Page 145 - Getting of the fence

The relevance and usefulness of the Comprehensive Approach
Structure and variety
The Comprehensive Approach provided “a clear structure for current activities as well as future ones” (Liz) allowing for a “stronger, more comprehensive design of the curriculum” (Fred). Doris experienced the use of the Comprehensive Approach as helpful, especially with regard to learning objectives. She explains: “You have an idea of learning objectives such as, with literature you want to increase reading experience or reading pleasure and you want them to understand aspects of a literary text, you want them to get acquainted with things from the history of England. You want many things at once but in the end, it is not always very structured. With the Comprehensive Approach you can place these objectives in a clear framework.” Interestingly, according to Ralph, the learning objectives “should have been identified years ago, but in fact it is still pretty new. What we wrote down, those goals and such, we had not yet formulated that.” For Fred, it was not only the learning objectives, but the entire structure of Backward Design as part of the professional development programme, that he experienced as “major gain.” Fred explains: “it helps me in creating a lesson plan and I think it helps the students as well.”
Teachers observed a change in being able to apply their newly acquired
knowledge about structure. Harry commented that he was now able “to stick to a
tight schedule” in his lessons. “I was a lot more organized to design the lessons. They 6 were now clear in terms of structure.” Similarly, Ysabel was also more structured
in her lessons, especially when showing video fragments. “I was always like, oh
just watch the video fragment, it’s nice.” In year 2 she managed to implement this
intention by designing assignments for each video fragment she showed in class.
Fred, on the other hand, explained that he always knew what he wanted to achieve
with his lessons, but he confessed that he “occasionally skipped a few steps” in the
design. Moreover, he mentioned that for him the most important aspect was being
explicit about the learning objectives: “Previously I tried to do this frequently, but
this year I was explicit about the learning objective in every single lesson” (Fred).
Sarah, however, was less successful in applying her knowledge about structure.
At the start of year 2, she shared an overview of the learning objectives with her
students and although she intended to remind her students of these objectives
throughout the year, she managed to do this only once.
The Comprehensive Approach made the teachers see that there are a lot of options for literature teaching, allowing for “ways to do it differently” (Fred). The aspect of variety was further emphasized by Liz who argued that it is now clear for her how she wants to teach literature: “Every lesson has to be surprising. I want to
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