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| | More ideas for developing teaching and learning materials | ||||||||
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Although the methods of blending basic skills and subject matter vary from program to program, you can structure activities to be useful to both the subject teacher and the basic skills teacher. Here are some additional ideas for linking content and skills in materials development.(*) | |||||||||
| Sequencing material | Mohan in Language and Content suggests three sequencing principles: | |||||||||
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| Time for talk | Ensure that every activity has discussion time so that participants are able to go beyond a specific experience or incident to discover the common patterns and the general or more abstract expression. This important exercise enables learners to understand and use decontextualized information such as mathematical formulas, statements of principle, values, and rules. | |||||||||
| Visual Aids | Use charts, graphs, and drawings to transform information into more understandable forms. Visual aids should reveal the structure of the information or experience: a time line or flow chart for sequencing, a web for interconnection, a spiral for recurring patterns, and so on. | |||||||||
| Holistic view of communication |
For communication practice you can design activities that make reading, writing, listening, and speaking tasks dependent on each other rather than stand alone. By interrelating tasks you mimic real communication. For example, you hear a news item on the radio, then talk to your friends about it, read a detailed account in the newspaper, talk some more, and decide that you'll write a letter to your local councillor about the issue. Speaking and listening to others on a topic prepare you to read about it. Writing about a topic is easier and more thoughtful if you have read and discussed it beforehand. Some skills are used to preview the topic, others to describe and analyse it in depth, and yet others to review and think about it. |
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