Curriculum Mapping and Inquiry- Based Learning
Some EFL teachers may find that the schools in which they teach have already established a curriculum. For example, Talk Talk English, located in Mongolia, advertises a unique curriculum, “developed for exclusive use within... [their] schools by... [their] Academic Development Team.” Thus, a teacher at this school might not need to map out a curriculum as this has already been done. Other schools, however, might require teachers to create their own unit plans. While there is not one “right” way to plan a unit, I have found the concepts behind Understanding by Design, created by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, to be very helpful. One advantage to planning a unit in this way is that the teacher is reminded to think about how to help students not only acquire knowledge and skills but also “make meaning” of what they have learned and “transfer” their knowledge to other contexts (Wiggins and McTighe). Many schools in the United States provide templates that their teachers can use to map out a unit plan using the principles of Understanding by Design, and I have used a similar template, provided by Dr. Louann Reid to her students in the Methods in Teaching Language Arts course to design a sample unit for tenth grade students. A slightly different Understanding by Design template can be found at http://digitalliteracy.mwg.org/curriculum/template.html.