Program: Eastern Suffolk BOCES Professional Development Program
Audience: Grades K-12 Educators
Dates: 4/12/2021 to 4/26/2021
This research-based curriculum incorporates key findings from the National Literacy Panel (2006) on teaching reading comprehension, vocabulary, fluency, phonemic awareness and phonics to English learners. Connections will be made to college and career readiness standards (such as CCSS) including reading and writing in the content areas. The program provides educators with research-based practical strategies for teaching literacy to English learners within reading, ESL, or grade-level content instruction.
Effective second language acquisition strategies serve as the foundation for the literacy practices communicated in the What's Different training, and the materials rely on seven research-based principles of effective instruction for English learners. A theme of the What's Different PD is that English learners are not a homogeneous group of students and, as a result, teaching methods will vary based on the characteristics of the students, such as those who are long term English learners, overage and under-credited. A further consideration for differentiation, particularly for older students who are new to English, is the degree of literacy in the first language and amount of formal schooling. Throughout the sessions, activities that teachers can implement in the classroom with modifications for their students will be modeled.
Participants will be able to:
• Differentiate how learning to read and write in English is the same and different for English proficient students and English learners
• Analyze how the components identified by the National Literacy Panel apply to the teaching and learning of reading for English learners
• Create lesson plans using reading and writing strategies that are useful for teaching English learners at a variety of proficiency levels, reading levels, first language literacy levels, ages, and language and cultural backgrounds.