Center for Standards, Assessment, and Accountability

Resource Type: Product or Tool

Colorado Assessment Review Tool

The Assessment Review Tool (ART) is intended for use in analyzing summative K-12 classroom assessments to determine their quality and efficacy, their suitability for use as student growth measures, and their alignment with the Colorado Academic Standards (CAS). With very minor modification the tool could be used to evaluate alignment to the Common Core State […]

Creating Text Dependent Questions for ELLs: Examples for 6th-8th Grade

This guidance document provides useful tips for constructing text-dependent questions (TDQs) for English language learners (ELLs). In this post from Colorin Colorado!, the authors created TDQs for a middle school informational text that is appropriate for ELLs. These TDQs are based on the authors’ previous work on adapting Achieve the Core’s TDQ guides and developing […]

Writing “Just Right” Research Questions: Strategies for ELLs

In this blog post, the author presents some instructional strategies to support English language learners (ELLs) at the middle school level as they work with an element of one of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) writing anchor standards, and concludes with some resources on writing for ELLs.

Common Core & ELLs: Lesson Plans

Colori­n Colorado has published three English language arts (ELA) units that are aligned to the Common Core State Standards and target English language learners’ (ELLs) literacy and language needs. These units for grades 1, 4, and 8 were developed by a group of teachers from Albuquerque, New Mexico, working in collaboration with the Albuquerque Teachers […]

Common Core Curriculum Rubric: Meeting the Needs of ELLs

The purpose of this rubric is to help teachers and school and district administrators assess whether a Common Core-based curriculum meets English language learner (ELL) needs. The rubric was initially developed to help the authors review a state’s ESL curriculum to see if it would help ELLs meet the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The […]

Burro’s Tortillas (1st Grade Unit)

This examplar first-grade unit contains 9 lessons and is based upon the picture book Burro’s Tortillas by Terri Fields, a Southwestern adaptation of The Little Red Hen. It includes a “realia” walk, interactive readings, and a cooperative paragraph.