Professional Development Programs for Teachers and Schools
All teachers are language teachers. No one can instruct without language. Yet, the meanings we convey in our subject specialties are unique. The language of science has distinct language patterns from the language of social studies from the language of mathematics as the meaning we convey differs between the content disciplines.
However, language is rarely made explicit. We teach our content objectives and assume students will understand the language of instruction, or we know they cannot access complex texts so we sometimes avoid complex texts altogether for our most struggling students. Consequently, students are shielded from complex language until assessment time, and the rigors of the Common Core State Standards, and then, the achievement gap, or really, the language gap is made obvious.
To know we use language in our instruction is evident, but to know how to make the language of school explicit often is not as clear.
However, language is rarely made explicit. We teach our content objectives and assume students will understand the language of instruction, or we know they cannot access complex texts so we sometimes avoid complex texts altogether for our most struggling students. Consequently, students are shielded from complex language until assessment time, and the rigors of the Common Core State Standards, and then, the achievement gap, or really, the language gap is made obvious.
To know we use language in our instruction is evident, but to know how to make the language of school explicit often is not as clear.
What We Offer
Erickson Educational Consulting, LLC, offers interactive professional development programs for teachers of PK through adult students that provide the opportunity to reduce the achievement gap by instructing how to explicitly make the language meaningful for all students in order to meet the rigorous demands of the Common Core State Standards. Teachers will leave our programs with the tools to answer the question, What language do I need to teach in order for my students to access, comprehend, and be successful in my content?
Program topics, tailored to meet the needs of your unique site, include the following:
Program topics, tailored to meet the needs of your unique site, include the following:
- Facilitating teachers' understanding of the connection between language and literacy with the emphasis on culturally responsive teaching
- Peeling away the layers of text complexity of your site's current curriculum from the discourse to the sentence to the word level concentrating on: text and genre organization, syntactic structures, and academic vocabulary
- Creating classroom environments using tools to develop and support students' academic oral language discourse
- Implementing Close Reading strategies to comprehend rich, content text
- Using language based strategies to unlock students' independent access to metacognitive strategies such as summarizing, predicting, questioning, drawing conclusions, inferencing,
- Access to a toolbox full of strategies to use immediately with students in a variety of settings: whole group, small group, intervention, PK through adult
Bridget Erickson, MAESL, President, and language and literacy consultant has the unique background as both an ESL teacher and Literacy Specialist. She understands the connections between language and literacy, and through her research and practice has developed a language based pedagogy that allows all struggling readers the ability to comprehend complex text across content areas when traditional metacognitive strategies alone are not working. Click here for more information about Bridget
