Integrating English Language Development and Content Area Learning: A Conversation-Based Approach

This course is for teachers and others who work with English learners and other linguistically and culturally diverse students. The main focus of the course is helping teachers to use conversations to develop students' language, literacy, and thinking skills within content area classrooms. Conversations offer a host of academic, social, cognitive, and linguistic benefits, many of which you will see as you work with students and apply the ideas and reflections that emerge in the sessions.

The videos, readings, and assignments in this four-session course are meant to help you create a culture of conversation in your classroom, as well as explore how you can use conversations to teach the skills of comprehension, argumentation, and application—and the language used to enact these skills—across disciplines.