English Learners and the Language Arts (ELLA)

Who Should Attend ELLA?

• Elementary and middle school teachers
• Literacy and English language development coaches
• Site and district administrators

What Are ELLA Professional Development Services?

WestEd's English Learners and the Language Arts (ELLA) is a comprehensive, coherent, and high-impact process for improving the schoolwide academic performance of English learners. Our rigorous instructional strategies also benefit monolingual English-speaking students who experience difficulty mastering academic language.

• We present an intensive, thorough investigation of the most current and confirmed research on teaching English learners to achieve high levels of academic literacy.
• We model evidence-based, effective, and replicable instructional strategies.
• We coach teachers in implementing these rigorous strategies in their own classrooms.

Our team comprises experienced classroom teachers with a demonstrated track record of boosting their students' achievement, as well as cutting-edge experts in pedagogical and linguistic theory and research. We customize the professional development for your school.

What Does ELLA Professional Development Do?

We provide teachers with the tools to effectively deliver their core literacy and content curriculum to English learners. Teachers learn to

• Plan and teach lessons with an emphasis on academic language development
• Teach academic vocabulary and reading comprehension using research-based strategies
• Employ teaching strategies that increase student engagement and opportunities for oral language practice
• Implement a schoolwide systems approach to language teaching to close achievement gaps

ELLA-trained teachers learn to incorporate multiple components of effective instruction for diverse learners by

• Providing systematic and explicit instruction for academic vocabulary and other forms of academic literacy
• Increasing active participation and student engagement
• Scaffolding their students' opportunities for language practice
• Making rigorous content comprehensible
• Implementing routines to foster a positive classroom climate

Research and Practice Areas That Guide Our Work With Teachers

Effective Pedagogy for Diverse Learners
Culturally Relevant Education • Maintaining High Expectations and Accountability • Valuing Students' Home Languages • Socializing Students to Become Members of Academic Language Communities

Increasing Student Engagement
Getting Students to Talk • Supporting Students to Use Academic Language • Cooperative Learning Processes • Setting Up and Maintaining Routines to Increase Active Participation

Second Language Development
Examining the Expectations of School Language • Everyday Versus Academic English • Scaffolding Listening and Reading Comprehension • Oral Language Development • Explicitly Teaching the Features of Language • High-Quality Literacy Instruction

Powerful Vocabulary Instruction
Intentional and Explicit Instruction of Academic Words • Developing Word Consciousness • Wide Reading Across the Content Areas • Independent Word Learning Strategies • Assessment of Word Knowledge

Writing
Scaffolding Academic Writing • Making Text Patterns Explicit • Incorporating Academic Vocabulary into Student Writing

Creating Systems for Continuous Improvement
Screening, Formative, Diagnostic, and Summative Assessment • Efficient Grade Level Meetings • Peer Collaborative Coaching • Data-Informed Instructional Decision-Making • Professional Literature Groups • Classroom Monitoring • Response to Intervention (RtI)

Logistics and Cost

ELLA's intensive, results-oriented, ongoing professional development ensures sustainable implementation of effective, rigorous, research-based instructional strategies. We offer ELLA in two formats to accommodate your scheduling needs.

Format One: Six Onsite Workshops & Eight Days of Technical Assistance
We provide six, three-hour workshops for up to 35 participants that are flexibly scheduled throughout the school year. Each workshop is designed so that participants learn manageable chunks of evidence-based, practical information that they can use in their classrooms before attending the next workshop. Each workshop includes structured reflection, opportunities to practice new strategies, and time to troubleshoot newly tried practices. The eight days of onsite technical assistance, which includes demonstration lessons and peer reflective coaching sessions, support teachers with what they've learned in the workshops. The total cost, including all workshops, materials, and technical assistance, is $42,000.

Format Two: 40-Hour Summer Institute & Six Days of Onsite Practicum/Technical Assistance
For California schools, this format meets the requirements of SB 472 ELPD. We provide an intensive 5-day, 40-hour summer institute that includes evidence-based practical information, structured reflection, demonstration lessons, planning time, and opportunities to practice new strategies. The summer institute is priced per participant.

Base rate: $1,600 per participant
School teams of 3-19 members: $1,400 per participant
School teams of 20 or more: $1,200 per participant

Onsite institutes with flexible dates are available for school teams of 20 or more.

The practicum, comprising six days of onsite technical assistance, costs $18,000 per site. The follow-up practicum is provided through six days of onsite technical assistance, complete with instructional coaching.

All participants, regardless of the ELLA format chosen by their school, receive comprehensive materials, tools, and templates:

• notes on presentations
• lesson planning templates
• research articles and bibliography
• peer collaborative coaching and team meeting forms
• forms to gauge and track levels of student engagement

Download the ELLA brochure (PDF) and visit our website.

Contact Information

Pamela Spycher
916.492.4026
pspycher@wested.org