Design 

When designing a curriculum, a teacher may outline a blueprint that consists of the language input to be taught, the process and methodology, and the learning outcomes that students would demonstrate at the end of a specific period. The construction of this blueprint is highly dependent on the context of the curriculum where a teacher might consider a forward design, a central design, or a backward design (Richards, 2013). In LT 548 (Curriculum Design), I elected the route of central design when constructing my dual language immersion course as it aligns with the student-centeredness present within early childhood education pedagogies of Reggio, Emergent, and Montessori. The artifact of the scope and sequence chart provided me with the opportunity to contextualize the content of the course in accordance with the two languages, the needs of the learners, and the context (Graves, 2000). Through outlining a prototype communicative syllabus (Brown & Lee, 2014), I highlighted a sequential list of potential topics that would interest the young learners, and then accordingly presented a list of grammatical and lexical forms that would be taught. I also ensured that the general themes throughout the 10-week course were broad enough for a teacher to easily adapt and alter the topics as changes to the learners' needs might emerge, which promotes not only the agency of the learners but also the educators as they exercise their philosophy in the process of design (Graves, 2023). 

The main teaching philosophy of the dual language immersion course I constructed in LT 548 is that children learn best through engaging with the language through play. Through a variety of hands-on activities, the teacher is able to allow learners to navigate and learn more about their world in a scaffolded manner (Vygotsky, 1978). Considering this, the lesson plan artifact surrounding the theme of “Food” was designed to provide learners with opportunities to engage in developmentally appropriate but challenging activities, which would not only enhance their intrinsic motivation but also increase their autonomy and confidence throughout the learning process (Ali et al., 2018). This lesson was carefully designed to demonstrate clear learning outcomes in each activity, with integration of Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom, 1956). The selection of the storybooks “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” and “Pete the Cat and the Missing Cupcakes,” also reflects the approach that literature can be utilized in an innovative manner, where readiness, experimental, and developmental activities allowed learners to engage with text across in a personally enriching manner (Tomlinson, 2003). The use of literature can fulfill the personal enrichment of these young learners where by allowing them to “draw on their own personal experiences, feelings, and opinions,” their development would be facilitated across the domains of language, socioemotional, and cognitive development (Lazar, 1993, p. 24).

In LT 539 (Design for Teaching Pronunciation), I undertook the challenge of teaching Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) pronunciation to young learners who were studying the language at immersion school located in the United States. The teaching of MSA is often subjected to debates where scholars and educators disagree on the benefits and drawbacks of teaching the most “eloquent” variety of Arabic. I aimed to transcend the underlying standard language ideologies present and advocate for MSA to be taught as a lingua franca (Jaradat & Al-Khawaldeh, 2015). As a tool of wider communication, MSA is comprehensible and intelligible to nearly all speakers of Arabic (Palmer, 2007), nevertheless, it is important for teachers to implement an integrated approach where other varieties of Arabic are introduced side by side with MSA, outlining the systematic differences that occur within pronunciation (Younes, 1990). The lesson plan artifact, “Linking with the /Al/ definitive Article,” highlights the teaching of a suprasegmental feature that occurs in most varieties of Arabic. In this lesson, the young learners are introduced to germination and accompanying stress in a contextualized manner where the vocabulary focus is on animals living in a variety of habitats. Furthermore, pronunciation acquisition is facilitated through adopting a communicative framework (Celce-Murcia et al., 2010). The activities are constructed to be personalizable and engaging, with students being able to practice the phonological feature in a scaffolded and meaningful manner.