Fall Institute: October 18-19 & 25-26, 2023 - Multi-Modal
Day 1: Virtual (Zoom)
Day 2: Virtual (Zoom)
Day 3: Face-to-Face (JCSS Central Registration/Boardroom)
Day 4: Face-to-Face (JCSS Central Registration/Boardroom)
Overview: The Center for Latino Achievement and Success in Education (CLASE) at The University of Georgia offers a 30-hour, interactive, foundational professional learning institute focused on a collaborative, conversation-based pedagogy for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) classrooms and its application
The linguistics of second language acquisition
Strategies for integrating language goals into content teaching
Tools for encouraging collaborative conversations
Ways to make content and language standards real and relevant for all learners while maintaining rigor
Our Online Professional Learning Platform
The power of this system is that it provides a structure for teachers to integrate focused language goals with rigorous content instruction, rather than creating "one more thing" that you have to find the time for. The Instructional Conversation (IC) System is a "way of teaching" and conceptualizing teaching and learning that positively impacts student language development and opens the space for formative assessment and differentiation. To get a better idea of what we are talking about, the research base behind ICs, and what an IC looks like, take a few minutes to view:
A short video example of a real classroom enacting an IC. As you watch, notice the kinds of academic and social language that the students are using. Also, note that this is a mixed ability group with ELs (including one child who arrived in the US with no English only 4 months before this video was filmed):
A 30-minute video with an overview of the Instructional Conversation System:
An interview of students talking about what they gain from ICs and how they perceive IC lessons impact their learning:
Cost: $800/person
Cost includes training materials provided electronically and physically via mail. Included amongst the materials is the course book, With a Little Help From My Friends: Conversation-Based Instruction for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD) Classrooms (Mellom, Hixon, & Weber, 2019). Additional copies can be purchased at Teachers College Press or Amazon.