[ed. note; this is the first of a reprinting of 23 articles written by Robert Harrell in 2013. We revisit them now in an attempt to further illustrate and defend what we do to anyone interested. We want to show how what we do aligns with standards and how it is much more student friendly than the old way. We question the use of Scope and Sequence documents, which are tied to thematic units, which we know don’t work, and we are trying now to redefine the nature of documents we provide to administrators and parents in terms of the ACTFL standards. This need has become especially apparent in light of recent communication with the ACTFL Language Educators group, where Eric Herman and others in this group shook their house up pretty good.]
Last spring Robert did some communicating with his district World Languages representative about scope and sequence. I asked Robert if I could share the content of some of those emails with the group and Robert agreed.
I didn’t publish them in June because many of our group were on vacation. I saved them until now. By reading Robert’s points here we will have them fresh in our minds to start the year, and many of us will be able to draw from these articles to inform discussion with people in our own buildings and at the district level, like Mary Beth, who talks to a new principal about CI this week. The category here is obviously going to be Administrator/Teacher/Parent Re-education.
The text is edited to remove identifying information. The conversation is too lengthy to be included in one post so there are 23 articles).
The points Robert makes to this gentleman at the district level reflect the same thing that we have all been discussing over the years. Robert illustrates our position. He defends our position. He is clear and his points make sense. They are 100% consistent with Krashen.
However, and I say this with open heart and as much kindness as possible, the responses by the WL rep are weak, short, without imagination, without grounding in any research, and without merit. They lack substance.
This exchange, therefore, must be viewed as yet another example of the inability of those who represent the old way of doing things to meet and respond to new ideas in any real way. When one’s position is not grounded in research and does not really align with the Three Modes, things like that are going to happen. The blinders that this WL representative clearly wear would even prevent him from grasping the tremendous fact of jGR and its all important role in comprehension based classrooms.
Before reading these articles, if you are new here and may not know Robert, you may want to read this article:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2013/06/01/teacher-of-the-month-robert-harrell/
Here then is the first in this series of daily articles on scope and sequence:
Ben,
Here is the original e-mail to my district with a little preface and editing from me (including inclusion of an addition point under theoretical underpinnings). I think he does raise a valid point about the “lazy” student; however, I believe he is really describing a student who is 1) unmotivated by the incentives school offers or 2) does not feel safe enough to speak or 3) both. (There may be other factors as well, but I think these are the main ones.)
First email to district WL rep:
Many schools are placing increasing emphasis on tools such as Curricular Mapping and asking all teachers to submit lesson plans in a particular format. The problem with simply continuing to use the Scope and Sequence provided by textbook publishers is that these are most often simply lists of vocabulary topics and successions of grammar explanations. This sort of Scope and Sequence needs to be replaced by something that reflects theory and practice of comprehension-based instruction through comprehensible input. The following is an attempt to articulate a possible Scope and Sequence that takes into account the research and findings from such diverse sources as ACTFL, SLA, Brain-based research, Krashen, and others. At the very least, I hope it will begin a discussion of what a “program of study” ought to look like in World Languages.
First of all, the theoretical underpinnings (in no particular order):
1. If, as much research indicates, there is a natural order of acquisition, setting up an artificial grammatical sequence of presentation such as most textbooks use does not aid either acquisition or fluency. In fact, the order of presentation in a textbook often runs contrary to the order of acquisition. Examples of this are the presentation of por/para and ser/estar and their distinctions. Grammar-driven textbooks present these in early first year, yet native speakers often argue about the correct use of them in a particular situation, indicating that they are late acquired. (I’ve observed these discussions personally.)