. Creation: pupils write a text in the genre they have been

studying

6. Evaluation: pupils compare their created texts with ones

they have read and evaluate how well they have

emulated the conventions of that genre

11

Speaking and Listening and Drama

Key to fun learning, teaching EFL pupils and utilising a broad

range of teaching styles, speaking and listening skills and

drama could be incorporated into the teaching of language

Arts.

Speaking and Listening Skills

Pupils, and especially EFL pupils, need opportunities to

articulate their ideas, beyond just through their writing. The

improvement of speaking and listening skills correlates with

the improvement in reading and writing skills.

Ergo, lesson activities where possible needs to include

speaking and listening activities.

Group activities, paired work and Talk Partners, in which

pupils are assigned a different talking partner in the class

every week, are a good way to provide speaking and listening

opportunities.

Drama

Visual, interactive, kinaesthetic, fun and creative, drama is an

excellent way to engage pupils and to help them to access the

curriculum in an imaginative and lateral way.

12

Differentiation

All pupils of all ages are invariably at different stages in their

learning.

As a rule of thumb, in efficacious education, one size does not

fit all.

Hence planning and teaching should show as much

differentiation as possible to cater for the needs of all pupils

and not just some of them.

Differentiated tasks by activity, and not just outcome, are vital

to ensure blind, wholesale teaching is curtailed and bespoke

teaching is expected and promoted.

13

Final Note

All of the ideas in this document are based upon my own

individual experience of teaching and CPD training in the UK

over 12 years across KS1, 2 and with some stints in KS3 and

4 with guidelines from various LEAs, Ofsted and HMI.

Some of these may not fit Nada in their purer form and are

only here being proposed as possible preliminary ideas and

not as infallible prescriptive recommendations.

I welcome suggestions for amendments to help me better

understand the needs of Nada and its community of staff,

pupils, parents and cohort committees.