World Language & Heritage/Native Speaker Programs

Developing Proficiency via the Three Modes of Communication


As a profession, second language pedagogy has shifted its focus away from isolated grammar and vocabulary tasks to a proficiency-based approach integrating the three modes of communication: interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational.


Communicative teaching and learning must include scaffolding, differentiation, and performance-based tasks where students have a variety of ways to demonstrate their linguistic skills and cultural knowledge.

Participants will leave this professional learning workshop knowing how to:
  1. Integrate the modes into daily lessons and thematic units
  2. Select authentic resources that provide students opportunities to develop all modes
  3. Design assessments that measure proficiency
  4. Implement strategies to move students beyond the novice level

Multiple Pathways to Proficiency: Building Your World Language Program from Novice to Advanced

The successful AP® student begins to prepare for their journey in their first year of language learning.

Teachers need to work in teams to provide a comprehensive experience for students; one that leads to communicative competence and intermediate proficiency.

The importance of vertical teaming and pre-AP instruction will be the focus of this professional learning workshop.

Participants will leave this professional learning workshop knowing how to:
  1. Plan accordingly across all levels of language learning
  2. Develop and scaffold the three modes of communication: interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational
  3. Scaffold and design assessments that measure proficiency across all levels of language learning
  4. Select and differentiate authentic resources
  5. Provide opportunities for students to demonstrate their knowledge, understanding, and proficiency of the target culture
  6. Compare and contrast their own community with the target community
  7. Scaffold and develop writing skills across different genres; descriptive, argumentative, and expository
  8. Use technology to enhance instruction


Authentic Resources for Real-life Communication in Your Classroom

Authentic resources are essential to developing language proficiency and cultural growth. They serve as pathways to understanding products and practices, leading to developing perspectives.

In addition, authentic texts created by native speakers of the target language for native speakers of the target language integrate vocabulary and grammar, providing a rich learning experience for the interpretive mode, yet also leading very naturally to the interpersonal and presentational modes as students interpret, discuss, compare, analyze, and evaluate what they read, hear, view, and experience.

This workshop will empower teachers to use authentic resources confidently, with students of all proficiency levels, including novice, helping students develop greater proficiency in language communication and culture.

Participants will leave this professional learning workshop knowing how to:
  1. Locate age-appropriate, engaging, high-interest, and thematically related authentic resources for all levels of instruction, from diverse target language communities of the world
  2. Scaffold the presentation of authentic resources into manageable steps, through a variety of effective pre-, while-, and post-listening, reading, and viewing strategies and activities
  3. Guide students to investigate, identify and explain the role of cultural products and practices, leading to understanding of cultural perspectives of target language communities.
  4. Train students to reflect on their own culture by "bringing it home," as they compare target language communities with their own, focusing their cultural lenses to respect and honor both cultures
  5. Guide students to develop vocabulary and language functions as they move from interpretive to interpersonal and presentational communication activities
  6. Design a variety of writing and speaking tasks that empower students to interact with and communicate what they have gained from authentic resources.
  7. Assess student learning through a variety of formative and summative assessments


Meeting the Needs of Heritage and Native Speakers

There is no doubt that over the last decade, classifying and implementing a curriculum that serves the diverse needs of our Spanish speakers has become a challenging task. However, with a deeper dive into who our Spanish speakers are and what their actual needs are, school sites can take the necessary steps to create and integrate targeted, dynamic, and pedagogically appropriate instructional practices to enrich the teaching and learning within Spanish speakers’ classrooms.

Participants will leave this professional learning workshop knowing how to:
  1. Identify, assess, and place Spanish-speaker students in appropriate courses
  2. Advocate for Spanish speakers by educating school administrators and counselors
  3. Implement appropriate pedagogy to enrich teaching and learning experiences


Supporting All Students: Inclusion & Equity in the World Language Classroom

World Language classrooms offer the perfect landscape for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work. Through representing multicultural communities and the mosaic of student identities, this workshop aims to support educators in their quest to improve their DEI goals.

In this interactive workshop, teachers will reflect on current practices and establish inclusion goals. Participants will then learn proven best practices to ignite curiosity and learning among students. Finally, participants will adapt a current lesson to meet the workshop goals.

Participants will leave this session knowing how to:
  1. Establish a classroom environment conducive to respect and understanding
  2. Integrate diverse content into instructional repertoire
  3. Adapt learning activities to celebrate students’ diverse needs


Fostering Classroom Community through Active Engagement Strategies

As language professionals, we know that our primary role is to build our students’ language proficiency. With Vista’s products, we have the tools and resources to accomplish that. However, we also know that for learning to be effective and for our students to be successful, we first have to build a classroom environment where students feel a sense of belonging; one in which they know they are seen and heard.


Participants will leave this professional learning workshop knowing how to:
  1. Create a safe space for all students to learn in which everyone feels welcome
  2. Build a classroom routine that fosters relationship building
  3. Use sample activities that provide students with opportunities to express themselves in the target language
  4. Implement strategies that allow students to get to know the teacher, as well as connect with their peers
  5. Implement proven classroom techniques to create a nurturing environment
  6. Use celebration of students as a method to connect and motivate students to engage in the target language

Bilingual/Dual Language and English Language Development Programs


Principles and Best Practices for Successfully Aligning Instruction with the Science of Reading in the Spanish, English, or Multilingual Classroom

This get-up-and-go interactive session can be customized for English, Spanish, or ELD. Teachers will be equipped with a deep understanding of the principles and best practices that align with the science of reading (SoR). Instructional routines and strategies that promote the emergence and integration of language comprehension and word recognition skills will be examined. Particular attention can be given to best practices for classrooms with multilingual learners (MLs) that weave together the SoR and language acquisition bodies of research. Wherever teachers currently are on the reading continuum, they will leave prepared to upgrade their literacy block with practices that develop the neural pathways needed for language acquisition and skilled reading.



This workshop will empower participants to:
  • Articulate the role of phonemic awareness, phonological awareness, and phonics in supporting MLs in becoming skilled readers
  • Identify instructional strategies for cultivating phonemic awareness, phonological awareness, and phonics skills that are based in language and reinforce the speech-to-print connection
  • Identify effective systematic and explicit instructional routines
  • Self-evaluate their current practices and how they align with SoR
  • Create their own individual plan to incorporate new practices and/or refine current practices


Curriculum and Instruction Differentiation for ELs and Cross-cultural Communication and Understanding

English learners (ELs) enter our classes at different levels academically and culturally. To ensure that teachers can meet ELs where they are linguistically and culturally, curriculum and instruction must be tailored to each student’s needs. These needs may vary depending on the students’ skills in listening, reading, writing, or speaking.

Participants will leave this professional learning workshop knowing how to:
  1. Begin with the end in mind by tailoring assessments to meet curricular goals for English learners
  2. Implement techniques to move students beyond basic levels of understanding in listening, reading, writing, and speaking
  3. Create learning stations for differentiated learning groups to promote linguistic and cultural competence
  4. Use formative assessment techniques multiple times throughout a class period


Understanding Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (BICS AND CALP) and their Impact on Student Academic Achievement

Learning Objectives:
Participants will leave this training able to understand Jim Cummins’s theories of basic interpersonal communication skills and cognitive academic language proficiency and the impact of those on policy, practices, student learning, and academic achievement on English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC).

Over the years, researchers have looked at proficiency theories related to teaching students different languages. Jim Cummins, language researcher, proposed specific categories of linguistic proficiency based on two major language proficiencies that must be acquired by second language learners: basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS) and cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP). Cummins utilized the “Iceberg Model” to explain both theories. BICS is the language that learners use in their everyday, real-world interactions—the social language—while CALP is essentially the discourse of the classroom or the academic language.

Participants will study the differences between BICS and CALP and how these two theories impact policy, teaching practices, academic achievement, and ultimately, success on the ELPAC.

Participants attending this professional learning workshop will be able to:
  1. Discuss the differences between Jim Cummins’ theories of BICS and CALP utilizing the Iceberg Model
  2. Understand the characteristics of both BICS and CALP theories
  3. Discuss the impact and implications of the theories for policy and teaching practices
  4. Understand implications of the theories for student second language learning success
  5. Select authentic resources to provide students with opportunities to move from the social language (BICS) to the academic language (CALP)
  6. Identify and implement strategies to move students beyond BICS to reach CALP and succeed on the ELPAC


Implementing Asset-based Instructional Strategies to Enhance Language, Literacy, and Cultural Competency in the Multilingual Classroom

Today’s emergent bilinguals (EBs) bring many assets to American classrooms that are seldom used to enhance their language, literacy, and cultural competency when acquiring English.

After participating in this full-day workshop, participants will walk away with powerful, research-based strategies to continue cultivating EBs’ heritage language and their new language.

These strategies will include:
  • Cross-linguistic connections
  • Understanding the importance of intertextuality, interlinguistic, and interculturalism
  • Embedding reading and writing together in both English and the new language
  • Effective time allocation management techniques


Engaging Multilingual Learners while Creating a Classroom Community

As schools are receiving more Newcomers and ELLs every day, professional development for ELD (English Language Development) teachers is growing ever more critical and essential. The success of Newcomer and ELL students is dependent upon helping them to engage in this new classroom environment and to feel like a valued and contributing member of their classroom community. With such a variety of needs and proficiency levels, the effective ELD teacher must tap into a wealth of resources, strategies, and best practices in order to help these new ELLs engage, connect, and become confident and capable contributors to the classroom culture and community.

Participants will leave this professional development workshop knowing how to:
  1. Choose resources and deliver instruction that personalizes and empowers student learning
  2. Meet ELL students where they are and effectively differentiate to meet their needs
  3. Implement effective learning strategies to best help ELL students feel confident, capable, and willing to take risks for deeper and more meaningful engagement with both the content and their community
  4. Develop activities and projects that provide opportunities for ELLs to make meaningful contributions to the classroom community
  5. Support the school community in better understanding the needs of ELLs and how best to support them to feel welcomed, invited, included, and inspired