ElevatED Learning Services offers a comprehensive array of professional development services designed to support educators in bringing new knowledge, techniques, and strategies from the workshop session to the classroom. In addition to online and in person workshops, we offer post-workshop guidance in implementing new learning through coaching and curriculum support.
Workshops
All of the workshops listed below are appropriate for teachers grades 3-12, whether they are new to the profession or seasoned veterans. Each workshop is designed to meet the needs of all content area teachers as well as those certified in English as a Second Language or Bilingual Education. As an approved New York State Education Department CTLE sponsor, we are able to offer CTLE credits to any New York-based participants in our workshops who need them.
Workshop activities provide a mixture of working in interdisciplinary groups and time to work in content area groups with opportunities to look at many examples of curriculum and structures from each discipline to serve as models. All of our workshops follow a similar format:
Schema-building around the concept
Collaborative analysis of exemplary models, examples v. non-examples, etc.
Application in small groups of the concept/strategy/structure to a given topic or piece of curriculum
Sharing of templates and examples to support participants in implementing the workshop concepts into their own curriculum
ElevatED Learning Services offers both in-person workshops and live online workshops to make professional development more convenient for educators. Our online workshops last between 90 minutes and 2 hours and include opportunities for discussing new strategies, analyzing student-facing resources, and applying new learning with colleagues. Our in-person workshops range from 90 minutes to full day sessions.
Many workshops can be customized into a series with a specific theme that addresses the unique needs of your school, district, or organization. In addition, 1:1 or small group virtual coaching is available after each workshop to support participants in incorporating the ideas and strategies from the workshops in their own curriculum.
Explore the list below to learn more about the different workshops that we offer.
You can also check our upcoming events page to register for the open enrollment workshops that we have already scheduled for the near future.
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The best way to understand your MLL students is to walk in their shoes.
You will experience firsthand the frustration and disengagement that comes from not understanding the language being used around you through a simulation of a traditional lesson taught in French. A second version of the same lesson demonstrates the power of effective scaffolding in making instruction in a new language accessible. We conclude the workshop by unpacking the key scaffolds used in the second version. This workshop is the ideal introduction to ElevatED Learning Services professional development workshops.
For more information, see our annotated agenda.
Book this workshop for your own school/district/organization.
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Explore and apply key concepts and strategies that lay the groundwork for effective differentiation of various types of tasks in all content areas. Learn how to avoid both “over-scaffolding” and oversimplifying content while supporting MLLs at all levels in accessing complex thinking and rigorous content.
For more information, see our annotated agenda.
Book this workshop for your own school/district/organization.
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Scaffolds that allow students to work more independently without constant teacher assistance are more important than ever. Learn how to customize any graphic organizer so that your MLLs can engage in higher-order thinking activities with minimal teacher support.
For more information, see our annotated agenda.
Book this workshop for your own school/district/organization.
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Struggling readers require a wide variety of supports in order to make meaning from text. Learn the key scaffolding moves necessary to adapt text effectively and promote the “good reader” strategies that model reading as an interactive process.
Scaffolding Text for MLLs is available as a single session workshop for all disciplines covering the scaffolding of non-fiction text. For more information, see our annotated agenda.
Scaffolding Fiction for MLLs Part I was designed for ELA/ENL teachers and provide strategies for adapting fiction texts so that MLLs are still exposed to much of the author’s original language without having to wade through as much text.
Scaffolding Fiction for MLLs Part II explores additional scaffolds for adapted fiction texts. For more information, see our annotated agenda for both Parts I and II. Pre-requisites for this workshop: Scaffolding Reading for MLLs or Scaffolding Fiction for MLLs Part I.
Scaffolding Primary Sources for MLLs was designed for Social Studies teachers and addresses the challenges around scaffolding primary source material while trying to maintain the original historical language. For more information, see our annotated agenda. Pre-requisites for this workshop: Scaffolding Reading for MLLs or Scaffolding Fiction for MLLs Part I.
Book these workshops for your own school/district/organization.
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Learn the fine art of scaffolding writing assignments, in which supports grant Multilingual Learners access to the task without compromising the rigor at its heart. Gain key tips on modelling and the use of paragraph frames that provide crucial structure to student writing. For more information, see the annotated agenda for more information.
Book this workshop for your own school/district/organization.
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Instead of telling your Multilingual Learners to “work together” in small groups and hoping for the best, discover key strategies for structuring student conversations that result in authentic opportunities for collaboration and the rehearsal of both social and academic English.
In Parts II and III, we explore the five Essentials of Collaboration, the components necessary to support MLLs – and all students – in being able to collaborate successfully with little intervention on the part of the teacher. You will have the chance to apply your new learning by developing a collaborative, discipline-specific stations activity with colleagues.
For more information, see our annotated agenda for all three parts of this workshop series.
Book these workshops for your own school/district/organization.
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The more you can build up your MLL students’ background knowledge around a topic, the easier it will be for them to access text on that topic. Discover effective strategies for activating and fortifying students’ prior knowledge through entry events (aka “Do Nows”) that are engaging and interactive.
For more information, see our annotated agenda.
Book these workshops for your own school/district/organization.
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This three-part workshop series will develop your recognition and understanding of the components of language development: discourse (genre), language functions, and semantics (vocabulary).
You’ll learn in the first two sessions how to assess a unit culminating writing task in order to determine which components of language students will need, and thus which components you’ll need to explicitly teach them.
The final session will walk you through the steps of taking this assessment of language demands and transforming them into viable language objectives that reinforce content objectives and will guide your lesson planning and make learning goals clear to students.
For more information, see our annotated agenda.
Book these workshops for your own school/district/organization.
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Not all vocabulary words deserve the same treatment, but many educators teach them as if they did, especially when trying to “frontload” activities with vocabulary lists and dictionary definitions. Explore new strategies for prioritizing academic language and explicitly teaching new terms through engaging, interactive structures.
For more information, see our annotated agenda.
Book these workshops for your own school/district/organization.
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“Amplify don’t simplify” is a common mantra heard in MLL educator circles. Discover how to amplify new concepts and language for your MLL students through interactive, low-stakes activities. In addition to providing MLLs with the practice they need around new learning before being asked to apply it, amplification activities allow teachers to formatively assess student progress.
For more information, see our annotated agenda.
Book these workshops for your own school/district/organization.
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Longer curricular units that culminate in an extended writing assignment provide Multilingual Learners with the opportunity to demonstrate their learning by synthesizing new content and academic language in a higher-order thinking (HOT) task. Learn how to not only ensure that your unit culminating task is HOT, but that it apprentices students in the disciplinary thinking and skills of practitioners in the field (e.g. historians, mathematicians, scientists, etc.)
For more information, see our annotated agenda.
Book these workshops for your own school/district/organization.
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This interactive workshop addresses many of the misconceptions around the use of the home language in the classroom, including clarifying exactly what translanguaging is as a pedagogical practice. You will learn about and explore the many ways that common classroom activities can be tweaked to allow for home language use, thereby raising MLL engagement and achievement.
For more information, see our annotated agenda.
Book this workshop for your own school/district/organization.
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Note: Building Schema for MLLs and Amplifying Instruction for MLLs workshops are pre-requisites for this series.
Explore the Framework for Teaching to the Demands, a strategy for sequencing instruction for MLLs that reduces cognitive overload and serves as a scaffold in and of itself, making all stages of instruction accessible. For more information, see our annotated agenda.
Book these workshops for your own school/district/organization.
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This 2-part workshop (a total of 9 hours of content) combines components of many of our most popular workshops to provide experienced curriculum writers with all of the strategies and tools necessary for transforming any curriculum into one accessible for Multilingual Learners. These workshops are not suitable for math teachers.
Part I of this workshop includes the following topics:
• Collaborative Learning
• Designing Effective Graphic Organizers
• Building Schema
• Teaching Academic Vocabulary
For more information on Part I, see our annotated agenda.
Part II builds on the information covered during Part I and covers the following topics:
• Amplifying Learning
• Scaffolding Reading
• Scaffolding Writing
• Differentiating Writing Tasks
• Sequencing Instruction
For more information on Part II, see our annotated agenda.
Book these workshops for your own school/district/organization.
Curriculum Support
We provide a variety of supports around adapting curriculum for MLLs. With some clients we do curriculum “audits” and provide feedback and examples and training around how they might make their curriculum more accessible for MLLs. With others, we “MLLify” a number of lessons and resources and lead clients through a debrief in which we describe the scaffolding “moves” we made, reasons behind those moves, and resources to support them in making similar moves themselves in order to scaffold other units to make them more accessible to MLLs at multiple levels of English proficiency.
We also work with clients to develop (from scratch) standards-based, hands-on curriculum for both heterogeneous groups of students as well as for newcomers. We design engaging curriculum that embodies the core aspects of instruction that our workshops focus on: collaboration, scaffolding, integration of language and content teaching, and an emphasis on higher-order thinking, regardless of students’ proficiency levels or academic background.
To ensure that our curriculum has the maximum intended effect, we customize professional development for teachers to familiarize them with the curriculum, to explain the planning moves in designing the activities within it, and to strategize the most effective means for implementation with students. As with coaching, our goal is to build knowledge and confidence at the school level by providing models from which teachers can begin to improve their own curriculum development practices for their MLL populations.
To learn more about how ElevatED Learning Services can support and facilitate the growth of your curriculum, contact us!
Coaching
We provide coaching (both virtual and in-person) for individual teachers as well as school leaders looking to improve their instruction for Multilingual Learners (MLLs). This work begins with professional development workshops, where educators learn key strategies for designing and implementing effective curriculum for MLLs.
In order to maximize the impact of these workshops, a member of the ElevatED Learning Services team subsequently works with a small number of teachers in adapting curriculum to help them incorporate what they have learned into their own instruction, as well as to develop a longer-term action plan for moving forward. Coaching also entails observing teachers in action in the classroom and providing feedback to them on the implementation of new strategies and activities. We conduct needs-assessments and feedback for leaders as well, after having participated in co-observations of multiple classes together to discuss patterns noted and determine the most high-leverage moves for supporting teachers in better serving their MLL students.
Our ultimate goal in coaching is to build capacity at the school level so that eventually our coaching services are no longer needed. We work to identify strengths in MLL instruction at a particular school and support the faculty and administration most invested in that work to be more knowledgeable and confident in developing, scaffolding, and implementing curriculum that meets MLLs where they are and elevates them to new heights. We also empower educators to be able to articulate these concepts and strategies to their colleagues as well, ensuring that change at the school comes from within.
To learn more about the coaching opportunities offered by ElevatED Learning Services, contact us!
