To provide appropriate instruction/learning opportunities, school personnel must consider who their students are (e. g., their cultural, educational, and linguistic backgrounds), what they need to learn, and in what contexts they are supposed to learn (e. g., programs available, community/home learning opportunities.)

School personnel must . . .

• Identify which students need special assistance due to limited English proficiency, ascertain students’ home language background, assess oral and written language proficiency, and carry out various types of classroom and curriculum-based assessments.
• Learn about the students, i. e., their cultural, linguistic and home backgrounds, the resources they have at their disposal, their attitudes and motivation toward school, their learning styles, strengths, and weaknesses, and other attributes.
• Decide what they should be learning (including first language skills, second language skills, curricular content).
• Understand the environment (school and home) where the students will be learning (including the kinds of programs and materials available, parental support, home/community learning opportunities, etc.).

Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to

1. Identify who in their class needs special services due to limited proficiency in English;
2. Make decisions regarding appropriate instructional methods and techniques taking into consideration:
   • Who is being taught (student characteristics);
   • What is being taught (content);
   • In what context it should be taught (context);
3. Justify decisions they have made regarding appropriate instruction;
4. Carry out these decisions in classrooms and schools.

Section II:

Recognize the need for training of teachers who work with Limited English Proficient (LEP) students and understand the legal, pedagogical, socio-economic, and demographic rationale for such training.

Section III:

1. Develop an awareness of the extent to which culture permeates every aspect of our being ... thinking, feeling, valuing, and interacting with others.
2. Recognize the difference between visible, surface characteristics of culture and the many subtle, invisible manifestations of culture known as deep culture.
3. Examine in-depth, and become familiar with, characteristics of one’s one culture and how this influences our interactions with and expectations for students.
4. Become knowledgeable about the stages of cultural adaptation for new comers to any culture and of the behavioral characteristics that may be associated with each stage of adjustment and which often appear as classroom problems.
5. Become aware of the wide diversity within any given cultural group and how to use cultural information without depending on stereotypes and preconceived ideas concerning cultural characteristics.

Section IV:

1. Understand the influence that home, school, and community relationships have on academic achievement and school adjustment of students.
2. Recognize student and parent background characteristics that influence effective parental involvement.
3. Develop strategies and activities that promote parent, school, and community relationships with the classroom.

Section V:

1. Understand the processes of first and second language acquisition and their relationship to cognitive development and age of the learner and develop appropriate and positive expectations for students’ progress in language learning.
2. Recognize/identify the stages of language acquisition in students and plan instructional activities that are appropriate to the stage of the students.
3. Understand the similarities and differences between first and second language acquisition and learning and adapt/develop classroom activities, procedures, and structures so that they maximize second language acquisition and learning.

Section VI:

1. Conduct classroom assessments of oral language proficiency using recognized, systematic procedures.
2. Develop appropriate learning activities given students’ oral language competence.

Section VII:

1. Recognize the difference between social and academic language.
2. Understand literacy in terms of the stages of literacy acquisition, the relationship between literacy and language acquisition, and the relationship between reading and writing acquisition.
3. Select appropriate techniques and create appropriate materials for teaching literacy.
4. Analyze skills-based and whole-language approaches with reference to teaching reading and writing to second language learners.
5. Create a literacy learning environment that is sensitive to the learner’s language and personal needs.
6. Develop strategies and lessons for teaching reading and writing skills "holistically."

Section VIII:

1. Utilize approaches that integrate language and curricular content learning and corresponding strategies and techniques used to teach language and content simultaneously.
2. Analyze strategies that combine language and thinking skills and relate such strategies to the content of the curriculum.
3. Develop a thematic course section using strategies designed to teach language and content simultaneously.
4. Develop strategies that infuse multiculturalism throughout the curriculum.

Section IX:

1. Recognize types of tests and their appropriateness for use with language minority students.
2. Critique and select assessment instruments designed to be used with language minority students.
3. Use alternative/classroom-based assessment to place language minority students in educational programs and to monitor programs.
4. Collect and evaluate language minority student data when special needs are suspected.

Section X:

1. Conceptually integrate all sections of this course and note how they fit together or complement each other.
2. Decide which approaches, methods, and techniques are appropriate with which students in order to work toward course goals.
3. Justify decisions regarding instruction based on information from various domains.
4. Carry out those instructional decisions with students.

The Case Study/Final Activity must be completed before points are awarded for the workshop. Course sections III-IX each have, in addition to activity assignments, an assignment which will become part of the Case Study. Some of these assignments should be completed and forwarded to the facilitator before going on to the next section. Some will require the creation of a plan or collection of artifacts or data which will be used in later assignments. Many of the activity assignments are also work that may be used in the Case-Study/Final Activity (e.g., various aspects of a lesson plan are part of several activities. This lesson plan may be refined and/or expanded for a case-study activity.) DO NOT POSTPONE DOING ASSIGNMENTS EVEN THOUGH THEY HAVE NO PRODUCT DUE IMMEDIATELY. Keep a copy of each assignment for use in the Final Activity. The Final Activity is based on all the data collected by each participant during the course of the Case Study.

Each participant will be required to select a student to study. Ideally, this student should be one of the participant’s LEP students who has yet to achieve native-like fluency in English. This case study student can be at any stage of development (beginning, intermediate, or advanced), any age, and from any background. When the ideal is not feasible, participants may select a native English-speaking student (preferably one in participant’s classroom who is having difficulty with language) or a non-English speaking child. The participant should have regular contact with this student.

(These are also included at the end of each section with specific directions/documents):

Section III:

Part A: List specific cultural/background questions or information to be obtained about your case-study student and develop a plan detailing how to obtain the information. (Product: list of questions and detailed plan)

Part B: Written descriptions that compare and contrast how specific daily routines are carried out in your school vs. the student’s home culture (culture capsule). (Product: written assignment)

Section IV:

Design and develop a student profile form that will include information regarding your case-study student and his/her family. (Product: completed copy of the student profile form specifically designed for your case-study student)

Using the student profile as a starting point, build a mini-ethnography for the case study student by collecting data on various elements of deep culture from his/her background. (Product: summary of all ethnographic data gathered on the case-study student)

Section V:

Collect an oral language sample from your case-study student. (Product: audiotape of the language sample)

Section VI:

Apply the Student Oral Language Observation Matrix (SOLOM) to the audiotape of the case-student’s verbal language production collected in Section V. Select and/or create activities/techniques which would be beneficial to the case-study student given his/her results on the SOLOM. (Product: results of the SOLOM analysis and a list of "appropriate" techniques and how each would benefit the student)

Section VII:

Use a series of instruments to collect information on various aspects of case-study student’s literacy proficiency. The data will be complied and added to the case-study portfolio. (Product: completed literacy data collection instruments.)

Section VIII:

Develop a whole language lesson plan for your case-study student. (Product: lesson plan)

Section IX: Design alternative assessment procedures and apply them to case-study students taking into account the strategies discussed in the section. The accumulated data collected from these procedures should be incorporated into the case-study. A summary of the results of this information must be included in the final ethnographic report you began in section IV. (Product: summary of information collected.)

The collection of products from these assignments will constitute a complete case-study portfolio. The portfolio and the final activity will be evaluated as the posttest for the course. The successful and timely completion of the assignments for each activity, the case-study assignments, and the final activity are required for awarding of points.