The Center for Latino Achievement and Success in Education (CLASE) at The University of Georgia offers a 30-hour foundational professional learning institute focused on the research-based pedagogy: Instructional Conversations (IC). This institute will give teachers access to:

• The linguistics of second language acquisition
• 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 rigor
• Our Online Professional Learning Platform

The power of this system is that it provides a structure for teachers to integrate focused language goals with rigorous content instruction, rather than creating "one more thing" that you have to find the time for. The Instructional Conversation (IC) System is a "way of teaching" and conceptualizing teaching and learning that positively impacts student language development and opens the space for formative assessment and differentiation.

To get a better idea of what we are talking about, the research base behind ICs, and what an IC looks like, take a few minutes to view:

• A short video example of a real classroom enacting an IC. As you watch, notice the kinds of academic and social language that the students are using. Also, note that this is a mixed ability group with ELs (including one child who arrived in the US with no English only 4 months before this video was filmed):
  • Short Video Example of an Instructional Conversation (IC)
• A 30-minute video with an overview of the Instructional Conversation System:
  • Instructional Conversation Overview (IC)
• An interview of students talking about what they gain from ICs and how they perceive IC lessons impact their learning:
  • Students talk about Instructional Conversations

Schedule

Synchronous Sessions:

• 4 six-hour sessions (24 total synchronous hours)
• 9:00am-5:00pm EST

Asynchronous Sessions:

• Participants will be expected to complete one precourse set of activities and one set between each synchronous session to apply learning from the synchronous sessions (6 total asynchronous hours)

Cost

• Early Bird Registration (up to one month prior to event): $800/person.
• Regular Registration (between one month prior and one week before event): $850/person.

Cost includes all training materials provided electronically.
 

Dates & Times

• Institute 1: June 8, 10, 15, 17, 2021
  • 4 days, two consecutive Tuesdays/Thursdays, 9am-5pm
• Institute 2: July 6-9, 2021
  • 4 days, T-F, 9am-5pm
• Institute 3: July 13, 15, 20, 22, 2021
  • days, two consecutive Tuesdays/Thursdays, 9am-5pm

Certificate of Completion

Participants will receive a CLASE Certificate of Completion which may be used for continuing education credit.