Overview
Speak Agent offers eight unique professional learning courses that enhance academic language teaching skills and knowledge and enable educators to gain hands-on practice using Speak Agent and its research-based strategies. This not only helps educators gain firsthand experience using the platform, but also lets them experience learning from a student's perspective. Each course develops specific competencies—such as Differentiated Instruction, STEM Writing Strategies, or Student Progress Monitoring.
Course Catalog
Below is our current catalog. The badge image above each course shows the relevant certification that teachers can earn. Courses with the icon are available on demand in your teacher account! Click here to learn how to access them.
#101: Academic Language Learning
This course introduces Speak Agent’s Content+Language program and how it aligns with your curriculum and standards. You will learn about our proven effective academic language learning model, the key principles of multimodal instruction, and how to apply the latest ELD standards for content-language integration. You will also learn the basics of how to use Speak Agent, from rostering classes to assigning learning tasks. Includes a workshop that explores how to integrate the program into your classroom instruction using fun & engaging activities, so relax and enjoy!
LENGTH: 60 minutes (optional extra 30 minutes to integrate the workshop)
#102: Virtual Gallery Walk
This is a webconference session where educators learn implementation best practices and collaboration strategies to assure high fidelity. Educators will share their experiences with the Content+Language framework by presenting a 3-minute "TED-Ed" talk to their colleagues. The goals are for teachers to learn from one another, to bring up challenges early on so they can be quickly addressed, and to ensure high fidelity in every classroom.
LENGTH: 60 minutes (Length can be tailored based on the number of participants.)
#201: Differentiating STEM & Language Instruction
This course takes a deeper look at the tools in Speak Agent that you can use for differentiating math & science instruction. It will explore how to find and use digital lessons relevant to individual student needs (including a track created especially for multilingual learners), when and where customizing lessons may be helpful, and how to implement customization with minimal effort.
LENGTH: 75 minutes
#202: Active Reading Strategies
In this course, teachers gain hands-on experience with eight interpretive language strategies for math & science reading and how to use them in Speak Agent. These include (1) vocabulary development, (2) multiple visual representations, (3) sentence frames, (4) manipulative sentence construction, (5) dialogic reading & Three-Read strategies, (6) audiovisual texts, (7) reading aids, and (8) leveled texts for accessibility.
LENGTH: 60 minutes
In this course, teachers will learn about key research-based strategies for scaffolded math & science writing such as Accessible Vocabulary, Explaining Thinking, Immediate Feedback, Journaling, Marginal Notes, Sentence Stems, Writing Your Own Problem, and Writing Models. The course will also explore the process of using Speak Agent to respond to student writing submissions and how to give feedback.
LENGTH: 60 minutes
#204: Student Progress Monitoring
This course delivers best practices for using Speak Agent reporting tools to track completion of assignments, monitor student growth, and review data for purposes of collaborative learning, grading, and intervention. It also explores the student portfolio feature set.
LENGTH: 60 minutes
#205: School Data Leadership
This course delivers best practices for using built-in reporting tools to track student usage and growth within a school. Equally important, the course helps school leaders and administrators interpret the data and to identify concrete action steps to take in each scenario. School leaders will be able to identify classrooms that are achieving high fidelity and which require help or encouragement to do so.
LENGTH: 45 minutes
#206: Multilingual High School STEM Strategies
This course is designed for high school Math and Science content teachers and language/ESL teachers to learn research-based strategies to support multilingual learners in required STEM courses such as Algebra, Biology, and Physical Sciences, who may have significant gaps in background knowledge, prior concept mastery, and language skills. It introduces Speak Agent's three-level spiraled Multilingual High School method.
LENGTH: 90 minutes if replacing #101 — or 30 minutes if added to #101.
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