Chapter 8 Richards

Howdy Pardners! Tonight I'm going to reflect on Chapter 8, all about instructional materials. I actually found this chapter to be quite informative as much of what I do pertains to curriculum, and choosing (and sometimes designing) instructional materials. As Literacy Coordinator I get to make decisions as to what materials to select to make available for teachers (which is interesting, because I am also a teacher, so I try to be sensitive to my needs lol), and I work closely with the curriculum director to decide what created materials will be best for our district.

The chapter starts out by comparing and contrasting the advantages of authentic materials vs. created materials. The author refers to authentic materials refers to the use in teaching of texts, photographs, and other teaching resources that were not specially prepared for teaching purposes. Some advantages of these type of materials are: They provide cultural information about the target culture, provide exposure to real language, they relate more closely to learners' needs, and they support a more creative approach to teaching. As a teacher I tend to agree that there are a lot of advantages to using authentic materials, none as important as the fact you are able to choose things for your specific group of students depending on their interests, needs, background etc. I find that I primarily use authentic materials in my teaching, especially for my Publication's class as we look at a lot of media and information from the Web. However, as Literacy Coordinator, and someone responsible for selecting materials for the district it would not be practical to expect all teachers could create or provide authentic materials for their students with no other materials in place, which is why created materials are also an essential part of the curriculum. The author refers to created materials as textbooks, and other specially developed instructional resources.

Although created materials don't have the same flexibility as choosing authentic materials there are a lot of advantages to having created materials such as: they can be motivating (the latest textbooks are pretty fun and flashy looking), they are built around a graded syllabus, provide systematic coverage of teaching items, created by experts, help to standardize instruction, can help train teachers, and are all ready created!

I know when I was teaching 5th/6th grade I was thankful to have created materials to use as a resource for myself, and as practice for my students. Who has time to create or find authentic materials for 10 content areas for 20 students on all different levels? It is important that districts used methods such as the ones in this chapter for choose materials that will best fit the needs of the district, but with the understanding that created materials are not, and should not be stand alone instructional materials.

The hard part about providing materials to teachers is to help them understand that although we have materials created for certain subjects, it's still okay to supplement with authentic materials, and that good teachers do provide authentic materials for the students. As the author points out in this chapter, "no commercial textbook will ever be a perfect fit for a language classroom."

I really liked the section on adapting textbooks on page 260. I think a session based on this page would be great for the new teacher in-service in the fall. The materials our district has adopted for reading and writing are really strong, however, they MUSt be adapted to meet the needs of the diverse learners in our schools.

Overall, chapter eight was great--not like a page-turner or anything, but it did pertain to my job, and I think I will refer back to this chapter during work next school year.

Richards, Jack, C. (2001). The role and design of instructional materials. In Curriculum development in language teaching. (pp. 251-284). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Sincerely,
MRM