Syllabus

Course Description

The prevalence of English as second language users in America's schools has led to the need for teachers who have a sound knowledge base of research proven theories, techniques, methods, and assessment for teaching literacy to such populations. This course is designed to help inservice teachers develop the skills and practices necessary to be facilitators of language and academic development of K-12 learners whose native tongue is other than English.

Objectives

• Identify and state the major premises surrounding ESL and the more recent terminology, ESOL,  literacy instruction
• Select appropriate emphasis and techniques based on "best practice" supported by the research for effective methods and practices in ESL, ESOL literacy instruction
• Demonstrate researched supported methods of instructing for language and reading fluency with ESOL students
• Contrast and compare the various methods supported by research findings for organizing and differentiating instruction for ESOL learners.
• Identify and state the "conditions of learning" in ESOL literacy programs
• Identify and discuss a variety of literature appropriate for learners with multicultural backgrounds
• Identify and discuss a variety of ways to use literature to raise awareness and acceptance of multicultural groups within our society and schools
• Identify and state the major issues with the concepts of quantitative and qualitative assessment of literacy achievement of ESOL learners
• Identify the "best practices" of  literacy instruction and achievement for ESOL programs
• List multiple ways that technology aid in the development of literacy in ESOL programs

Curriculum Design

Linguistically Diverse Students and Literacy is a forty five-hour, 3 graduate credit course taught online. Modules 11-13 are hands on modules during which students will demonstrate their level of competency with course content by completing their preplanned final projects of designing and publishing a class webpage, hypermedia presentation for use in their own classroom, and the final technology infused integration units.

Time Requirements

This course is offered over a period of 15 weeks. Modules are completed over the 15-week period pending length of assignments per week.

Skill and Hardware Requirements

Students may use either a Macintosh computer or a PC with Windows 2000 or higher. Students should possess basic word processing skills and have Internet access as well as an active email account. Students also are expected to have a basic knowledge of how to use a Web browser, such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, etc.

Course Materials

The required textbook for this course is: Rothenberg, C. & Fisher, D. (2007) Teaching English language learners: A differentiated approach. Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, NJ. Recommended Reading List provided each term. Course content includes many online readings, website reviews, research reading assignments and forum postings.

Course Outline

Introduction: Introduction & Overview

Objective:In this beginning exercise, the instructor will confirm the accuracy of e-mail addresses for all students. The instructor will then send a welcome message to the class. The students have this first week to acquaint themselves with the format of the course, the textbook, and the methods of communication.
Contents:

• Introduction to the online class environment
• Meet the classmates
• Meet the instructor
• Become familiar with the online course content
• Review the course outline
• Review the course syllabus and relevant information
• Become familiar with the textbook layout
• Review Chapter Overviews
• Review Project structures

Module One: A Differentiated Approach: Core Principles of Learning

Objective:

• Defining the ESOL students and their multicultural counterparts
• Introducing the statistics on the need for ESOL programs in America's schools
• Examining the English language development proficiency descriptors
• Contrast and compare program models for teaching ESOL learners
• Examine the effect of teacher expectation and attitude on achievement of ESOL students
• Introduce the terms, ESL, ESOL, ELL and define their likenesses and differences
• Define Zone of Proximal Development as it applies to ESOL learners and instructional programs

Contents:

• Introduction the ESOL and culturally diverse learner
• Who are they
• What do they know that will help them learn English
• Under what conditions will they best be able to learn
• Statistics on the prevalence of ESOL and culturally diverse learners in American schools
• From melting pot to salad bowl
• Rapid growth in last decade
• Success rates
• English language development proficiencies
• Listening and speaking
• Reading: Phonemic Awareness, decoding etc.
• Reading vocabulary
• Structural features of informational materials
• Writing, penmanship and organization for idea presentations
• Conventions of writing
• Teacher Expectation and attitudes
• Lower expectation
• Higher expectation
• Acceptance
• Funds of knowledge
• Practices and resources
• Recognition of knowledge
• Program Models for teaching ESOL learners
• Using native tongue/Bilingual programs
• Using native tongue as support to the instructional program
• English as a Second language programs
• Content based/Sheltered Instructional methods
• Research based recommendations for ESOL programs
• Effective practices
• Use of zone of proximal development theories
• Use of conditions of learning strategies
• Sheltered instruction

Module Two: Language Acquisition: Dimensions of Proficiency

Objective:

• Define the dimensions of language proficiency
• Identify the key principles of language acquisition
• Introduce communicative competency theories and components
• Determine best methods of applying the four principles of language acquisition to instructional practices
• Identify additional factors that influence language learning

Contents:

• Define language proficiency
• BICS and CALP
• Communicative competency
• Four principles of language learning and their application
• Comprehensible input
• Contextual instruction
• Low anxiety environment
• Meaningful engagement
• Additional factors that influence language learning
• Proficiency in the primary language
• Age of student
• Personality
• Motivation

Module Three: Purposeful Planning: Equal Access for All

Objective:

• Introduce differentiated instruction concept and practices
• Contrast and compare traditional instruction with differentiated instruction
• Examine standards for effective teaching
• Identify ways to plan for all students
• Define a workable Instructional framework for teaching English (ESOL, ELL) learners

Contents:

• Planning instruction that matters
• Traditional planning
• Universal design planning
• Standards of effective teaching
• Producing together, teacher and students
• Developing language and literacy across the curriculum
• Making connections between outside world and school learning
• Challenge thinking in complex ideas and topics
• Using conversations and dialogue to engage students in learning
• Planning for all students
• Inclusive classroom participation
• Maximum text readability
• Amendable accommodations
• Equitable use
• Flexibility in use
• Simple and intuitive use
• Perceptible information
• Tolerance for errors
• Low physical effort
• Appropriate size and space
• Designing effective daily lessons
• Common features of lesson plans
• Objectives and standards
• Purpose
• Anticipatory set
• Instruction
• Guided practice
• Independent practice
• Assessment and closure
• Reflection/Reward
• Framework for teaching English language learners (ELL)
• Key questions to ask about the lesson
• Using Frontloading of language
• Integrating language and content
• Principles of instruction
• State clear purposes
• Access prior knowledge
• Connect to prior learning
• Provide models/demonstrations
• Contextualize new information
• Develop vocabulary
• Provide for student to student interactions
• Provide opportunities for authentic practice
• Teach learning strategies: metacognition
• Use multiple assessment methods
• Provide primary language support as appropriate

Module Four: Phonics and other Word Identification Strategies

Objective:

• Identify the reasons we assess students
• Introduce methods for assessing oral language
• Examine how to use assessment results to plan instruction that is differentiated
• Examine how to use assessment to "inform" teaching

Contents:

• State why assessment is necessary in ESOL, ELL literacy programs
• Identify methods of assessing language development of their ESOL, ELL students
• Student Oral Language Observation Matrix, (SOLOM)
• Interactive Writing Charts
• Running Records
• KWL Charts and Response Logs
• Teacher Created Tests
• Writing samples
• Design a written plan of implementing assessment for ESOL, ELL programs
• Setting goals and purposes
• Collecting the data
• Interpreting the data
• Using data for daily or program planning
• Design a written plan of effective "intervention" for ESOL and ELL students

Module Five: Oral Language: The Foundation of Literacy

Objective:

• Introduce ways to provide for oral language activities for ESOL learners
• Examine the concept of social interaction and language learning
• Examine methods of scaffolding questions to facilitate critical thinking for students at all levels of proficiency in English
• Identify ways to design lessons where student engage in peer interaction, questioning and helping
• Review oral language development and learning as a tool for designing effective classroom instruction for ESOL and ELL learners.

Contents:

• Accessing prior knowledge, language and culture
• Using oral language to evaluate prior knowledge
• Setting the background
• Research findings on oral language in the classroom
• Improving ability to communicate
• Continuous meaningful practice
• Taking the teacher out of the "talking mode"
• Organizing for Interaction
• Language and content
• Grouping students for interactive projects and discussion groups
• Effective meaningful group work
• Provide explicit instruction on working in groups
• Build in necessity for talking
• Select cognitive tasks that require critical thinking
• Involve all students
• Provide sufficient time to complete the task
• Developing language with group work
• Listening
• Explicit teaching in listening skills
• Modeling listening skills
• Guide practice in listening
• Independent practice
• Reflection
• Q & A for developing language
• Teacher expectations
• Teacher's questioning levels
• Low level cognitive questions
• High level cognitive questions
• Open ended/critical evaluative questions
• Wait time
• Students Questioning
• Using QARs
• Reciprocal Questioning
• Students Helping Students
• Reciprocal Teaching
• Personal Aides/Coaches

Module Six: Review of Oral Language Development with ESOL Students

Objective:

• Identify the needs of multicultural students with diverse language in American classes
• Define the challenges and rewards of multicultural literature to teach reading and oral language proficiency
• Identify ways to plan lessons for Interaction of ESOL students
• Continue to develop skills in modifying or adapting lesson plans to meet the needs of diverse language users.

Contents:

• Special plight of English language learners
• Phonological awareness
• Fluency gaps
• Comprehension gaps
• Achievement gaps
• Viva la differance!
• Accepting and celebrating diversity
• Dual language identity text
• Primary instructional language
• NCLB and multicultural diverse literacy learners
• Positive implications
• Negative implications
• Problematic issues
• Related to teaching
• Related to equity
• Transforming literacy curriculum and pedagogy
• Context
• Methodology
• Providing for authentic voices in the classroom

Module Seven: Academic Language: Building Language Proficiency

Objective:

• Define academic language and its importance to literacy achievement
• Identify the components of an effective reading program
• Examine the role of word knowledge in performance of ESOL learners
• Identify effective methods for teaching word knowledge/vocabulary

Contents:

• Defining Academic language
• Language domains
• Accuracy
• Linguistic functions
• Cognitive demands
• Range of knowledge
• Language registers and implications for ESOL
• Mode: Means of communication
• Field: Subject matter being discussed
• Tenor: Relationship between listener/reader and speaker/writer
• Research findings on language registers
• Reading academic language
• Five essential components of reading
• Components of quality reading
• Strategies for teaching reading to ELL, English language learners
• Research findings on reading academic language
• Developing reading vocabulary
• High frequency or sight words
• Root words
• Affixes
• Cohesive devices/signal words
• Referents
• Lexical chains
• Conjunctions
• Content words
• Academic vocabulary
• Word learning strategies
• Word walls
• Barrier games
• List-group-label
• Vocabulary journals
• Read Alouds
• Semantic feature analysis
• Vocabulary cards/word banks
• Word sorts
• Wide reading

Module Eight: Academic Language: Reading and Writing

Objective:

• Identify effective instructional strategies for developing writing skills for students with varying degrees of English proficiency.
• Define the term "assessment-driven" instruction
• Contrast and compare peaceful coexistence of test developers, policymakers and teachers
• Explore and reach conclusions about if and how assessment "informs" literacy education

Contents:

• Text structures and functions
• Narrative
• Expository
• Writing for academic purposes
• Strategies to teach ELL and ESOL
• Language Experience Approach
• Interactive writing
• Writing models
• Generative sentences
• Word pyramids
• Power writing
• Found poems
• RAFT, role, audience, format, topic
• Writing to learn
• Independent writing assignments
• Teaching Grammar in ESOL programs
• Sentence structure
• Subject-verb agreement
• Verb tense
• Verb phrases
• Plurals
• Auxiliaries
• Correcting ESOL learners' language mistakes
• Two schools of thought, yes and no
• Factors to consider in correcting errors
• Comprehensibility
• Pedagogical forms
• Types of errors
• Transfer
• Overgeneralizations
• Avoidance
• Idiomatic
• Idiosyncratic

Module Nine: Grade Level Content: Integrating Language and Learning

Objective:

• Identify learning strategies that support learning content while developing English proficiency
• Identify methods of "frontloading" language to prepare students to discuss or write about a new concept
• Identify teaching methods or practices that will help build independent learners
• Learn how to differentiate teaching and learning for ESOL and ELL students
• Identify the essential standards for ESOL and ELL students to achieve

Contents:

• Accessing prior knowledge
• Scaffolding
• Reintroduce prior information
• Questioning
• Making content comprehensible
• Modeling
• Bridging
• Contextualization
• Schema-building
• Metacognition
• Test re-presentation
• Developing independent learning
• Graphic organizers
• Require critical thinking
• Organize information visually
• Categorize Information
• Text structure and graphics use
• Planning
• Instruction
• Practice
• Reinforce
• Integrating language and content
• Frontloading
• Integrating
• Developing Independence
• CALLA
• Metacognitive strategies
• Cognitive strategies
• Social/affective strategies
• Type of learning
• Declarative
• Procedural
• Conditional
• Sequence of instruction
• Explicit teaching
• Modeling
• Guided practice
• Independent practice
• Reflection/reward

Module Ten: Grade Level Content: Math, Science, Social Studies and Literature

Objective:

• Examine the problems associated with teaching and learning these at or near grade level for ESOL students
• Identify the approaches that are recommended by research as viable alternatives or modifications for teaching each content area to ESOL students

Contents:

• Mathematics
• Social Studies
• Literature
• Spiral the Curriculum the need for redundancy

Module Eleven: Differentiated Instruction: High Expectations for All

Objective:

• Identify the effect that teacher expectation has on student learning
• Define differentiated instruction in terms of ESOL, ESL, and ELL learners
• Identify the ways to use the concepts of multiple intelligences to differentiate instruction
• Identify and explore teaching strategies best suited to differentiated instruction

Contents:

• Learning styles
• Auditory
• Visual
• Kinesthetic
• Teacher Expectation and Student learning
• Good's research (1987)
• TESA studies
• Teacher student interactions that facilitate learning
• Equitable distribution of response opportunities
• Affirmation or correction
• Proximity
• Individual helping
• Praise for learning performance
• Courtesy
• Latency
• Reasons for Praise
• Personal interest statements
• Rephrasing, digging deeper
• Touching
• Higher level questioning
• Acceptance
• Stopping misbehaviors
• Defining differentiated instruction
• Sources, processes, products
• Multiple intelligences
• Research findings
• Grouping
• Planning and scaffolding
• Varied assessments

Module Twelve: Technology in ESOL, ESL, and ELL Literacy Programs

Objective:

• Research computer programs and Internet web resources focused on ESOL, ESL and ELL literacy instruction
• Explore and compile an annotated  resource list of quality technology resources for ESOL students and parents at grade levels appropriate for classrooms or district programs
• Establish effective classroom procedures for integration of technology and ESOL, ESL, ELL instruction.

Contents:

• Effective use of computers in ESOL classrooms and programs
• Evaluating Computer programs for literacy instruction in ESOL programs
• Guidelines for effective technology integration in ESOL literacy instruction

* All readings on these topics will be posted on the class website and the Internet

Module Thirteen: Communicating with ESOL, ESL, and ELL Parents

Objective:

• Review Lau Guidelines, Federal and State mandates for ESOL Education
• Research web resources for writing, spelling, and grammar instruction with ESOL students
• Research web resources for translation services and "best practices" in communicating with parents of ESOL students
• Identify excellent resources for parents to involve them in their child's schooling and education
• Provide time for participants to develop an appropriate plan for home school communication with ESOL, ESL and ELL parents

Contents:

Class participants will read the class website and the related Internet links provided to find information on the various approaches for involving parents in the ESOL literacy program as well as plans for effective school home communication. A review of the web resources and class website is required.

Module Fourteen: Recap and Enrichment

Objective:

• Revisit topics of interest from the course
• Identify other areas not addressed in the course at the request of course participants or current events
• Refine assignments as needed

Contents:

• What research shows on the state of ESOL programs: A recap
• Traditional - historic
• Issues
• Critical need
• Creating effective English development programs
• Collaboration
• Taking courses
• Professional presentations

Module Fifteen: Posttest and Catch-up

Objective:

• Assessment of course outcomes
• Provide time for submission of or resubmission of any needed documents with revisions
• Post course evaluations

Course Requirements:

Requirements	Points
Forum Discussions	50
Weekly Assignments	100
Project 1 (Module 5) Annotated Bibliography	25
Project 2 (Module 6)  Lesson Plan # 2	25
Project 3 (Module 12) Annotated Bibliography # 2	50
Project 4 (Module 15) Final Integration Project with PPP	50
Total	300

Grades
300-279 - A
278-255 - B
254-231 - C

Student Academic Integrity

Participants guarantee that all academic class work is original. Any academic dishonesty or plagiarism (to take ideas, writings, etc. from another and offer them as one's own), is a violation of student academic behavior standards as outlined by the Teacher Education University catalog and is subject to academic disciplinary action.

Bibliography

Computers and English for Speakers of Other Languages. (2007) Integrating technology in ESOL programs. http://tech.worlded.org/docs/cesol/links.htm Retrieved August 12, 2007.

Cummins, J. (2003) Reading and the bilingual student: Fact and friction. In Garcia, G. (Ed.), English learners: Reaching the level of English literacy (pp 227-258). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Dutro, S. & Moran, C. (2003) Rethinking English language instruction: An architectural approach. In Garcia, G. (Ed.), English learners: Reaching the highest level of English literacy (pp.227-258). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Kohn, A. (2004) What does it mean to be well educated? And more essays on standards, grading, and other follies. Boston: Beacon Press.

National Center for Educational Statistics. (2003) The nation's report card: Writing highlights 2000. http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2003529 Retrieved August 12, 2007.

Rock, M. L. (2004) Graphic organizers: Tools to build behavioral literacy and foster emotional competency. Intervention in School and Clinic, 40(1), 10-37.

Tompkins, G. E. & Blanchfield, C. (2004) Teaching vocabulary: 50 creative strategies, grades K-12. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.

Walqui, A. (2003) Conceptual framework: Scaffolding instruction for English learners. San Francisco: WestEd.

Teacher Education University reserves the right to adjust and adapt this syllabus as necessary.