EP 140 Designing an ESL PD for Gen Ed Teachers

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You are an amazing and hard-working educator. The work that you are doing for your students is appreciated. Thank you for your dedication and the time you put in to ensure your students succeed. 

Imagine it is the beginning of the school year and you are getting question after question about the ESL students at your school. The general education teachers also wonder how they can support the language learners. 

Instead of sending emails, having small conferences, and endless meetings, host professional development on how to support language learners. This can be done in small groups or a school-wide professional development. Hosting professional development with the teachers helps prepare them for the school language learners and prepares them for success with their students. Professional development can be simple and effective. Here are some strategies you can use to help you create your back-to-school professional development. 

Start professional development with a brief introduction of yourself. Then provide an overview of the demographics of language learners in the school. For example, you can share the languages spoken, newcomers vs. long-term language learners, a breakdown of how many are currently in each grade, etc. You can get as detailed as you want but remember this is an overview of the demographics. 

In this section of the presentation, you can also include an overview of the student’s levels and what they can generally do at the levels. After this section, I suggest adding a checkpoint. This can be a quick online quiz, tun and talk activity, or any activity that provides a quick engaging overview of the section. 

The second session of your presentation should focus on the processes and common questions about supporting Language Learners. This can include how students get identified for language support services. This would be an opportunity for you to include a graph of the process and steps for how students are identified and classified as language learners. 

I suggest that you include a breakdown of the student’s levels. This will help the teachers understand what the students can do at each level. WIDA has a “Can-Do” chart that can be very helpful for teachers in determining what students can do at each level. 

In the final section of the presentation, you want to tie everything together. Use this part of your presentation to provide tips and strategies on how they can support language learners in the classroom.

This can include writing language objectives in their lessons which can also benefit all the students. I have a step-by-step guide on how to write language objectives which I will link in the show notes. 

Also, include in the final section detailed scenarios and how you will address those scenarios. For instance, if you have a newcomer and they are not speaking. You can present this scenario and then provide the teachers with strategies to support the students. These will be helpful to show teachers and see in real-time how to think through the scenarios. 

I genuinely hope these strategies and tips help you plan for the upcoming school year. 

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