Participants will understand how to fulfill leadership responsibilities behind ESOL program development and maintenance, to include federal and state program and legal requirements, the role of culture and the community, cross-cultural communications, strategies for parental involvement, and support for classroom teachers.
*This course is optional, and not necessary for endorsement completion.
This course will take participants into deep realms of content area reading and writing to include literary and non-fiction across multiple genres, reading comprehension, critical literacy, questioning strategies, and leveling of resources to differentiate for standards and second language learners’ needs. Participants will learn about, become familiar and practice with the resources that determine text complexity and level libraries. Participants will learn to use running records and anecdotal data to analyze, evaluate, and plan for student needs. With a focus on grade level writing differentiated for ELLs, participants will cull the writing and language standards for applicability to content-specific reading and writing in ELL instruction. In doing so, participants will level strategy and expectation with assignments as they align with state and national standards. Assignments will include developing performance tasks and comprehensive lessons, unit planning and preparation and rigorous participation in discussion forums. Participants will learn to strategically scaffold in order to close grade-level achievement gaps while meeting the expectations for ELLs.
Course Objectives:
- Apply new strategies to teaching ELLs while facilitating grade-level standards-based language standards in reading, writing, listening and speaking.
- Understand how to assess students using standards-based formative and summative assessments while using assessment data to close achievement gaps among ELLs.
- Select methods to improve listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills for a variety of academic and social purposes.
- Apply standards-based instruction through design and implementation to develop the skills ELLs need for academic success.
- Resource and apply tools that determine text complexity.
- Use and plan with resources that support content area reading and writing specific to ELLs.
- Understand genre as it applies to reading and writing specific to ELLs.
- Learn and apply research-based strategies to plan, differentiate, and scaffold reading and writing tasks for ELLs.
- Summarize and articulate role of diversity and its role in, and affect on, the school community.
- Plan with, and apply, strategies for enlisting involvement of the home family.
- Develop utility with resources and materials that support student growth in language and overall academic achievement.
- Paraphrase and articulate the history and background of ESOL/ELL programs, the role of legislation behind them and what the mandates are in order to support them in the school community.
- Represent the legal interests of ELL students in the wider school community through hypothetical scenarios.
- Support the role government in ESOL programs through teacher professional development and parental support.
- Practice with strategies that aid paraprofessionals in supporting ESOL/ELL academic growth in all content areas.
- Outline and articulate second language acquisition (applied linguistics) theory and its applicability to the instructional process.
- Apply language acquisition and theory to instructional design.
- Design curriculum supports and use strategies that further language acquisition.
- Design action plans fro the lens of the school site administrator as the instructional leader representative in the school-based ELL Committee.
- Analyze and use data to further ESOL professional development, student intervention, and for programmatic decision-making.
This course is 60 hours