The Center for Multilingual-learner Education, Research and Innovative Teaching (MERIT) at The University of Georgia offers a 4-day (30-hour), interactive, foundational professional learning institute focused on a collaborative, conversation-based pedagogy and its application in classrooms.

This institute will introduce teachers to:

• The linguistics of second language learning

• Strategies for integrating language goals into content teaching

• Tools for encouraging collaborative conversations

• Ways to make content and language standards real and relevant for all learners while maintaining complexity

• MERIT’s online IC platform

The Instructional Conversation (IC) System provides a structure for teachers to integrate focused language goals with rigorous content instruction as a way to contextualize teaching and learning to positively impact student language development and open spaces for formative assessment and differentiation.