Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 6; November 03

Creating new Identity Portfolios in the English Class

Nuria Salvador, High school teacher from near Barcelona

WHAT THE PROJECT WAS ABOUT

This was a whole year project done at IES EL CALAMOT during the school year 2000-2001. It involved :

First term: In the English class 15 year-old students had to write 8 texts in English, aiming at building a false adult identity as part of their everyday work for that term. Once their faked identities had been created, learners could choose to present a New Identity Portfolio based on their compositions

Second term:. If they had handed in a New Identity Portfolio, then they would go to the bank and, with the help of the staff involved in the project and decide on the financial product that best suited their needs according to the identity they had created.

As the second part of the project is not in the Catalan curriculum for compulsory education, their work during the second term was optional, and done in the evenings. It was tutored by a Business and Commerce teacher, as we are also a Vocational Education school, and learners had to write another paper, explaining their choice of financial product.

When learners decided to join, they entered a competition. The prize was a week for two in the UK, paid for by the bank. Our only condition to allow learners to participate was that they had completed their New Identity Portfolios.

Third term: Evaluation of the papers and Prize-Giving Ceremony

1. CREATING NEW IDENTITY PORTFOLIOS IN THE ENGLISH CLASS

Using the textbook, which was Heinemann's Generation 2000, as a structure for the 8 texts the learners had simply to write following the outline of the book, and there was nothing extraordinary in learners having to write them, as that is the normal procedure. Learners wrote what they were asked to as part of their work for that term.

Deciding to elaborate the portfolio, implied going a step further, and meant that the learners were ready to transform their texts into papers, including two compulsory sections and several optional sections.

COMPULSORY SECTIONS

1. Vocabulary: Here learners recorded all the words they had looked up in dictionaries in order to write their compositions. Each word should also include a corresponding sample sentence, which I encouraged them to copy from a “safe” source (the composition itself once it had been corrected, the dictionary, a textbook…), rather than invent it .
2. My Favourite Mistake: Learners should list in this section the errors they had made in their compositions together with a reflection, in Catalan, explaining why the error had been made.

I must point out that learners were already familiar with these two sections, as they use portfolios to take notes in the English class, and these two sections are included. What was different now was that they had to take personal decisions as to what they should include, which is not normally the case when they are younger.

OPTIONAL SECTIONS

1. Pictures with commentaries
2. Interviews
3. Diaries
4. Mind maps
5. Favourite songs

The educational idea behind doing this was helping learners acquire the necessary strategies to become independent learners and providing tools to encourage harder and more motivating work to those who were willing to accept the challenge.

There was also the idea, as an African saying goes, that “You need a whole village to educate a child”. Involving the community is very important in order to engage learners, parents, and also teachers, and one of the key strategies if we are to create motivation in the context of compulsory schooling for all learners up to the age of 16. It is not by chance that rural schools rate the highest in the Catalan context nowadays, as there the involvement of the community is greater.

With that idea in mind, and being a school in Barcelona's industrial belt, Dolors Sánchez, a Business and Commerce teacher, and I, asked for a meeting with one of the most important financial institutions in Spain, and explained our idea to them. To our amazement, they listened, and agreed to join us in the adventure of making our school a more dynamic place.

Being listened to was really a confidence booster to both of us, and the experience itself was really enriching both to us and to the staff in the branch where learners went to ask for information.

Sharing the project with them also allowed us to see learners from a different perspective, as not all the learners we anticipated would engage in the project actually did, and some we thought that would not, not only participated but were enthusiastic about it. Besides, it was really interesting to realize that the opinion the people in the bank had about the learners did not always coincide with ours.

THE COMPETITION

A jury formed by a teacher of English, a Business and Commerce teacher, the Head teacher and a representative from the bank chose the best two projects, and in the end, after a prize giving ceremony where parents were invited, two of our learners went to England for a week.

APPENDIX – THE EIGHT TEXTS