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Explore guides, research papers, policy briefs, and tools to aid decisions on standards and assessments.
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. Academic language, as the article points out, plays a significant role in the Common Core standards. More importantly, academic language is important in developing content-area knowledge in students, especially ELs.
This is a very practical article written for a curriculum leader for professional development purposes, although teachers may also find it helpful for ideas on how to include academic language supports in their lessons and student materials. The table provided in the article seems especially useful in illustrating how to incorporate language domains (e.g., listening, speaking, reading, and writing), Common Core standards, classroom task, and the academic language needed for EL students to accomplish the task and standard during a lesson. This article is brief, but it includes many links to related articles in the Colorin Colorado website, as well as outside resources.