Unit 3: Adapting Resources

To me the whole purpose of adapting materials is so that the learner does not feel like the boy in the picture. Our goal as educators is to engage learners through relevant and interesting lessons.
Billsborough (2017) provided examples of universal principles: providing opportunities for students to make effective use of their previous knowledge, helping them to use the same mental resources they used to acquire their L1 and taking into account their individual differences. Local principles would include: adding humor, creativity and incorporating opportunities for kinesthetc learning. In short, engaging students in their learning by creating practical, informative classroom opportunities. In previous courses we talked about a needs assessment, which I think is so important in the first step of planning for a class. That provides key information that can be incorporated into daily lessons, while still remaining true to the curriculum. Involving students in their own learning by providing choices (they adapt the lesson according to the choices they make) gives students the opportunity to become autonomous learners in charge of their own progress.

Editor, W. (2017, August 8). ELT materials writing: More on emerging principles. Retrieved from 

      https://mawsig.iatefl.org/elt-materials-writing-more-on-emerging-principles/

Unit 1: Developing materials and copyright

This is definitely a challenging area, as there is a fine balance between wanting to share resources that you know will support learning and monitoring what can and can't be shared. I think that the Copyright Matters! booklet(see resources for link) put out by the Government of Canada should be a document that teachers keep on hand at all times when planning units. There is a little more leeway and freedom since the amendment in 2012 but it is still essential that teachers review the document prior to using materials in their original format. I think that we are fortunate to have all the accessibility to video and audio recordings that we do now to use in our classroom. I also appreciate being able to look on line for starting points for lesson plans, with a few tweaks to meet the needs of my class I can save time by adapting materials that already exist.






Noel, W., & Snel, J. (2016). Copyright Matters!: Some Key Issues Questions & Answers for Teachers. Council of Ministers of Education, Canada. Retrieved from http://cmec.ca/Publications/Lists/Publications/Attachments/291/Copyright_Matters.pdf