LT 548: Curriculum Design gave an in-depth look at the backend of the design process. Prior to this course, I was not aware of the amount of meticulous work that went into fabricating a course that is both effective and enjoyable for learners. What came out of this course was a curriculum that I am simultaneously immensely proud of and thrilled to have completed a project of this scale. The curriculum that I designed focuses on learning English through theatre. By combining kinesthetic elements that are provided by the medium, students experience embodying language in a whole new way. Each unit is designed to supplement the last and build upon itself towards the final project of putting on a play of students’ group design. These skills that are taught are not only indicative of successful theatre arts but are transferable off the stage. Enunciation, pronunciation, and articulation of the mouth are a few of the focused skills that are explored within the course. Brown and Lee (2015) outline the 8 principles of second language teaching, one of which is the active learning criteria that is at the forefront of this course. I came into designing this course with the goal of constructing a curriculum that allows students to connect the emotional significance of the new words that they are learning with the physical attributes that pair. 

Each element of the course is further supported by Student Learning Objectives (SLOs) that are “checkpoints” of achievement that students will accomplish. Each is crafted using verbiage from Bloom’s Taxonomy (a hierarchical organization of objects that clarifies objectives for students and teachers) to help structure the skills (Bloom et al., 1956). 

Through the design process of this curriculum, I learned the genuine passion that is poured into courses and garnered a new appreciation for instructors who  have birthed incredible lessons for students to enjoy. For this reason, I have selected my curriculum to represent me learning how to design, a growth landmark, and to give my appreciation to past LTS graduates whose courses I have taken that were built from the knowledge LT 548 provides.

I chose this artifact as the course it came from showed me a glimpse of my future career. Seemingly hyperbolic, it was this course that gave me the opportunity to tutor an ESL student for the very first time, and it was this instance that I knew I had found my current calling. The artifact that I have selected here is a combination of creating inventive games and activities that aid students in their acquisition of difficult aspects of a language. A strength of mine is creating analogies that assist students in understanding concepts, and by utilizing this skill, it has helped me create effective materials for teaching. This activity was created to focus on teaching a segmental element of English: the vowel differentiation of /ɪ/ and /æ/ (as pronounced in the words ‘kit’ and ‘cat’ /kɪt/ /kæt/) through minimal pairs. I derived the communicative framework for teaching pronunciation from Celce-Murcia et al. (2010) Teaching pronunciation: A coursebook and reference guide (2nd edition), focusing on the description and analysis and guided practice (p.45). This activity was designed to have students learn kinesthetically, give opportunity to visualize phonemes and their corresponding written words, whilst connecting them to their real-life representation. I did this by adapting the well-known card game Go-Fish. Instead of matching cards by their numerical or face value (King, Queen, etc.), students would be pairing cards by the minimal pairs of the vowels that are covered during the lesson. 

Though an artifact from my undergraduate years - for which the lesson plan is not honed to the same standards as today’s -, I feel that this showcases my design philosophy of intuitive and enjoyable materials that students want to engage with, rather than drudge through. This has not altered and has been further refined in my many instances of designed materials. I selected this artifact for its display of pure, untampered passion for teaching and the mark of a zealous future instructor. 

My third artifact is a lesson plan and accompanying materials that I crafted collaboratively with Miranda Dufour and Savanna Kyser for one week within the LT 537: Second Language Teaching Practice course. This artifact consists of a set of slides for both teaching days, the corresponding lesson plans, and activity materials. This course’s focus was on casual, open-ended conversations between American English Institute (AEI) peers and the LT 537 students. Because this course was an elective, the way in which we designed our materials, conveyed instruction, and environmental mood were essential to the course’s success. These initial lesson plans were important as it was the first week of the course and began the momentum and set the tone for the rest of the course. Design, more specifically, the way in which we conveyed content, was integral to the course. Activities that we implemented varied from pair work - intimate, more personalized communication - to the entire class of 50 AEI students and LT 537 students engaging with one another - chaotic, more spontaneous conversations. All aspects worked on various skills and aided in keeping the attention and ultimate goal of genuine participation of the AEI students, as this was where the true learning lies. This course was sensitive to the needs and interests of the AEI students that were freely taking the course. Surveys were conducted twice a week (within the final minutes of the class) to check in on their likes, topics that they wanted to see, and if there were elements that they thought could improve. We then evaluated this data and created a living archive of feedback that would then be used to guide future groups in their lesson creation.

I chose this artifact to represent design as it utilizes key teachings from the LTS program such as washback and scaffolding dynamic environments (Brown & Abeywickrama, 2019; Yerian, 2022). These two concepts are integral to the overarching curriculum design and down to individual lesson structure. 

My fourth artifact that represents thoughtful design is my lesson plan and materials coming from LT 528: Teaching English Culture and Literature. This lesson plan is focused on teaching ESL learners through the literary genre of Noir. Within this fictitious course design, students would be focused on learning academic reading techniques such as analysis and argumentative writing. However, an overarching theme would be learning about moral ambiguity and what it means to be good. To do so, these concepts learned from the LTS program would be used: student engagement, metacognition, and creative material mediums (Brown & Lee 2015; Jia et al., 2019; Yerian, 2022. These elements are integral to confident design and engaging lessons, and as such are heavily implemented within the lesson plans and materials. 

The purpose of the course is to talk about cultural views on “goodness” and how characters are socially viewed. For instance, in a different country from the United States, would a character such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thanos, be seen as a hero/anti-hero? Within the initial inception, I created three possible materials that would accentuate the course’s theme of noir. These are F 451: To its End, Sliding Perspective, and Neon Nights. However, within this reflection, I will be focusing on the main activity of the course, F 451: To Its End. These three activities accentuated the aspects of what makes noir the dark and gritty genre that is retrospective of the time. As such, I wanted to showcase not only the flavor of the genre but the integral aspects of the genre that is often overlooked.

Pulpy and driven by action and intrigue, many noir books are works of literary fiction that make statements on the human condition. In a great number of cases, those statements are bleak. From the villains to the protagonists to society itself, the world seems to conspire against good people in noir fiction. In this vein, the activity aptly named, To Its End, encapsulates the sudden, unforgiving aspect of the genre. Students are asked to create a journal that details their personal reflections on the award-winning novel, Fahrenheit 451 written by Ray Bradberry. The purpose of this activity is to comment on cultural differences between societal norms of perception through discussion on two fundamental elements of society: collectivism and individualism. DeCapaua (2018) details the elements and descriptions of both