Teaching in the Vantage One Science Program: Sharing Our Curricular and Pedagogical Insights from Teaching English Language Learners

Event Date & Time

Event Description

This session will showcase how we, as faculty members, have adapted and improved our instructional approaches as a result of teaching in the Vantage One science program. This first-year experience program offers international students the opportunity to begin their studies at UBC and at the same time, complete an intensive Academic English Program. As such, our course sections are comprised entirely of English Language Learners (ELL) who come from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Over the past two years, we have worked individually and collaboratively to plan and deliver our curriculum and pedagogy to meet the academic and linguistic needs of our students.
We will begin the session with a brief overview of the Vantage One science program so that the participants understand the context within which we work. We will spend the majority of the session presenting mini case studies that highlight how we have developed, used, and assessed various curricular and pedagogical approaches (i.e. pre-class preparatory materials; in-class discussions; out-of-class homework) to improve the learning and experience of our students in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, and Science. We will also highlight how these approaches in the Vantage classroom have informed our teaching within non-Vantage science courses. Throughout the session, we will invite the audience to share their own successes and challenges with teaching and working in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms. We hope that each participant will leave the session with at least one strategy that they could use in their own classroom or work setting.
Facilitators:

Joss Ives, Instructor, Physics and Astronomy

Ashley Welsh, Postdoctoral Fellow, Vantage College

Meghan Allen, Instructor, Science & Vantage College

Fok-Shuen Leung, Senior Instructor, Science & Vantage College