As I think more about my upcoming summer, I realize that the most beneficial professional development that I provide will be targeting mainstream teachers who have ELLs in their classrooms. Each summer our school district requires all certified teachers to take 3 6-hour trainings provided by the district or regional educational cooperative. Each year so far I have offered training for ESL pull-out teachers, but this year I will also plan a day of training for the mainstream teachers who sign up for my session. I think that there are many misconceptions about ESL instruction that can be addressed as well as strategies that can be suggested that will enhance their classrooms in the upcoming school year.
My unit of study will be centered around equipping English Language Learners with the skills they need to acquire content and language more rapidly. These four lessons will take place throughout the same day. I will break up the 6 hours into 4 90 minute sessions with a ten minute break between the first and second sessions, lunch between the second and third, and another ten minute break between the third the fourth segments. Teachers will have the opportunity to engage in four areas of ESL instruction that will help better prepare them for the cultural, academic, and linguistic needs of English Language Learners.
As for a catchy title for the day, it is important for me to be clear and inviting in my course description and name. The school district lists out, by day, all the available trainings for teachers to choose from. The set-up is online and laid out similarly to how conference participants choose their break-out sessions. My description should be a short paragraph, and the title should be about 8-10 words at the most. Often presenters choose hyphenated titles such as, “World Class Education: Preparing the Next Generation of Global Citizens” or something like that. My title will be “Working with Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Learners.”
Outcome 1b of the Danielson Group Framework for teaching aligns with the Council for Chief State School Officers’ Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium’s Standard 1. InTASC’s Standard 1 states, “The teacher understands how learners grow and develop, recognizing that patterns of learning and development vary individually within and across the cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional, and physical areas, and designs and implements developmentally appropriate and challenging learning experiences.” Danielson’s exemplar of Outcome 1b states, “The teacher understands how learners grow and develop, recognizing that patterns of learning and development vary individually within and across the cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional, and physical areas, and designs and implements developmentally appropriate and challenging learning experiences.”
Based on the Arkansas-recognized framework for teacher expectations, I plan to modify these two standards into a theme and focus, as the outline of a thematic unit suggests. My theme is working with ESL students in the mainstream classroom. My focus is that I want to equip classroom teachers with research to explain, topics to think about, strategies and resources to use, and conviction to transform their ELLs’ experiences in their classrooms. In order to meet this overarching focus, my four objectives, one specifically covered in each lesson segment, will be tough to narrow down. Even harder to decide will be the activities and content to include in each lesson. All activities and material presented will refer back to the CCSSO and Danielson standards listed above.
The first lesson’s focus will be on language acquisition theory and implementing this new knowledge in their classrooms. The objective will be, “Teachers will be able to explain to fellow teachers the stages of language acquisition to a greater degree than when they arrived.” This objective is tied to Bloom’s second level, comprehension. The second lesson will teach the audience about the SIOP model of making content comprehensible to English Language Learners. This objective will be, “Teachers will be able to name and define the components of a SIOP lesson orally within their table group.” This lesson’s objective is tied to Bloom’s first level, knowledge. The third lesson’s focus will be on cultural awareness. The objective will be, “Teachers will be able to examine their own cultural awareness as it relates to their classroom and plan for changes connected to their new knowledge in the form of whole group discussion and presentations.” This objective is tied to Bloom’s sixth level, evaluation, and fifth level, synthesis. The fourth lesson will cover the overview of specific strategies and resources for the teachers to implement and use in their own rooms. By the end of this segment, I will expect them to role play using some of these strategies. The objective will be, “Teachers will be able to dramatize student and teacher interactions when ELLs require language acquisition strategies to make the content comprehensible to demonstrate that they understand what these strategies are and when to use them.”
I will try my best to make these four lessons learner-centered by helping the participants to think about previous teaching experiences (elicit), reflecting on their effectiveness in each of the four areas we cover, and dialoguing and collaborating with their table group and the whole group (explain). Additionally, I would like to implement some Google Drive sharing as I present the research to them in the first and second lessons. I envision producing some handouts with portions of articles and summaries of the SIOP strategies. Giving them the ability to collaborate on the document in live time while seeing each other’s notes will make the content more meaningful (explain). I could create teams of four to share a Google Drive folder. Then as they role play based on their newly acquired knowledge (extend), I will see that they are understanding and able to apply these pieces of research. There are many websites with great model lessons and information about ESL that I can show video clips (engage) from. In the section on language acquisition, I plan to run a simulation where the teachers experience some preschool games in a foreign language on a website so they get a glimpse of what it is like for their non-English speaking newcomers.
Our school district also purchases licenses to the Culture Grams website, and during the culture portion, I plan to share that with them and give them some time to explore that resource. It is a website that gives detailed information about every country. It is a valuable tool for teachers to use when lesson planning or leading students in social studies projects as well as when a teacher wants to know more for himself about a particular culture group that is represented in his classroom (explore). In the end, based on their personal reflection and journal entry, I will know what they have retained and will be able to use in their classrooms next year (evaluate).
Coli Escher 