Center for Standards, Assessment, and Accountability

Grade Level: Middle School (6-8)

Common Core and ELLs: Planning Professional Development About Academic Language

This article is part of a series from Colorin Colorado! on planning professional development around the Common Core with English learners (ELs). Written for a district or school curriculum leader, an administrator, or a lead teacher, this article shares guidelines and examples on how to train teachers to include academic language into their lesson planning materials. […]

Common Core for ELLs: Classroom Videos

These classroom video modules showcase several approaches of Common Core-aligned instruction with English language learners (ELLs). The videos feature educators from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Poughkeepsie, New York, who worked in collaboration with Dr. Diane August to implement the new standards with their ELL students. The videos highlight specific Common Core standards being met, as […]

Determining How Much Background Knowledge to Provide for ELLs

The topics of this blog post, written by ELL and literacy expert Diane Fenner, relate to close reading, Common Core, background knowledge, and English language learners (ELLs). There has been considerable debate regarding how much background knowledge is appropriate for ELL students, and this post offers two tools for helping teachers determine how much background […]

Language Objectives: The Key to Effective Content Area Instruction for English Learners

From the website: “In this article written for Colorín Colorado, Jennifer Himmel of the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) provides an overview of how to use language objectives in content-area instruction for English learners. Her overview includes: what a language objective is steps that teachers can take to create language objectives how to implement language […]

Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century

From the publisher’s description: Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century describes this important set of key skills that increase deeper learning, college and career readiness, student-centered learning, and higher order thinking. These labels include both cognitive and non-cognitive skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, effective […]