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Improving Teacher Quality

Collaborative Approach to Learning: Bridging Language and Science Teaching

Grant Number: 10-709

Grant Award: $999,677

Duration of Project: Thursday, September 30, 2010 - Monday, September 01, 2014

Project Subject Areas: Mathematics

Grade Band: 3rd-5th

Institutes of Higher Education:

  • University of California, Berkeley

Local Education Agencies:

  • Oakland Unified, Oakland

Number of teachers/principals/highly qualified paraprofessionals participating in the project:

40

Goals:

To meet the stated need to increase ELL students’ access to science content and related academic language in the upper elementary levels in OUSD, the CAL: BLAST program will work to achieve the following program goals:
  • Increase teachers’ interest in science and learning new science content
  • Increase teachers’ ability to make science accessible to linguistically diverse students
  • Increase all students’ science learning
  • Increase ELL students’ proficiency with academic language use
  • Reduce the achievement gap in science and English language arts between EL and EO students

Activities:

The professional development model consists of a 80-hour professional development model, 40 hours during the summer, 24–hours follow-up institute days, 10 hours of PLC meetings; in addition, project coaches will provide observations and feedback to project teachers two or three times for an additional 6 hours.

Anticipated Outcomes:

Teachers will increase their interest in science, science content knowledge related to the 3rd-5th grade science standards, knowledge and implementation of using ELD strategies in science instruction and addressing ELA and ELD standards during science instruction. Students will increase their science and academic language achievement.

Contacts:

Project: Ardice Hardtry, Research Director, hartry@berkeley.edu
Institute of Higher Education: Maureen Sullivan, ELD Specialist, sullivanm1@sfusd.edu
Institute of Higher Education: Joanna Totino, Project Director, jtotino@berkeley.edu
Local Education Agency: Caleb Cheung, LEA Co-Director, caleb.cheung@ousd.k12.ca.us

Questions, Comments, Corrections?

Send an e-mail to Teacher_Quality@cpec.ca.gov .