Proven Practices to Engage K–12 English Learners in Productive Lesson Interactions

Orchestrating classroom interactions that significantly improve an English learner’s language and literacy skills is both a science and an art. English learners at every age and English proficiency level serve to gain from informed guidance in language to achieve a range of communicative goals within lesson interactions, from making and supporting points to comparing and building upon others’ ideas.

Drawing on extensive experience serving K–12 English learners, Dr. Kinsella details the language demands posed by K–12 scholarly interactions, and provides evidence-based principles, classroom-tested guidance, hands-on modeling, guided video viewing, and practical resources to help all students become more agile and confident communicators.

About the Speaker: Kate Kinsella, Ed.D. is an emeritus teacher educator at San Francisco State University and a highly-sought after speaker and consultant to school districts within and outside the U.S. Her 30-year career focus has been equipping youths from diverse backgrounds with the academic communication, reading, and writing skills to be truly college ready. A K–12 teacher’s teacher, Dr. Kinsella maintains active classroom involvement by writing curriculum, conducting research, teaching demonstration lessons, and coaching teachers and administrators. She is the author of widely-used instructional programs to support English learners and striving readers, including Read 180, English 3D, Language Launch, the Academic Vocabulary Toolkit, and Oxford Content Area Picture Dictionary. Dr. Kinsella has served as the lead scholar and pedagogy guide on three recent successful U.S. Department of Education funded research initiatives to improve academic speaking and writing skills for K–12 multilingual learners.