8th Teaching & Education Conference, Vienna

A SUGGESTED INTEGRATED CURRICULUM MODEL OF INSTRUCTION WITH SAMPLE ACTIVITIES FOR PRIMARY SCHOOL ENGLISH GRADES

ERDEM AKSOY

Abstract:

In 2018, the English language curriculum of K-12 in Turkey were updated and started to be implemented nationwide. To accommodate the demands of the updated English Curriculum of 2018, Theme-Based instruction was assumed to be an appropriate approach to teach English to students in all K-12 levels (MoNE, 2018). The aim of the present study was to investigate opinions and suggestions of primary school English language teachers for theme-based instruction used in the curriculum as well as course books and thus offer an integrated model as well as sample activities to use based on the opinions and suggestions of English language teachers. This study was designed as a phenomenological qualitative study. Based on a previous study (Aksoy, 2019), the researcher first identified a specific group of teachers who stated that theme-based instruction was not adequately reflected into course books or classroom materials and then conducted in-depth interviews to reveal their opinions and suggestions based on theme-based instruction. Thus document analysis and in-depth interviews were used as data gathering tools. In terms of research results, teachers suggested cross disciplinary integration model. Although this is believed to be an ideal model, it cannot be implemented in today’s context since this requires a complete change in the objectives and contents as well as sequences of all other courses. Thus, sequenced model of integration where teachers arrange topics so that similar units coincide was believed to be an effective model to integrate themes/topics to teach English. In the suggested model, the objectives and themes of the English mandated curriculum were kept in their originality. The related objectives of other courses were screened and integrated within the units/themes of the mandated English language curriculum and sample activities were prepared accordingly.

Keywords: curriculum development, English language teaching, primary school English language curriculum, sample activities

PDF: Download