Life isn’t neat. It’s all very well to know that Welcome to Hope Street is for prelim (CPSWE) learners, but what about when you have a mixed level class, with much more capable CSWE I beginners, who need to work on different learning outcomes. Can you use the book, but give them extension work?
This was the question asked by Dorothea, the same teacher who last term decided to use Maybe Next Year as the basis of her lessons, as described in an earlier blog post. She has been been instrumental in helping me think about the extra information teachers need – as well as reporting back on her successes. (Thank you, Dorothea!)
Creating a chart
In this case she suggested that a chart could benefit teachers who had the same class mix:
- On one side: all the CPSWE learning outcomes, with notes on how a teacher could match Welcome to Hope Street to those outcomes, and where they would need to bring in additional material.
- On the other side, the CSWE I learning outcomes that could be addressed, and activities that CSWE I students could be doing to extend their learning.
I had a go at this, and she handed out the draft chart to her colleagues (in what I heard was a terrific presentation about her teaching strategies using the books). Now you can download this slightly neater version. Corrections and suggestions are welcome, of course…I’ll update it as they arrive.
And for a different curriculum?
I’m talking about the Certificates in Spoken and Written English (CSWE), because that’s what I’m familiar with. If you teach from a different curriculum, I hope you can still get ideas from this, because the principles will be the same. (Also, please note that it in no way represents the official CSWE – these are my ideas only.)
