English Language Learners and Academic Vocabulary: A Professional Development Course for K-12 HIDOE Teachers

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Session Description

Much of the K-12 curricula for English Language Learners (ELLs) in the USA has been developed by educators whose foreign language experience draws from studying languages that share similarities to English, such as French, Spanish and German. This background lends to favoring instruction of grammar over vocabulary because learners of related languages are able to benefit from the many cognates across those languages. This neglect of explicit instruction of vocabulary in school curricula is problematic for Hawai‘i because it does not reflect the needs of the population; only 1 of the top 10 languages spoken by ELLs in K-12 schools is a European language.

In an effort to correct this, a fully online professional development course has been designed for practicing K-12 teachers who are enrolled in the TESOL certification program at Kapi‘olani Community College using the LMS, Laulima, and featuring the use of well-organized and visually stimulating Lessons pages with integrated web tools and videos. During the course, teachers review methods and research on developing academic vocabulary through sheltered instruction, collaborate and engage in feedback with peers, and compile a teaching strategies portfolio that contains lesson plans, activities, and materials for developing vocabulary skills in K-12 classroom settings. This session will discuss the goals and strategies for developing this course as well as the implementation.

Presenter(s)

Tamara Smith
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa,

Tamara Smith is completing the Certificate of Online Learning and Teaching (COLT) from the Learning Design and Technology (LTEC) department at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She earned her BA in Linguistics at UC Davis and her MA in Second Language Studies at UHM, where she also completed Graduate Certificates in Disability and Diversity Studies and Spanish Applied Linguistics. She has been teaching in the ESL program at Kapi‘olani Community College (KCC) since 2014, and recently began teaching in the Second Language Teaching (SLT) program, delivering online courses to pre-service and in-service teachers. Prior to pursuing graduate studies, she taught language and content from pre-K to 12th grade in public and private schools in Chile, California, and Spain. She believes that all teachers are language teachers.

Lindsey Brown
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

I’m a former English and ESL instructor at UH Maui college, and a beginning instructional designer. I love that e-learning provides access, and believe that asynchronous courses can be more engaging than traditional classroom environments.

tcc2022

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