Second Language Education Cohort PLC Workshops

Every Teacher is a Language Teacher:

Teaching language and literacy across the curriculum

Our next PLC Workshops event 2021 event is scheduled for:

Date: January 26th, 2021

Time: 8:30-11:30 a.m. (EST)

Venue: Zoom

Background information: This series of workshops is for all our Year 1 B.Ed. teacher candidates (approximately 320 students). They are training to work at one of the three following levels: Primary/Junior, Junior/Intermediate and Intermediate/Senior, across all subjects in English-language school boards (find out more about the Division options here). They will have all been in practicum once by next January. 

The aim of these workshops is to engage our teacher candidates with second language pedagogy, as this is not a requirement in the B.Ed. program to date, despite the fact that classrooms are increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse. Our motto is Every Teacher is a Language Teacher and we would like to show our teacher candidates how literacy and language learning can be integrated across the curriculum.

Workshop delivery: The workshops will take place synchronously online on January 26th 2020. Workshops will be delivered twice (lasting 60 minutes each with a 15 minute pause in between) and will take place in English. This gives students the opportunity to attend 2 of the sessions we will be offering. 

When creating your workshop, please keep the following in mind:

  • The teacher candidates you will be presenting to have NO (or very little) training in second language pedagogy
  • Our teacher candidates have asked for workshops that target specific age groups. Either:
    • Primary/Junior (PJ) : Kindergarten to grade 6
    • Intermediate Senior (I/S) : grades 7-12
    • If your workshop is applicable to either age group, consider offering the 1st session for PJ teacher candidates and the 2nd session for IS candidates, and adjusting your workshop content accordingly. 
  • Our teacher candidates have asked for workshops that target specific subject matters:
    • P/J: English, Dramatic Arts, Music – Instrumental, Visual Arts, FSL, Geography, History, Mathematics, Health and Physical Education, Science (general, chemistry, biology, physics)
    • I/S: English, Dramatic Arts, Music – Instrumental, Visual Arts, FSL, Geography, History, Mathematics, Health and Physical Education, Science (general, chemistry, biology, physics)
  • If applicable, you may want to specify for which population your workshop is relevant: (e.g., refugees, new immigrants, parents, etc.) 
  • Our teacher candidates have asked for concrete take-aways: i.e., specific pedagogical strategies (i.e., anti-racist teaching approaches; Indigenous world views; plurilingual perspectives, collaborative learning, etc.), in-class activities they can use, resources and/or worksheets they can take home

If you are interested in delivering a workshop, please complete this Google Form by December 1st 2020 with a draft title, brief description of your proposed workshop (200 words in clear accessible language), target age group, target subject matter, and key words. This information will be shared with the Year 1 students for session registration and will be included in the Teacher Education newsletter.

Due to the targeted nature of these workshops, submissions do not undergo a typical peer review process. We are looking to offer a wide-range of workshops that target literacy and language learning for specific subject-matters, and will be inviting presenters based on the submissions we receive. 

Mimi Masson, the Cohort Lead for the cL2c, will be reviewing the submissions, feel free to address any questions to her at mmasson@uottawa.ca

Presenters will also be invited to submit a chapter based on their workshop to our bi-annual publication Every Teacher is a Language Teacher (Vol. 2) after the workshop (details forthcoming). 

Thank you in advance for your valuable contribution and we look forward to hearing from you!

Best Wishes,

Mimi Masson and Amanda Battistuzzi

The cL2c Team