Professional Conference Response

               I attended the RITELL (Rhode Island Teachers of English Language Learners) Fall Conference on Sheltered Instruction and the Common Core Standards. The main speaker for this conference was Dr. Deborah Short. She is a distinguished author, researcher, and speaker on the topics of Sheltered Instructions and the SIOP Model, which she is the co-developer of. I was a little apprehensive about attending this conference because I assumed that this was going to be all about English Language Learning and little about the techniques that could be used. I soon realized that the techniques were a major portion of the sessions. Dr. Short made it an important point in her presentations to make sure that the teachers present knew how to incorporate the SIOP Model and all of the techniques in their classrooms.

               The main session that started the conference explained the benefits of using the SIOP Model. The model can address the Common Core ELA and Math standards through the use of techniques that support vocabulary development, oral language skills, and content area literacy. I learned that SIOP stands for Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol. This session was filled with good information about how the common core standards can be addressed with using the techniques that are associated with SIOP. Short explained that common core is starting to take ELL into consideration and create the standards for those students. Hopefully that happens and the ELL community is finally recognized.

               The one breakout session that I attended was titled “Getting Started with the SIOP Model”. Dr. Deborah Short was the speaker again for this session. During this session, I learned about what the SIOP model was all about and how it can really help when teaching ELL students content and vocabulary within the classroom. Even though I do not plan on becoming an ELL teacher, the techniques that I learned by listening to this session, will be useful in my future English class. Some of the techniques include having content and language objectives, four corners vocabulary, word sorts, and many more. All of the techniques that Dr. Short presented were about combining language and content in lessons. I really liked this session because for my future English class, there is always going to vocabulary that the students will need to learn and by incorporating it into the lesson and the content, the students will have more opportunity to learn the words.

               I am glad that I attended this conference. It was a good first experience as I start my journey into the teaching community. I learned a lot of new techniques that I can use for teaching vocabulary and also content in the class. Even though the conference was about educating the English language learning students, I believe that all of the same techniques can be applied to the common classroom.