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Teaching Materials:

Thematic Modules for 21st century education

Teaching Critical Digital Literacy to Combat Fake News

Ron Darvin

Free (Open Education Resource)

This module provides materials (reading, activities) to help students become critical consumers of information online, and to develop a critical digital literacy that allows them to filter through the abundance of information, to contest, deconstruct, critique and discover legitimate knowledge. The module has 7 sections. Materials Set 1: shows teachers the steps students need to take to evaluate the truthfulness of a news story. Set 2 expands the vocabulary of students to help them recognize fake news. Set 3 allows students to explore how fake news is circulated. Set 4 invites students to pay closer attention to layout and other multimodal features of a website. Set 5 provides more indepth look at the multimodality of online media. In Set 6 students investigate a news story to raise their critical awareness. Set 7 challenges students to remix existing news stories and explore how they can manipulate media themselves.  

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Versions in Spanish and Chinese also available

Teaching in and for Plurilingualism in the 21st century

Emilee Moore (Ed.)

Free (Open Education Resource)

This resource book aims to share with readers some insights into why and how educators might prepare current and future teachers in and for plurilingualism. The resource book will be of interest to teacher educators, current and future teachers, educational authorities, and other members of society interested in understanding plurilingualism and plurilingual education. It includes a balance of theoretical reflections and examples of materials created for teacher development programs. The volume is structured into three sections following an introductory chapter. Firstly, the social and linguistic complexity of schools of today is discussed followed by discussion of different the different ways of understanding plurilingualism can be focused. Finally, an understanding of a didactics of plurilingualism, adapted to the realities of speakers and their surroundings, is provided. 

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Version in Catalan and Spanish also available

Fan Fiction for 21st Century Language and Literacy Development

Shannon Sauro

Free (Open Education Resource)

These teaching materials draw upon the language play and language learning found in online spaces where fans of television shows, movies and books congregate. The materials described here were first developed in Sweden, but can be adapted easily to different contexts by drawing on the literary and popular cultural interests of students. The first set of materials aims to help students plan their fanfiction carefully. The second set of materials promotes students' creativity in writing. The third set of materials sets out an independent writing activity followed by a fifth activity that focuses on student reflection.

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Versions in Spanish and Chinese also available.

Educational Proposals to Work and Reflect on Gender Identities, Gender Diversity and Gender Equality

Claudia Vallejo & Laura Giménez

Free (Open Education Resource)

More and more, the 21st century cosmopolitan societies we live in are growing in diversity, interconnectedness and complexity due to many different factors. This diversity has brought along the questioning of rooted conceptions about basic elements of our lives and identities such as what it means to be a boy or a girl, a man or a woman, what girls and boys, men and women do, feel or look like, or what families consist of. education is a key realm to advance in acknowledging and overcoming the social inequalities, stigmatisation and discrimination faced by women and LGBTQ+ people. this collection of resources, we intend to support teachers and students in developing gender and LGBTQ+ awareness and critical thinking around issues of gender diversity and gender equality, to deal with the many -sometimes blatant but oftentimes subtle- gender inequalities we still find and face in our daily lives. The teaching proposals are aimed at primary and secondary school students, but can also be adapted for teacher-trainers and to be developed in other contexts of formal and non-formal education. 

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Versions in Spanish and Chinese also available

Emergent Information Gap Tasks for (Digital) Language Classrooms

Ufuk Balaman

Free (Open Education Resource)

The use of tasks in language education has also gained prominence due to the emphasis on developing interactional skills transferrable to real-life situations. This has been widely recognized as the main principle for effective task design. Similarly, online tasks have been adopted to provide opportunities to learners for developing digital literacies to better (e-)function in technology-mediated settings thus for increasing their future participation in the 21st century knowledge society. Against this background, this module presents the modification of an established task type (i.e. information gap tasks) for promoting process-oriented interactional efforts of learners by leaving the gap to emerge rather than imposing it to the learners thus enabling a shift from the task work plan (i.e. assigning information gaps to learners) to task process (i.e. facilitating the emergence of information gaps and encouraging minimization of emergent gaps). By doing that, this new task also sets out to facilitate the emergence of interactional competencies indispensable to technology-mediated 21st century real-life situations. Previous research has shown that emergent information gap tasks have been very useful for L2 interactional development and explicated an alternative understanding to structured task design principles. 

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Versions in Spanish and Chinese also available

A Proposal for 21st Century Education: An Introduction to Dual Language Book Reading

Rahat Zaidi

Free (Open Education Resource)

This dossier of lesson plans contains the scope and sequence of ten lesson plans designed to show the potential application of dual language books as implemented through dual language reading strategies and translanguaging in the mainstream English Language Arts classroom in the middle years. Translanguaging is the process by which teachers and emergent bilinguals use complex language practices or strategies to communicate meaning in settings such as schools and also the community (Garcia & Kano, 2014; Garcia & Kleifgen, 2010).  The inclusion of these practices aid rather than compete with the language of instruction in the multilingual classroom. The use of Dual Language Books (DLBs) enables the teachers to acknowledge and improve their students’ language awareness.  his is one of many strategies to reaching the ultimate goal of enhancing and enriching students’ overall literary experience in the classroom. There are ten books taught in multiple languages, some of which include: Spanish, Urdu, French, Tagalog, and more. Each book is written in two languages: English and a second language, which renders the book a dual language book.

Co-creating Language Learning Journeys: A Designerly Approach to Supporting Experiential Language Learning practices

Brendon Clark & Nicholas B. Torretta

Free (Open Education Resource)

There is often a great difference between what a student learns in a second language class and the competence a student needs to use a second language in the context of everyday life. The ability to speak a language and the ability to participate in everyday activities using a language are tightly linked. For many, the goal of language learning is to be able to participate competently in activities with other people using the target language, whether it is in a simple service interaction such as ordering food at a restaurant, or joining a conversation with colleagues during a break at work, or more involved types of participation such as interacting with the hospital staff during an emergency, or giving a presentation to a room full of colleagues, investors, or a scientific community. These interactive situations are potentially influenced by the physical environment, surrounding physical artefacts, gestures and other bodily actions. Often these situated interactions are influenced by what each of the participants may have been doing before and what they are intending to do afterward, and the practices they have developed in similar situations, and the relationships they have developed with the other participants. 

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These materials introduce a set of concepts, 'toolboxes' and examples for supporting a reflective experiential language learning practice where the learner uses the social interactions in everyday situations as the basis for reflection and future action. 

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Version in Spanish also available. Version in Catalan available soon.

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