Using Gagne’s 9 Events of Instruction in Lesson Planning for English Language Learners

The ever-increasing levels of English Language Learners (ELLs) in the modern classroom and the performance gap between these students and their mainstream peers make clear the need for improved educator training in second language acquisition strategies. The basic strategies and techniques of education remain sound, but require modification to allow them to meet the needs of our ELL students. To that end, the purpose of this project was to design an effective online professional development course for secondary educators to update their knowledge of Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction with additional strategies designed to support ELL students. Use Constructivist strategies, the course seeks to facilitate a gain participant knowledge by requiring hands-on tasks that simulate the use of appropriate ELL strategies in their own classrooms. The CASA model of online-learning (Menchaca 2014) was employed as the organizational basis of the individual course modules; content delivery followed by asynchronous responses, synchronous face-to-face sessions, and completed with an assessment. The course is hosted on and administered via the Canvas Learning Management System and consists of nine primary learning modules aligned to Gagne’s model utilizing Canvas-based quizzes, Prezi presentations, and Google Apps for Education documents and forms to promote and facilitate learning and retention.