Facilitating Proficiency-Based Learning

Proficiency-Based Learning Part 2: Developing Curriculum

Part 2.3: Plan Learning Experiences and Instruction

After identifying desired learning results and determining acceptable evidence, the last step in backward design is to design learning activities and consider instructional methods that will best support learners in achieving these results and producing this evidence. This stage involves instruction and planning formative practice so that learners can receive feedback before they are asked to demonstrate their learning through performance-based summative assessments.

When designing learning experiences and instruction, educators focus on the core purposes: communication and the language functions needed to create the learning experiences.

Over the course of a thematic unit, educators provide learners with multiple practice opportunities in interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational communication, each suited to the learners’ performance levels. The examples in this blog illustrate only a few of the communicative experiences learners might engage in for practice and feedback during a unit of study. An array of experiences would be provided for learners, from highly scaffolded - where learners might complete sentence frames - to less scaffolded - where learners answer open-ended questions.

In our example related to the environment, to complete the interpersonal task, learners need to be able to employ functions such as asking and responding to questions, recounting past events, making comparisons, and express agreement or disagreement. These functions guide instruction and practice.

Formative Practice - Communicative Interpretive Experience

Instruction starts with discovering and building background knowledge. Educators can provide input through interpretive texts. For a unit that features our example interpersonal task, one of the input texts might be a person describing activities that they and their friend took part in. Learners might then identify the activities in the texts and categorize them by their environmental impact to see how they impacted the environment.

In this way, learners practice interpretive skills for a purpose. Categorizing gives learners a purpose for reading and may cause them to think more deeply and be more motivated to understand the text.

Here's how this might look for a learner. In this activity, learners pull information from the text and demonstrate their interpretive skills.

Formative Practice - Communicative Interpersonal Experience

To practice interpersonal communication, learners could compare their lists with a partner, discussing what the people in the story did yesterday and if the learners think those actions were beneficial or harmful to the environment. They would then practice agreeing or disagreeing, using a scaffolded chart to support their discussion, if needed.

Formative Practice - Communicative Presentational Experience

For presentational communication, learners could practice by writing about someone's activities from the previous day. In this process, they could highlight actions that negatively impact the environment and propose positive alternatives.

Let's take a step back and look at how each of these modes interact in an IPA. Learners practice language functions in all three modes of communication in scaffolded experiences, allowing them to eventually communicate their own ideas to complete the performance assessment tasks, like an IPA. Ritz and Toro offer numerous examples of input and interactive experiences for proficiency-based world language instruction. Chardin and Novak suggest that educators collaborate with learners to “create a buffet of methods, materials, and assessments to meet the intended goal.” (More about learner-centered practices and differentiation will be shared in Proficiency-Based Learning: BLOG SERIES 3)

Wrapping up Part 2

A proficiency-based curriculum requires a thoughtful approach, working backwards from goals to assessments to instruction and formative practice with feedback. Through backward design and a proficiency-focused learning environment, educators can develop a curriculum that emphasizes what learners can do and supports them on their pathway to communicate in the target language.