Creating High Quality Learning Environments for Diverse Learners Using Primary Sources

Due to a lack of both background content and discipline-specific vocabulary struggling learners typically have exceptional difficulty with history. Such students may include English Language Learners, children from families with limited academic background, and students from high poverty and other disrupted backgrounds.
Building on the experience of the Collaborative’s Center for English Language Education, Emerging America is developing a variety of workshops and resources to help mainstream educators support these students.

Course/Inservice Workshop: Creating High Quality Learning Environments for Diverse Learners Using Primary Sources
Spring 2012, we offer three sections of this course:

Northampton, MA – Saturdays, January 7 and February 11, 2012
Hudson, MA – Wednesdays, April 4 and 11, 2012
Fitchburg, MA — Saturdays, May 5 and 12, 2012

For all sections, participants must attend both days.

All sessions take place from 8:30am to 3:30pm (lunch included)
22.5 PDPs or 1 Graduate Credit through Fitchburg State University

Download brochures and registration forms

Northampton (January 7 and February 11).
Hudson (April 4 and 11) OR Fitchburg (May 5 and 12).

This free workshop for regular classroom teachers is designed to show how primary sources can be used to successfully engage a growing mix of culturally diverse students, and to meet the new Common Core State Standards (required in 2014).

In addition to learning to apply core principles for teaching struggling learners, participating teachers learn to identify and easily access primary sources from the Library of Congress website and use these sources to enrich literacy in History/Social Studies.

Course instructor, and course co-designer, Audrey Morse, brings extensive background as a speech and language pathologist and an ESL teacher. She has taught at all ages pre-K to adult, including teacher licensure courses.

Course designer, Debbie Zacarian, is the author of Transforming Schools for English Language Learners: a comprehensive framework for school leaders. As Director of the Collaborative’s Center for English Language Education, she has trained and consulted across Massachusetts and nationwide on English language education, closing the achievement gap and educational leadership.