Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages

New York’s classrooms are some of the most culturally and linguistically diverse in the country. Our TESOL certificate program prepares NYS-certified teachers to provide responsive, comprehensive education to students of every background. 

What You’ll Learn

The 15-credit program includes five courses—each with carefully designed fieldwork experiences—that emphasize both academic content learning and English fluency for English Language Learners.

With advanced certification, not only will you be able to more effectively and compassionately serve diverse student populations, you’ll increase your value as an educator and improve your career prospects.

Paola Higuera is a NYC public elementary school teacher. She always wanted to be an ELL teacher and “is excited to be taking courses at Touro in the TESOL Certificate program. I was once an ELL student myself and look forward to providing ELL services to the future generations.”

Differentiated Instructional Activity Assignment
The differentiated instruction definition refers to an approach to education whereby teachers make changes to the curriculum and the way they teach to maximize the learning of every student in the class (IRIS Center, 2021). This is not a singular strategy but a framework that educators can utilize. Carol Ann Tomlinson also notes that in differentiated instruction, the teacher anticipates the varying levels of students’ interests, readiness, and learning profiles. Subsequently, they can provide diverse ways of learning, enabling students to learn without being anxious because academic tasks are too difficult for them or being unmotivated because assignments are not challenging for them (ASCD, 2011). However, differentiated instruction is not the same as individualized instruction.

For your Differentiated Instructional Activity Assignment, you will use one of your content lesson plans you have already taught and make modifications to the following segments:

practice (how teachers deliver instruction to students),
process (how the lesson is designed for students),
products (the kinds of work products students will be asked to complete),
content (the specific readings, research, or materials, students will study),
assessment (how teachers measure what students have learned), and
grouping (how students are arranged in the classroom or paired up with other students).

In the differentiated lesson, students will play equivalent fraction four in a row, equivalent fraction bingo and concentration equivalent fractions. Using games in the classroom increases student engagement, participation and motivation.

Paola Higuera, Touro University TESOL

Video demonstration Paola Higuera, Touro University TESOL