The school E is an innovative centre with a focus on students being the centre of the learning process constructing their own knowledge, scaffolded by the teachers. The educational objective of the school is to help students develop competencies for life: learn to be, learn to do, learn to know, learn to live.

 

The school is divided into 3 communities (comunitats): petits, mitjans, and grans. The following TU will be developed with the mitjans community, formed by 175 students of 1st (50 students), 2nd (75 students) and 3rd (50 students) grade. Because students are free to choose the activities they want to develop, as will be explained in detail in the following paragraph, it is very difficult to estimate the number of students that will develop this teaching sequence, and their age range.

 

The main particularity of this school is that it does not have subjects, but each classroom is called an ambient, each of which is focused in one particular area (art, crafts, maths, language & ICT, natural sciences, history, geography). Only music and Physical Education are thought as subjects separately, where the teacher delivers the instructions to students. Each ambient has several activities related to its subject, which are called proposals (propostes). Proposals do not have an established time; children take the time they need to complete them at their own path; some may even need to finish a proposal the following day. Proposals are autonomous, meaning that students develop them without the teacher’s explanation: some of them have instructions, and others are already known by students. The teacher, though, is walking around the class to see if students need some support. They do not follow an order, nor there is a sequencing of proposals.

 

Every morning students move freely around the ambients and develop the proposals they want. Proposals tend to be individual as well, although there may be more than one student developing the same proposal at a time, and consequently interaction takes place. Some proposals require more than one participant, such as the domino, the shop role-play, etc. After finishing the activities, students write down on their notebooks what they have done, or make a drawing of the final product (depending on the age of the children).

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Because of the methodology employed in this school, I’ve had to adapt the TU to fit this particular way of working. Therefore, I’ll develop 6 proposals within the maths ambient. The timing chosen for these activities is an estimation: students may take the time they need, but if it is longer than 15-20 minutes, they may lose concentration, especially because they are done in a foreign language.

 

The competences developed in these 6 sessions are: numbers and calculus, measurements and geometry. All the proposals are independent among them, meaning one child can do the second proposal without doing the first one and it would still make sense. This was a requirement from the school, due to their way of working, previously described. At the same time there is a nexus among them: the topic they work. For this TU I have taken advantage of the Carnival festivity, which will be celebrated in the school few days after the TU is finished. Through the proposals, students will be asked to “save” the Carnival by helping some characters get their customs done, recover certain objects or certain people.

 

Despite the fact that students tend to develop proposals autonomously, for my teaching sequence I’ve preferred to ask them to develop them in pairs; this way they can help each other when difficulties arise, and oral interaction becomes more meaningful. To achieve this, there will be a poster in front of the proposals asking children to come by pairs to develop them.

 

Students’ knowledge and domain of English is very limited, since it is worked only once a week for 45 minutes in the subject of music, which is taught using a content and language integrated approach (CLIL). Therefore, the vocabulary and structures used for this teaching sequence will have to be very basic, and a lot of linguistic support will be provided in diverse formats to ensure students’ comprehension. 

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Also, because students’ learning levels are diverse, there will be different worksheets, organised with labels according to grades: 1st - 2nd grade (easier) and 3rd grade (more difficult).

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