CRLP Summer Newsletter
California Reading & Literature Project at UC Berkeley
Greetings Bay Area Educators,
I hope this newsletter finds your school year winding down smoothly. Here at CRLP we are busy preparing for two summer open institutes and the launch of our new PD initiative funded by the Intrepid Philanthropy Foundation: Content Area Literacy in the Digital Age (check it out below!).
We'd also like to celebrate the work of our partner districts and school sites this past year in service of advancing literacy for ALL students! Below you will see highlights of this work, in addition to an update on CRLP's newest professional learning opportunity: Visual Literacy and the CA ELD Standards.
Best wishes for a relaxing and rejuvenating summer break,
George Ellis
Director
California Reading & Literature Project
UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education
2019 LIGHT Award Recipients
Earlier this month, CRLP received the Intrepid Philanthropy Foundation's LIGHT Awards Grant for our proposal titled Content Area Literacy in the Digital Age. This two-year grant will allow CRLP at UC Berkeley to create a new professional development offering to explore a topic of great interest in the world of education:
"How can teachers best support literacy instruction in the ever-changing Digital Age?"
The grant funds will be used to sponsor six Teacher Leaders in deepening their knowledge of literacy, technology, and the facilitation of adult learning by attending the following professional learning events: Computer Using Educators National Conference, Advanced Lesson Design with HyperDocs, Art of Coaching Institute, and Professional Development that Changes Practice Institute. The goal at the end of the two-year grant cycle is to create a new PD offering to help support digital literacy instruction throughout the state of California.
Congratulations to our LIGHT Award Team:
- Kara Whiston (Tenderloin Community School - San Francisco)
- Christina Huizar (Tenderloin Community School - San Francisco)
- Allie Helgren (Audubon Elementary School - San Mateo/Foster City)
- Luann Daniel (Skyline Elementary School - South San Francisco)
- Meghan Clark (Daves Avenue Elementary School - Los Gatos)
Professional Development that Changes Practice
Wednesday, June 26, 2019, 8:00 am - 3:30 pm
Thursday, June 27, 2019, 8:00 am - 3:30 pm
UC Berkeley, 2121 Berkeley Way
This interactive, practical workshop models the kind of learning experiences that can change professional practice and ultimately, outcomes for adult learners. We’ll explore strategic planning, assessment and evaluation of professional development, creating learning experiences for adults, fostering trusting cultures, and becoming a learning organization.
INSTITUTE OUTCOMES
- Cultivate optimal conditions for learning.
- Choose and build buy-in for effective professional development goals.
- Design learning structures and agendas aligned with principles of adult learning.
- Refine your communication skills.
- Develop skills to encourage productive conflict and navigate tricky group dynamics.
- Identify ways to gather data and reflect on the effectiveness of professional development
- Hone your leadership identity, grounded in your core values.
Website: https://www.smore.com/r46qx
Spanish-English Biliteracy Transfer (SEBT) Open Institute
Tuesday, June 18, 8:00 am - 3:30 pm
Wednesday, June 19, 8:00 am - 3:30 pm
UC Berkeley, 2121 Berkeley Way
- SEBT provides guidance for teachers as they help their students reach grade-level literacy in both Spanish and English
- SEBT offers an instructional approach based on what students have learned in Spanish and the level of transferability of skills/concepts between Spanish and English
- SEBT includes assessments specifically designed to support the transferability of reading foundational skills.
Website: https://crlp.berkeley.edu/professional-development/spanish-english-biliteracy-transfer-sebt
2018-2019 Bay Area District Support
Thomas Edison Charter Academy (SFUSD)
This fall we began a new partnership with Thomas Edison Charter Academy in San Francisco. To meet the needs of this K-8 school, we customized our Results: Academic Language & Literacy Institute (RALLI) signature program for K-5th grade teachers and combined it with the 6th-8th grade-focused Content-Area Language & Literacy (CALL) to offer a joint RALLI/CALL 4-day institute, which included two additional half-day follow-up sessions to provide teachers with lesson planning support and dive deeper into the CA English Language Development (ELD) Standards.
San Bruno Park School District
CRLP continued its decade-long partnership with the San Bruno Park School District in 2018-2019. This year, CRLP trained all of of SBPSD's K-8 teachers, administrators, and psychologists in our new 3-hour Introduction to the California Dyslexia Guidelines workshop. The goal of this technical assistance is to inform educators about what the new Dyslexia Guidelines entail, how they will be used to identify students with dyslexia, and how to plan for appropriate instructional supports to assist these students. CRLP is also offering technical assistance to San Bruno Park School District as it navigates the process of piloting new History/Stoical Studies curriculum for adoption.
Sylvia Mendez Elementary (Berkeley Unified)
Antioch Unified School District
In 2018-2019 we also continued to support the Antioch Unified School District (AUSD) in implementing Results: Foundational Skills across all K-2nd grade classrooms. Our customized implementation support has taken shape in three different ways: 1) Professional Learning Community for all 14 AUSD Principals, 2) Lesson Study Series for all 14 AUSD Reading Specialists, and 3) Teacher Leadership Series for a new cohort of 52 K-2nd grade teachers who have been identified as site-level teacher leaders to create model lessons and serve as Results coaches at each school site.
Millbrae Elementary School District
As part of our long-standing collaboration with the Millbrae Elementary School District (MESD), we continued our second year of implementation support for theirWonders Language Arts curriculum for K-5th Grade. CRLP's Teacher Leaders facilitated a 3-day professional development series around the curriculum resources available for Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) in the Wonders curriculum. We have also partnered with MESD to establish a Literacy and Leadership Team to create more effective teacher-led team meetings to help teachers dive deeper into data analysis and targeted, differentiated instruction.
Mt. Diablo School District
For the past several years, we have provided technical support to the Mt. Diablo Unified School District with a fall workshop on how to administer CRLP's A Developmental English Proficiency Test (ADEPT). New MDUSD teachers and EL Coaches learned to administer the ADEPT assessment tool to identify a students’ ELD instructional level and to differentiate instructional supports. This year, we added an additional component to the ADEPT training to allow teachers to become more familiar with the California ELA/ELD Framework, the California ELD Standards, and their relation to ADEPT.
Visual Literacy and the CA ELD Standards
New PD Offering!
At this year's Spring Speaker Series, CRLP at UC Berkeley launched it's newest half-day professional learning: a study session to explore the power of visual literacy. In partnership with the San Bruno Park School District, over 25 participants learned an innovative instructional routine for teaching English Language Development (ELD): Visual Thinking Strategies. In this session teachers explored how Visual Thinking Strategies can be used to promote critical thinking in both ELD and History/Social Science. Our session also allowed educators to deepen their knowledge of the CA ELD Standards and learn a core routine for motivating students to more effectively interact with visual media.
If you are interested in bringing this new half-day PD to your school district, please contact us at crlp@berkeley.edu.
Contact Us
California Reading & Literature Project
UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education
Email: crlp@berkeley.edu
Website: crlp.berkeley.edu
Location: 17 University Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720
Phone: (510) 643-6189
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ucbcrlp/
GEORGE ELLIS
Director
California Reading & Literature Project
UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education
Email: georgeellis@berkeley.edu
Website: https://crlp.berkeley.edu/about/who-we-are
Location: 17 University Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720
Phone: (510) 643-6189
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ucbcrlp/