The National Less Commonly Languages Resource Center (NLRC) Learning Community is a professional development opportunity open to LCTL instructors from K-16 nationwide. The learning community will provide relevant accessible readings, hands-on activities, and opportunities for sustained pedagogical discussion. The learning community aims to work with a small group of LCTL instructors over the course of the academic year.
2025-2026 Learning Community – Book Club and Extra Sessions
This academic year, the NLRC professional learning community will join a reading group facilitated by ACTFL’s LCTL Special Interest Group (spearheaded by the Associate Executive Director of the NLRC).
NLRC Professional Learning Community participants will join the reading group sessions and then meet with NLRC facilitators on a few separate occasions to supplement those discussions and work on implementing suggestions and themes from the book. Here’s information about the first session of the reading group. Please sign up soon if you’re interested!
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The book club is focused on Designing Effective Language Learning Materials for Less Commonly Taught Languages, authored by Öner Özçelik and Amber Kennedy Kent.
The reading group will have a total of 4 sessions: October, December, February, and April. We also have invited the authors to a 5th session to do a live Q&A and presentation (date TBD).
The first reading group session will take place on:
- 🗓 Date: Thursday, October 16
- 🕓 Time: 4:00 PM Eastern Time (3pm Central, 2pm Mountain, 1pm Pacific)
- 📍 Location: Online via Zoom
- 🔗 Registration Link
During this session, the reading group will discuss the Preface, Introduction, and Chapters 1–2, focusing on needs assessment and learner/contextual analysis in LCTL materials development.
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If you’re interested in the extra NLRC sessions, please contact us and we’ll make sure you’re on the list for the supplementary sessions!
Previous NLRC Learning Communities
2024-2025 Learning Community – Project-Based Learning
Last year’s Learning Community focused on project-based learning. Project-based language learning immerses language learners in real-life issues (i.e., responding to a challenging problem or question) and practical language application, achieved through creating meaningful projects that serve genuine purposes and sharing their products with an audience beyond the classroom context. The Learning Community provided a way for LCTL instructors to expand their teaching methods repertoire and explore with peers how small- or large-scale projects, infused or not with technology, could help integrate culture, content, and language, as well as advance their students to the next proficiency level.
Participants had the opportunity to:
- Learn how to design projects that engaged students and helped develop their language and life skills at the same time
- Create and scaffold appropriate and authentic materials with a student-centered approach
- Brainstorm with fellow LCTL instructors and Learning Community facilitators, and share ideas and stories to build off each other
2023-2024 Learning Community – Designing Proficiency-Based Assessments for Your LCTL Classroom
This year, the learning community will focus on assessment. Starting from proficiency-based language objectives or can-do statements, the learning community will develop task-based, proficiency-based formative and summative assessments that fit your course or program. Participants will (1) identify relevant language proficiency objectives and/or end-of-course target tasks based on the ACTFL Proficiency guidelines and (2) create performance-based assessments to evaluate students’ progress during and at the end of the course. Throughout the course of the Academic Year 2023-2024, participants will design engaging and motivating assessment tasks or classroom activities that help students master corresponding language objectives (summative assessment) and gauge their progress towards those objectives (formative assessments).
Participants will collaborate and provide feedback on each other’s ideas and work. Participants will be encouraged to pilot their assessments in the classroom and reflect on the success of their assessments. Finally, participants will also receive guidance and feedback from the experienced learning community facilitators. By the end of the learning community, each participant will have fully developed assessment tasks or activities that meet and assess relevant proficiency learning objectives in a principled fashion.
During this learning community, participants will:
- Become familiar with foundational principles of assessment for LCTLs, including proficiency-based language teaching and performance-based assessments
- Identify the most relevant proficiency-based language learning objectives or target tasks for their course or program
- Explore diverse types of assessment (self- and peer-assessment) and how they contribute to strong assessment practices
- Design strong performance-based assessments with corresponding rubrics
- Explore how technology can enhance assessment practices
- Learn about accessibility and inclusion issues in assessment
- Participate in feedback/review of assessments created by other participants using rubrics
- Pilot the use of the assessments in their classroom, reflect on the success of the assessments, share their experiences with the group and discuss ways of improving the assessments further
The facilitators aim to work with a small group of LCTL instructors over the course of 8 meetings during the 2023-2024 academic year, with meetings planned once a month from October through May. The group of committed participants will meet virtually via Zoom. We will make use of various online learning tools to foster a lively and principled exchange of ideas.
Spring 2023 Learning Community – Designing Proficiency-Based Instructional Materials for Your Classroom
The inaugural Learning Community ran from January until May 2023. The group of committed participants met virtually in Google Classroom and made use of all its features fostering a lively and principled exchange of ideas. The NLRC’s first learning community focused on the design of proficiency-based language teaching materials for the classroom. The learning community adopted a task-based, proficiency-oriented view of language instruction and followed a reverse/backwards design approach.
Participants:
(1) identified relevant language proficiency objectives based on the ACTFL Proficiency guidelines,
(2) created performance-based assessments to evaluate students’ progress, and
(3) designed engaging and motivating tasks or lesson activities that help students master corresponding language objectives.
Participants collaborated and provided feedback on each other’s ideas and work. Participants were encouraged to pilot their materials in the classroom and reflect on the success of their instructional materials. Finally, participants also received guidance and feedback from the experienced learning community facilitators.
At the end of the learning community, participants had a fully developed sequence of meaningful tasks or activities that meet and assess relevant proficiency learning objectives in a rigorous and principled fashion. Certificates of participation were handed out on request.
If you are interested in future professional development opportunity, please let us know by filling out our Learning Community sign-up form (linked below)!