Planning your Primary Oposiciones syllabus
‘Oposiciones’ needn’t be a daunting prospect if you have a clear structure and some nice activities for your lesson plan. Miriam Malo has some very useful tips.
The Oposiciones exam - the public examination for state Primary Education – requires teachers to hand in a syllabus which must include at least fifteen didactic units. You will be required to present your syllabus orally to the panel of examiners, as well as the unit of work you end up choosing. Here are some guidelines which I hope you will find useful.
Step 1: Where to begin
Once you have chosen the year group your syllabus will be designed for, the next step is timing it, taking into account the amount of hours available for that level. You should state these in the initial part of your written plan and at the beginning of your oral presentation to the panel of examiners.
Your first unit should include an initial assessment in order to check your pupils’ previous knowledge of the subject. This will enable you to gauge their level of English and tackle any problems they may have, as well as taking suitable measures to ensure all abilities are catered for in your class.
Step 2: Planning learning objectives
The next stage is to set the learning objectives your pupils are to reach by the end of the unit, based on the general and stage objectives prescribed by the LOE. These will shape the way you plan the unit as you need to bear them in mind when selecting activities, although it may be easier to prepare the activities first and draw the didactic objectives from them. They should be expressed in the infinitive form and ought to include not only concepts (language areas such as vocabulary and grammar) but also procedures (the strategies and tasks used to help pupils acquire these concepts, e.g. making a mind map compiling the vocabulary of the lesson) and the behavioural attitudes you expect from them. When dealing with objectives in the oral presentation of your syllabus, it’s a good idea to present them in a visual way to the examiners, using a particular shape (a tree, a train, a ladder) that illustrates the way they are connected and also shows the point you wish to reach with your pupils by following them.
Step 3: Planning the overall structure
The next stage is to plan the overall structure of your syllabus. In order to choose the topics for the different units you have to take into account the children’s interests. International days can be a good reason for including a topic, as well as festivities (Halloween, Christmas, etc.) Make sure you choose an interesting title for each unit.
Step 4: The lesson plan
A good format to follow for any lesson plan is:
Warm-up → presentation → controlled practice → free practice → feedback.
Activities are the cornerstones of any lesson plan and it is precisely your choice of activities which will make your unit of work stand out above the others. Make sure that each activity is appropriate for the aim you want to achieve and that exercises for fast finishers and slower learners have been included. Jot a few ideas down for activities that have really worked with your pupils so that you have them ready to slot into your plan. Then draw up an outline of each unit. One possible format to follow is:
1. Warm-up activities (eg brainstorming vocabulary, oral practice, relating new words to pictures)
2. Listening to a story or reading a text and doing follow-up activities
3. Further exercises related to vocabulary
4. Inductive presentation of grammar for older pupils (ie allowing pupils to work out rules for themselves)
5. Follow-up activities (eg crafts, projects and role plays) to introduce freer practice
6. Revision activities compiling the contents and key competences your pupils have acquired throughout the unit, ie the application of their linguistic knowledge to the real world
You should also try to include ICT activities wherever possible.
There are certain staple activities you can always fall back on such as chants and songs, which you may modify in order to adapt them to the topic (see Worksheet 1 and Worksheet 4) or TPR games. Vocabulary wheels (see Worksheet 2) and fortune tellers (see Worksheet 3) are good ways to help younger pupils become autonomous learners as pupils can work with them either individually or in pairs. Pupils in second cycle can build up a picture dictionary by collecting new words and illustrating them with drawings or pictures cut out of a magazine. In third cycle, pupils can record vocabulary in a small notebook, either in alphabetical order or by arranging words according to the different topics studied. You can get lots of interesting ideas for activities in: 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom by Carol Read (Macmillan ELT).
Step 5: Assessment
When planning our assessment strategy we must take into account the following issues: evaluation criteria (taken from the learning objectives), eg if the objective is ‘to practise introductions and greetings’ we can set two evaluation criteria: Can introduce him / herself and Can use greetings), evaluation tools, including the record we keep of our pupils’ progress –a sheet where we can grade the different requisites (such as He / she follows simple instructions and He / she actively participates in group activities) on a scale of 1 to 5, and the pupils’ self assessment: for younger pupils you can draw a picture related to the unit where pupils tick a series of ‘can-do’ style statements (see Self-assessment sheet). It can also be helpful to know their opinion about the unit (smiley/ sad faces for younger pupils), as this feedback lets us reflect on the teaching/ learning process. Finally, as teachers, we should complete our own self-assessment sheet which we can use to continuously assess our plan once we’ve put it into practice.
Miriam Malo Lara is a teacher at Colegio Bienaventurada Virgen María,
Castilleja de la Cuesta (Sevilla).
Check out Miriam's website recommendations:
www.mes-english.com (free flashcards on any subject).
www.apples4theteacher.com (a Primary website).
www.first-school.ws (for Pre-school children).
www.toolsforeducators.com (free worksheets generators).
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