Conversation Practice: Strategies to Improve Speaking for Newcomer Emergent Bilingual Students

Instructional Design: The professional learning will use the Backward Design framework, which consists of three stages: Identify desired results, determine acceptable evidence, and plan learning experiences and instruction. The professional learning will also follow the 5 key principles of effective PD: duration, support, active participation, modeling, and relevance.

Topic: Conversation Practice: Strategies to Improve Speaking for Newcomer Emergent Bilingual Students

Strategies Covered: Dialogues, 3 – 2 – 1, Ask – Answer – Add, and Video.

Rationale: Due to continued declines in performance in emergent bilingual (EB) students’ performance on the Speaking domain of the Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System (TELPAS), school administrators and emergent bilingual (EB) specialists in my district voted to prioritize professional learning that focuses on speaking initially, and then moves on to the other domains of literacy.

Audience: The audience is a group of campus-based EB specialists and administrators who will then take the information back to their campuses and train the teachers who work with newcomer emergent bilingual students. The trainers have background knowledge and experience in teaching English language learners and want to learn more/specific strategies that meet the needs of newcomer EB students.

Needs: The campus trainers need to learn how to use the conversation strategies effectively to support the oral language development and academic achievement of newcomer emergent bilingual students. They also need to learn how to model, coach, and provide feedback to the teachers who will implement the strategies in their classrooms.

Schedule/Timeline: The professional learning (trainer of trainer sessions) will consist of four sessions, each lasting one hour, with a total of 4 hours of contact time. The sessions will be spaced out over eight weeks, with one session every other week, to allow time for reflection and application between sessions. There will be an additional review and reflection week to close out the learning series for a total of nine weeks (with the aim of coinciding with the marking period).

Note: Campus specialists and administrators will have 1 – 2 days to turn the training around to teachers on their campus during PLCs and 8 – 9 school days to monitor implementation, model, coach, and provide feedback to teachers per conversation strategy.

Location: The sessions will be in-person during campus contact meetings.

Resources: The main resource for the professional learning will be the book “The ELL Teacher’s Toolbox: Hundreds of Practical Ideas to Support Your Students” by Larry Ferlazzo and Katie Hull Sypnieski. The book contains detailed explanations and examples of the conversation strategies, as well as many other useful tips and tools for teaching English language learners (teachers and each campus representative have received a copy of this book). The campus trainers will also need access to a computer, internet connection, and writing materials. They will also be provided with digital documents/hard copies of session deliverables to record their takeaways, reflections and plans.