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K–12 teaching and learning · from the UNC School of Education

A Crash Course in ESL: Online course syllabus

Syllabus for the course A Crash Course in ESL which provides a concise overview of strategies and best practices for administrators working with English language learners.

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Course objectives

A crash course in ESL is a four week course. There will be a variety of activities and readings designed to teach you all about ESL. There are many topics that we will cover in the next four weeks including, but not limited to:

  • Obstacles of ESL students
  • Social vs. academic language
  • Stages of language acquisition
  • ESL policies and procedures in NC
  • Language proficiency testing
  • ESL pull-out vs. other models
  • ESL students and testing
  • Helping your ESL student
  • ESL Standard Course of Study
  • Modifying Instruction and finding ESL resources
  • Making your school ESL friendly

Due dates

In each week’s overview, you will see a list of assignments and their due dates. You will need to complete each assignment by the due date and in doing so will be given a certain amount of points for each task. You must receive a total of 90 points over the duration of the course in order to receive course credit. Late work assignments are not accepted. Plan on spending between 1-3 hours per week on this course.

Stay Current

Don’t allow yourself to get behind! With each new week, I’ll be assigning new tasks, each building on lessons from the previous week. If you suspect you may not have access for more than a day or two, or if you do indeed get behind, please notify me immediately, and we will talk about what we can do.

Course materials

You’re in luck! All of the course materials that you will need for this course are available to you online! We’ve assembled a series of content pages and web links that will allow you to complete the work from your computer. You will, however, need to have the Adobe Acrobat Reader software loaded—you’ll use this to read a special kind of file called a .pdf. If you don’t already have the Adobe Acrobat Reader software installed, you can get it for free by downloading it from Adobe .

Requirements for completing the course

I will assess your participation week to week here with an aim of giving specific feedback on what’s going well and where you may need improvement.

You’ll be evaluated on your participation, including posting three times per week with thoughtful comments and completion of assignments.

Working together

My goal is for you to succeed and we’ll all be working together to make that happen. Your classmates will form a support community and we’ll share our strengths with each other.

Assessments

  • I ’ll describe all your assigned activities each week’s section. If you’ve completed all listed activities by the last day of the course week, and posted on three different days of the week, you’re fine.
  • I ’ll try to make clear in assignments what expectations we have for you and describe how you perform those online tasks.
  • Each week, I’ll post an assessment of your last week’s work in the email section.
  • Your assessments are private to you and, if you ever have any questions about what I post, you’ll be able to talk to me confidentially in that same area. I’ll introduce assessments and messages soon.

Rubric for participation

How, then, do I assess your participation in these important discussions? A simple answer is that I look for frequent and appropriate contributions to class discussions from all participants.

Just what do “appropriate” contributions look like?

My assessment of your postings is based upon your level of contribution as a whole, rather than having specific points assigned for content, style, correctness of expression, etc.

I do, however, encourage you to consider how your writing style appears to others. For instance, if you know that spelling is not your strong suit, you might try writing and spell checking in a word processing document, then pasting those comments into your posting in the forums.

Your discussion postings should be thorough and thoughtful. Just posting an “I agree / disagree with your comment” or “I think the same” to someone else’s thoughts is not considered adequate.

Here are some of the characteristics that I consider to be part of excellent discussion contributions, and these are the things I will look for when we assess your participation:

  • Original insights or responses that build on the ideas of other participants
  • Responses that are appropriate to a particular purpose and audience
  • Content that demonstrates you have read and understood the particular reading
  • Skill and competency in the use of language; clearly expressed ideas
  • Content that elicits reflection and responses from other participants
  • Responses to those who comment on your contributions
  • Responses that integrate multiple views, and show respect to the ideas of others
  • Responses that dig deeper into assignment questions or issues