The purpose of this facilitator guide is to provide you with support in fulfilling your responsibilities as a facilitator. If you find as you are going through the course that you need additional information or guidance to complete a task, please feel free to reach out.  

Materials for this course:  

• Electronic Device (iPad, Tablet, Computer, Laptop) with internet access  
• Textbook: Wright, W. E. (2019). Foundations for teaching English language learners: Research, theory, policy, and practice, 3^rd edition. Caslon Pub.
• Total Points Sheet (to aid in grading)

Time Requirement:  

We have sought to allow the facilitator 5 minutes in each session to review homework with teachers. Time is always tight so you will need to make sure you track it carefully.

Your teachers will receive 3 credits for completing the eight sessions. This means that you need to assure that the teachers have met the time demands for the credits earned.  You will do this by: 

• Making sure that teachers are engaged and participating for the entire 160 minutes (without a 20-minute break) or 180 minutes (including the break). *have teachers decide what option they would like (break or no break and get out 20 minutes earlier) 
• The homework assigned in the class also helps teachers meet the credit demand. While there is variability in the rate, depth, and speed in which teachers complete the homework, we have paid careful attention to the typical time it will take to complete the assignments. Your homework will take about 3.5 hours each week (if teachers complain that they are spending more time on homework than 3.5 hours, discuss with them the strategies that they are using to complete the assignment—interruptions, etc.).    

• An additional 10 hours are provided for them, to complete the reflection assignment. This assignment is the first homework every week. For this homework, they are to select something that they learned about that will support the learning of their ELs, a strategy they want to try out with an individual student, and other kinds of individual applications or changes in their practice. In the reflection, they record what they did and what they learned from trying out the practice or strategy with their students. Sometimes, we will make specific suggestions about what they might do for this reflection activity. If they try an activity and write it up in the reflection, we assume that they have spent 10 hours planning, enacting, evaluating, and reflecting. We do not ask them to document the minutes spent, nor do they need to provide a lesson plan.  

For this course, we use EdTech Books (The link to this book is https://equitypress.org/-FAY). This is an open access online platform. For this reason, please encourage teachers to bring their electronic devices (tablet, laptop, etc.) to class. Within the book, you will find active viewing guides, directions for learning activities and directions for homework assignments (descriptions of these assignments are found below). When teachers are asked to complete worksheets or other kinds of consumable materials, there are links within the texts that will take them to those resources. If you find the use of links problematic, you can open the link yourself and print the materials for you class. This will depend on internet accessibility for you and your students.  

There are links embedded throughout the course. They are often part of the instructions and simply look like blue words. You can click on these words and it will open a new webpage to Box Online (this is the online storage place that we use). Once you see the document in Box, students will need to download the document to their device and then they can fill it out. If you would like to provide them with the paper copy, and bypass having each teacher download and email or print to turn it in, you can download it to your computer and make copies of everything they will need for each class session. We will not prompt you to do that unless hard copies are needed for the activity.  There are also other links throughout the course that will take you to different online resources that you will need (videos, etc.).  

Types of Activities in the Course 

Active Viewing Guides: Active Viewing Guide (AVG): These refer to videos or power points students need to watch and participate in (if viewed during class time). There are links to the object to be viewed and the notetaking sheet in the materials. The links allow them to review these again if they want since these are somewhat similar to a textbook in terms of providing content. 

 There are 2 kinds of active viewing guides (AVG) that may be used in this course: 

• PowerPoints drawn from the WIDA website or other school districts who use the WIDA guidelines. You will present these to the class and discuss the contents as they unfold. Sometimes, we have worksheets and note-taking-guides that are associated with the PowerPoint. The teachers should fill these worksheets out as the watch the PowerPoint. These PowerPoints also have discussion questions or learning activities connected. 
• The second type of active viewing guide (AVG) is the kind typical of earlier versions of the TELL courses, which you have seen or have become familiar with before. We will provide the link for these videos in the course AVG page and indicate where in the video you should begin. This means your teachers will be able to review these videos at home with the provided link. It also means that if you don’t have time in class to watch the video, you can assign it to them for homework.  

Learning activities (LA): These are the activities you and the class will complete during the session.  Some are stand-alone activities, and some tie to homework from the previous week, and others may build on the previous activity.  Pay attention to the number of minutes allotted and make every effort to stay within that time limit. 

Homework activities (HW): These comprise 5-6 homework activities teachers need to complete to prepare for the next week’s activities.  If someone is absent from a week, be sure to remind them to do their homework, as often they give the background for the next session’s learning activities.  The first one is always a reflection on changing their practice and is explained in HW 1.1. Be sure to save enough time at the end of each session to briefly go over the homework for that session. 

Guidance for Teaching: Below you will find information for each of the sessions which explains what you need to do for each learning activity and introducing the homework at the end of each session. This allows you to prepare for each session.  Prior to beginning LA 1.1, explain what teachers need to know from the information above. 

Another thing to remember is that teachers must receive a grade of B (or 80 % or better) in order for this course to apply to their ESL endorsement.  Be sure they understand that they need to keep track of their points themselves as well as you keeping them.  Make a copy of the total points for each student so you can mark grades as assignments are completed.  

It’s a good idea to purchase marker sets (or get them from the district)  which you can store in small zip-loc bags to bring with you to class each week.  As we use groups of 4 a lot, if your class has 28 students, make 7 bags.  It makes it convenient to just distribute them to the tables when they are needed.  We also make notes in the facilitator guide if you need poster paper or other size papers or other unique materials.