Embedded Files
Approaches to Teaching & Learning
Approaches to Teaching & Learning
What does high-quality teaching and learning look like in our programs? What values guide our work?
What does high-quality teaching and learning look like in our programs? What values guide our work?
HCC ESOL classrooms and learning encounters are characterized by a set of core, common understandings about how learning happens, the role teachers play in facilitating that learning, and the impact it can have for individuals and communities:
All students can learn! ESOL classes meet students where they are, and build on the varied strengths and experiences that every person brings to the classroom. These funds of knowledge are rich resources for learning (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992). All students bring skills and funds of knowledge to our classroom.
Curriculum and instruction should be relevant to students’ purposes for learning and interests, and therefore should include mechanisms for consultation, co-construction, and student choice.
Learning happens in a spiral (Gibbs, 2014; Harden, 1999). As students rework concepts in more complex ways across class levels, they refine mental models of how language works. Curriculum documentation supports continuity and spiraling across levels.
Metacognitive awareness matters! Creating opportunities for learners to think (and talk) about their thinking supports the further development of lifelong learning skills.
We honor the right of all our students to define personal educational goals and maximize their educational potential, honor their own language and culture, and enjoy the full benefit of participation and inclusion in the life of the community.
Documents in this section provide an overview of how teaching and learning in HCC ESOL programs, as well as an overview of our curriculum.
Guidelines for all teachers.docHCC ESOL Teacher Guidelines
HCC ESOL “Look Fors” 10-18What does high-quality teaching and learning look like in HCC ESOL classrooms?
Images of Classroom Culture.docxImages of Classroom Culture & Organization
Class Observation Rubric blank.docxHCC ESOL Classroom Observation Rubric built by teaching team
DESE PQR Classroom Observation Tool.pdfClassroom observation tool developed by DESE for Program Quality Review Visits
ESOL Curriculum Development Project - Guiding PrinciplesGuiding principles for on-going HCC ESOL Curriculum Development Projects
Program & Level Objectives (Scope & Sequence Tools)
Program & Level Objectives (Scope & Sequence Tools)
What skills and competencies do students develop within each level of the program? How are skills sequenced across levels?
What skills and competencies do students develop within each level of the program? How are skills sequenced across levels?
Curriculum clarifies our goals as a program and the learning that happens at each level. Curriculum supports alignment across levels for students, teachers, and the program. Designing backwards from program objectives (exit criteria), what should I teach at my level? What does the next level teacher expect as learners transition to their classroom? How are we building the complex language and problem solving skills students need and deserve, even from the beginning levels of instruction?
The scope and sequence of our program and levels is defined by the following documents:
Exit Criteria: This document describes the scope of core language skills (L/S, R, W) at each level and the sequencing within and across levels. Our goal is to build the coherence and appropriate rigor that sets students up to be successful within the program and after they transition into their next step.
Core Tenses & Aspects across HCC ESOL Levels: There is great power in a mental model so simple that once you've taken it in, you own it. These tools become a structure for your thinking. We hope Core Tenses & Aspect provides this level of distillation and clarity for you!
Structure Sequence by Level: Modeled off of the work of the REEP Program in Arlington, VA, the Structure Sequence by Level describes the core grammatical and syntactic structures students learn at each of our levels. Language learning is recursive, and the length of time needed to acquire a particular feature depends on a variety of factors, including complexity of the structure, the level to which an error impedes understanding, and the degree of similarity or difference from a student's L1. For this reason, structures on this list are designated as to be taught, reviewed, or maintained. Almost no structure is taught at only one level, and even when a structure is being "maintained," there will likely be some active work involved in that maintenance, on the part of both students and teachers!
Documents in this section describe the intended and assessed curriculum: the knowledge and skill targets that we assess to determine progress.
What is not included in this section are the contexts in which language learning gets embedded. Rich contexts come from your students' goals, from texts you are working with, from opportunities within our program and region, and from collaboration with your colleagues! See the Course, Unit & Lesson Planning section below.
Condensed HCC ESOL Level Exit CriteriaHCC ESOL Exit Criteria, aligned to MA ELPS
Defines the core language skills being developed at each level (Listening & Speaking, Reading, Writing). Click above for the full document, or below for a PDF.
Core Tense/AspectCore Tenses/Aspects across HCC ESOL Levels
What tenses/aspects form the structural core of each HCC ESOL level? We produce many dense, challenging documents. This one is the simple snapshot! Carry this as your mental model of where the work of your level is centered, and relationships between levels.
LAALC Structures by Level (grammar/structure sequence)HCC ESOL Structure Sequence by Level
Grammar and syntax build across class levels. This document outlines what structural elements are taught, reviewed, and maintained at each level.
Rubrics & Student Checklists
Rubrics & Student Checklists
How can students and teachers determine that a student is ready to move levels? How can we measure progress within a class level?
How can students and teachers determine that a student is ready to move levels? How can we measure progress within a class level?
For Speaking and Writing, our program rubrics and checklists detail what student progress looks like within a level, and aid teachers and students in assessing progress.
Rubrics are designed for teachers, and provide a picture of when a student is ready to move to the next level. These are used to evaluate student performance at any time, and to help determine student readiness for end-of-year level progression.
Student Checklists
Student Checklists
Checklists are a distilled version of the rubric, designed for students! They can be used for teacher feedback, as well self- and peer-assessment. Checklists are designed for frequent use: for projects and assignments throughout the year, as well as in Level Completion Projects.
Course, Unit & Lesson Planning
Course, Unit & Lesson Planning
How will students demonstrate and reflect on learning, and recognize their own progress?
How will students demonstrate and reflect on learning, and recognize their own progress?
Level Completion Projects (Summative Course Assessments)
Level Completion Projects (Summative Course Assessments)
Level Completion Projects help students and teachers determine readiness for the next class level as measured against HCC ESOL Exit Criteria, and importantly, build reflection and student self-awareness of progress into our program curriculum. The design of the project is meant to ask "What are our goals? and the completion of the project is meant to ask Did we meet them? How has my learning changed over this process? What skills and strategies am I taking with me?" At the beginning of the year, each teacher will choose between two assessment models: Portfolio or Capstone project. Teachers are encouraged to collaborate with peers who have chosen the same assessment model throughout the year!
The document at left provides further context and detail of Level Completion Projects, including examples for both Portfolio and Capstone projects. Also check out Barbara, explaining Level Completion Projects!
Capstone Project Examples:
Capstone folder on Shared Drive:
Example Portfolio Tools & Resources:
Portfolio folder on Shared Drive:
Writing Curriculum Arc
Writing Curriculum Arc
Writing Curriculum Arc
Writing Curriculum Arc
Guide for Using the Writing Curriculum Arc
HCC ESOL’s Writing Curriculum Arc is designed to provide ideas and inspiration and to serve as a menu from which to select and craft writing tasks. The Writing Arc for Levels 1-4 helps to answer the essential question: how do we build the stepping stones for students to achieve exit level writing skills as effectively as possible?
It is backwards-designed, and includes the following sections:
Ongoing Strategies and Instructional Practices
Target Skills (aligned to the HCC Grammar Structures by Level document) and Text Types by Trimester
Diagnostic Pre- and Post- Writing Needs Assessments
Scaffolded Progression of Activities, aligned to the writing rubric by level. These stepping stones serve as suggestions and examples, and can be adapted, modified, or used as presented, based on your instructional plan and the needs of individual students.
Note: You are NOT expected to teach all of these during the course of the year! Each trimester should include several writing activities, and will vary depending on course content and on how many layers of revision and editing occur with each activity.
Syllabus Planning & Class Armature
Syllabus Planning & Class Armature
Teachers in our program construct syllabi for their courses to support both themselves and their students:
For students, working with a syllabus exposes them to a common US academic structure that may be unfamiliar. It provides a space for students and teachers to negotiate what will be learned, and adapt that content to students’ goals and interests. It models and provides practice with long-range planning and time-management skills, and highlights resources (including people!) available to support students.
For teachers, the syllabus provides a space for long-range planning and backwards design: working backwards from our exit criteria, what experiences can I plan for students that will support their development of these skills? What are the stepping stones they need across the year? What units, projects, and assessments will support their progress this trimester? What are my students’ goals and purposes for learning, and how can I build in opportunities to personalize learning and make it relevant?
In addition to planning content and skill progression, teachers should think about underlying structural questions that will support the varied needs and interests of your students. You’re building for strength and flexibility! (Robust structures to assess learning and gather student input allow you to be flexible.) The Class Armature tool asks you to consider how you will approach recurring, content-agnostic elements of your teaching. The result is a teacher-facing syllabus that hopefully lightens your on-going planning load, because you will have already made important decisions that guide your class. The Class Armature is made up of two elements:
Class Armature Guide
Class Armature Guide
For a long time, we’ve asked you to think about many different elements of your class, each with it’s own timeline and rhythm. Teachers were responsible for integrating all those pieces. Yikes! Beginning in 2022, we’re trying to weave those threads together for you. The Armature Guide shows the same information in two ways:
First, Pesha traced threads separately, thinking about the arc of each. That’s the first tab (“By Thread”).
On the “By Time” tab, those threads are woven together and sequenced across a trimester.
In essence, the Armature Guide lists the questions to ask yourself as you work through the Class Armature Organizer.
Syllabus Planning
Syllabus Planning
Considerations for your syllabus planning are summarized below, with direct links to previous syllabi created by your colleagues.
Unit & Lesson Planning
Unit & Lesson Planning
Unit Planning
Unit Planning
HCC ESOL classes do not follow a prescribed set or sequence of thematic units. Instead, teachers and students treat units as a menu: units should be selected, adapted or created to be appropriately rigorous, aligned to students' goals, and highlight opportunities to become more engaged community-members and take advantage of local opportunities to advance along a career pathway that is personally fulfilling and leads toward greater economic stability.
At right is a unit planning template (for use in creating new unit plans) and a directory (to help you locate existing units that may not have been designed for your level but could be adapted). Below are folders for each level (with the same content as the directory -- just organized differently.)
Curriculum documentation at the unit planning level supports teachers to refine, go deeper, and focus on the particular needs of their students, rather than recreating.
HCC ESOL Unit Planning Template -- MAKE A COPY and rename to use!Unit Plan template -- please make a copy and rename, so we keep the template intact!
Unit Plan DirectoryUnit Plan Directory -- listing of unit plans with level, language and thematic content
Lesson Planning
Lesson Planning
Lesson plans are developed by teachers to guide their instruction. In general, HCC ESOL teachers have found weekly plans to be the most supportive of continuity. While there is no required template, lesson plans should contain the following components: learning objectives ("SWBATs" -- Students will be able to...), MA ELPS alignment notation, materials and resources, lesson sequence / activities, assessment, and reflection. The template at right may be used, or use a format comfortable for you!
Lesson plans should be kept in your class folder on the HCC ESOL Team Drive, so they are available for review and viewable/searchable by your colleagues.
Lesson plan template (Pesha)Lesson Plan template -- please make a copy and rename, so we can keep the template intact!!
Homework and Independent Learning
Homework and Independent Learning
After shifting to remote instruction in 2020-2021, we've conceived of our classes as having three components:
Synchronous (Zoom instruction)
"Homework" (assignments that directly connect to synchronous instruction)
Independent Learning (a path charted by students, in consultation with their instructor, to improve their language skills through a menu of practice options that align to their needs, interests, goals, and preferences)
The working document at right is our common space for structuring and developing Independent Learning.
Independent Work in HCC ESOL ProgramsIndependent Learning
This is an example of a level 4 class independent learning menu, which contains both general access and log-in activities.
Massachusetts Standards and Benchmarks
Massachusetts Standards and Benchmarks
Massachusetts English Language Proficiency Standards
Massachusetts English Language Proficiency Standards
MA ELPS merged doc.docxMA ELPS - full standards
The MA ELPS, adopted in February 2019, "are designed to prepare adult learners for the complex language tasks required to successfully meet life, academic, and career goals. In addition, they provide ESOL adult educators and learners a common language for this journey. They also guide instructors in providing rigorous, scaffolded instruction that builds knowledge and transferable skills" (MA DESE). HCC ESOL teachers are required to align instruction to these standards, and note that alignment in unit and lesson plans. At the program level, the MA ELPS provide a framework for continued curriculum development.
These standards are new to us, and we will learn them through engagement and use! Below are tools to help you digest and learn more about the standards, including an overview chart (Strands, Standards, & Threads) and overview videos from SABES.
Massachusetts ESOL Professional Standards
Massachusetts ESOL Professional Standards
The MA English Language Proficiency Standards focus on student learning. In addition to these benchmarks of student learning, our work is also driven by the effective instruction done by our teaching team.
The MA ESOL Professional Standards outline what effective teachers of adult English learners need to know and be able to do, to help students meet those rigorous standards and their goals!
MA_esol-prof-standards 2021.pdfIntegrated and Contextualized Instruction
Integrated and Contextualized Instruction
In integrated and contextualized instruction, the development of language, literacy, numeracy, digital, and soft skills is embedded within contexts immediately relevant to students. Instead of teaching isolated, component parts and hoping students will understand their importance and be able to transfer them into meaningful contexts, contextualized instruction follows a Whole-Part-Whole frame: both the Whole (context) and the Part (individual skills being developed) matter. Skills are presented in context, and the teacher assesses students’ ability to use new skills in context. Students understand how their current level of skill relates to the level required to meet their goals. Students need to be able to answer two key questions about their learning: “Does this make sense?” and “Do I care?”. In contextualized instruction, these questions are well on their way to being answered, because the relevance of what is being learned is clear!
Core ESOL classes, while not contextualized to any one industry or field, maximize learning when the language content and skills are presented, practiced, and applied in contexts that are high-value to students.
Further resources for contextualized instruction are available on our "Teaching Resources" page.
Teaching Skills That Matter in Adult Education (TSTM)
Teaching Skills That Matter in Adult Education (TSTM)
Teaching Skills That Matter in Adult Education is a national adult education initiative which promotes the teaching and fostering of essential transferable skills that learners need to successfully meet their academic and life goals. These skills can be reinforced through effective teaching approaches (integrated and contextualized instruction, problem-based learning, and project-based learning) focusing instruction on five highly relevant topic focus areas civics education, digital literacy, health literacy, financial literacy, and workforce preparation, which reflect today’s increasingly complex world.
Focus on Workforce Development
Focus on Workforce Development
Career Training and Accelerated Career English Programs
Career Training and Accelerated Career English Programs
In addition to core ESOL classes, HCC offers several explicitly contextualized programs: ESOL Nurse Aide and ESOL Culinary, with an intensive Accelerated Career English (ACE) program to support higher-level (3+) students with an immediate goal to attain employment or improve their job situation.
The ACE program supports students in career pathway exploration and coaching, job search skills, computer skills, college preparation and workforce training. It is particularly helpful for students seeking to pivot in a new direction or build upon previous professional and work experience.
Pioneer Valley Priority Occupation Career Pathway Roadmaps
Pioneer Valley Priority Occupation Career Pathway Roadmaps
In 2019, the MassHire Workforce Boards from our region developed career pathways maps for the most important job sectors in our region. The results are rich tools for career and education planning, and -- importantly -- for language learning in a context aligned to many of our students' goals.
Please plan to share how you use them with our team! Links to the four maps are below.
Curriculum Planning Guidance - Contextualized ESOLCore Standards and Benchmarks for ESOL Curriculum Core Standards & Benchmarks for ESOL Nurse Aide
Further resources for contextualized instruction are available on our "Teaching Resources" page.
Essential Career & Digital Literacy Skills
Essential Career & Digital Literacy Skills
For students with career goals, the essential skills highlighted in this chart (backwards-designed from a common set of criteria within the Hampden County workforce system) allow students to more readily access MassHire One-Stop Career Center services.
For all students, the Digital Literacy and Strategies for Managing Barriers strands focus on the skills needed to effectively access education, community support, and civic engagement.
Digital Literacy & Numeracy Integration
Digital Literacy & Numeracy Integration
Literacy, numeracy, and digital literacy skills are interwoven in our lives: we frequently make decisions based on the integration of quantitative as well as qualitative data, we make meaning from multimodal texts that include video, image, sound, print, charts and graphs, we solve problems and think critically in technology-rich environments. This has never been more true than now, when technology skills are critical to so many core rights for our students: access to education, health and safety, community connection, and civic engagement!
HCC ESOL offerings play different roles in supporting students' digital literacy and numeracy development. Opt-in offerings focused on computer skills and math allow interested students the opportunity to build new skills through sustained instruction. In traditional ESOL classes, teachers intentionally incorporate numeracy and digital literacy while the focus remains on building language skills.
The documents in this section support teachers on the integration of digital literacy and math into ESOL instruction.
Classroom-based Digital Literacy Practices & Strategies
Classroom-based Digital Literacy Practices & Strategies
Tips for Success: Bringing Digital Literacy into ESOL ClassTips for Success: Bringing Digital Literacy into the ESOL Classroom
Opt-in ESOL Computer - Class Description & OverviewFramework for opt-in ESOL Computer classes
MA DESE Digital Literacy and Computer Science Curriculum Framework.pdfDigital Literacy & Computer Science Curriculum Frameworks
Numeracy and Math Skills Integration
Numeracy and Math Skills Integration
Math in ESOL OverviewFramework for the role of math in core ESOL classes
Math Integration GuidebookList of math integrations for common ESOL topics, including suggestions of key skills, vocabulary, and resources.
Further resources are available on our "Teaching Resources" page.
Student Assessment, Reflection & Feedback
Student Assessment, Reflection & Feedback
Assessment plays a critical role in the learning-teaching loop. At the classroom level, formative assessment gives teachers and learners important information about students' understandings and areas of growth. Summative assessments allow students to consolidate learning from a longer period of time -- a unit, trimester, a year, etc. Level Completion Projects in the form of a portfolio or capstone provide ample opportunities for reflection, skill-building, and sharing learning with a wider community.
We also administer standardized assessments 3 times per year. While we cannot share these tests with students, we do share information about how they performed, as well as feedback on classroom-based assessment, so that students can help drive their learning and the class.
Reflection builds student metacognition, self-efficacy, and power. Self-reflection is an important and expected skill in many US contexts, particularly in the workplace and education. Self-reflection is a skill that can be developed over time. HCC ESOL teachers are encouraged to build self-reflection and feedback mechanisms into their classrooms at minimum monthly/at the conclusion of each unit. Weekly or every class is even better!
Intentionally structuring feedback cycles into our work is one way we respect all our learners invest in their education!
MA standardized assessment information -- policies, training, resources, etc. -- maintained by the ACLS Assessment Center at UMass.
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