Syllabus

Embracing Diversity and English Language Development in Your Program (10 professional development hours)

Embracing Diversity and English Language Development (ELD) in Your Program (10 professional development hours)

This content is available for individual self-paced learning or can be used to facilitate the training of groups of K-8 teachers (in person or online) in Massachusetts.

If this course is being taken to document Professional Development hours, use the checklist on the left to document course completion.

If you are interested in CEU credit, please contact:

  1. Your regional EPS provider (Educator and Provider Support Partnership) http://www.mass.gov/edu/birth-grade-12/early-education-and-care/workforce-and-professional-development/regional-educator-and-provider-support-partnership/ or
  2. BOSTnet http://www.bostnet.org/

UMass Boston is developing this content into a one-college credit course: ECDH 475 Supporting Diversity and English Language Development in Out-of-School Time Programs.  Check the website at www.umb.edu

Course Description

This course for Administrators provides knowledge and skills in supporting diverse families and enhancing English Language Development (ELD) across expressive and receptive language domains for school-age children who are English Language Learners (ELL) or have other learning and language barriers. Administrators learn about  key standards and best practices and explore strategies to implement improved practice, creating a shift in policies and programmatic culture to embrace and support diverse learners, welcoming non-native English speaking families and enhancing the ELD progress of students who are learners of English.

(If you work directly with children in an Out of school time program, consider taking the course: Diversity and English Language Development for Grades K-8.)

Learning Outcomes

  1. Understand Standards and Best Practices: ELL and special learners in QRIS, MA-CF for ELA, WIDA Standards, key assessment tools (SACERS, APT, Arnett, and CLASS) and Universal Design for Learning
  2. Develop learning and confidence-building activities and a staff motivation plan to help staff embrace key concepts and meet program improvement goals
  3. Describe how to create a programmatic culture shift to support ELL and special learners and enhance ELD support
  4. Align Program Improvement Plan (PIP), Individual Professional Development Plans (IPDPs), and Program Professional Development Plan (PPDP) to these key concepts and to QRIS requirements
  5. Measure success across key assessment tools and understand how to use data
  6. Craft a Program Improvement Plan strand for supporting English language learners and other diverse and special populations

Sessions

  1. Exploring: This session will cover the broad definition of diversity and how to effectively address diversity through standards and best practices for your educators through three interactive videos, educator scenarios and discussion questions.
  2. Planning: In session 2, the concepts in session 1 will be used to develop assessment and goal setting, with two interactive video presentations, a discussion about overcoming challenges and staff motivation, as well as an assignment to create an implementation plan.
  3. Implementing: In the final session of this course, administrators will practice implementation after watching the interactive video presentation, using the program improvement plans, reflection and discussions.

Those taking this course for credit should complete the discussions and assignments. Use the checklist on the menu to the left.

Additional Reading and Resources

 

This course is developed by Elise Scott and Susan Vinovrski from BOSTnet. Funding was provided by the Department of Early Education and Care, Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge Grant.

Citation: melanie.maxham. (2014, September 04). Syllabus. Retrieved November 06, 2014, from UMass Boston OpenCourseware Web site: http://ocw.umb.edu/early-education-development/embracing-diversity-and-english-language-in-your-program/syllabus.
Copyright 2014, by the Contributing Authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Creative Commons License