ELLISA Project

English Language and Literacy Integration in Subject Areas

The English Language and Literacy Integration in Subject Areas (ELLISA) project is funded by the U.S. Department of Education Office of English Language Acquisition National Professional Development Program.

ELLISA addresses a critical challenge in education: the preparation of pre-service teachers to provide effective instruction to English learners (ELs) to support this vulnerable student populations’ acquisition of academic language, literacy and content knowledge. 

elementary scienceThe ELLISA project will develop a model of EL-focused elementary teacher preparation based on effective EL teaching practices that integrate the teaching of language and literacy into science, mathematics and social studies instruction and articulate this model across program components including subject matter teaching methods courses, student teaching supervision and mentoring by school district cooperating teachers by providing professional development to university subject matter methods instructors and teacher supervisors, and cooperating teachers from the partner school districts. In addition, the ELLISA project will develop pre-service teacher education and professional development materials to enable teacher education programs and school districts to implement the ELLISA model at their own sites.

The ELLISA consortium includes San Francisco State University (SFSU), San Jose State University (SJSU), UC Santa Cruz (UCSC), and two partner school districts – Alum Rock Union Elementary School District and Franklin-McKinley School District  (ARUSD and FMSD) both of which serve large populations of ELs.math lesson

The ELLISA project director and principal investigator is Dr. Trish Stoddart, professor of education at UCSC. The ELLISA project management team includes Dr. David Whitenack (SJSU), Dr. Marco Bravo (SFSU), Dr. Eduardo Mosqueda (UCSC), and Dr. Jorge Solis (UTSA). Click here for brief bios of selected team members. For more information about this project, please contact Dr. Stoddart at stoddart@ucsc.edu.

USCS SFSU SJSU