Realizing Opportunities for ELLs in the Common Core English Language Arts and Disciplinary Literacy Standards

This paper opens a larger conversation about what must be done to realize opportunities presented by the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts and the literacy standards in other subject areas. It emphasizes the simultaneous challenges and opportunities for ELLs.The paper emphasizes that texts are approached differently for different purposes. Students need opportunities to approach texts with these varied purposes in mind. It also highlights how ELLs may be well served by opportunities to explore and justify their own textual hypotheses, even if their initial interpretations diverge from those of the teacher.

Material Type: Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy

Author: George Bunch, Amanda Kibler, Susan Pimentel

Teacher Development Appropriate to Support ELLs

Even among educators who have been successful at educating ELLs under traditional supports and programs, the level of knowledge required to do the job successfully has increased. This paper considers more aggressive and creative capacity-building initiatives that strengthen and integrate the disciplinary teaching strategies with literacy and language development strategies. The authors discuss the value and implications of new partnerships, of structures for collaboration, and of time dedicated to engaging experts from different fields in the design and delivery of teacher preparation and professional development.

Material Type: Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy

Author: Maria Santo, Linda Darling-Hammond, Tina Cheuk

What Does Text Complexity Mean for English Learners and Language Minority Students?

This paper addresses the implications, for ELLs, of the new standard's requirement that students be able to read and understand complex, informationally dense texts. The authors discuss the types of supports that learners need in order to work with complex texts. They also provide a sample of what academic discourse involves, using an excerpt from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail. They demonstrate how English learners can be provided with strategies for accessing complex texts, such as closely examining one sentence at a time. The authors argue that instruction must go beyond vocabulary and should begin with an examination of our beliefs about language, literacy and learning.

Material Type: Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy

Authors: Charles j. Fillmore, Lily Wong Fillmore

Adding Tenths and Hundredths

This problem simply asks students to add the tenths and hundredths together.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Author: Illustrative Mathematics

Carnival Tickets

In this task, students can see that if the price level increases and peopleŐs incomes do not increase, they arenŐt able to purchase as many goods and services; in other words, their purchasing power decreases.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Author: Illustrative Mathematics

Multiple Representations of Numeric Patterning

This lesson is a re-engagement lesson designed for learners to revisit a problem-solving task they have already experienced. Students will activate prior knowledge of graphical representations through the 'what's my rule' number talk; compare and contrast two different learners' interpretations of the growing pattern; use multiple representations to demonstrate how one of these learners would represent the numeric pattern; make connections between the different representations to more critically compare the two interpretations. (5th/6th Grade Math)

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lecture, Lesson Plan, Teaching/Learning Strategy

Author: Dickinson, Fran

Proportions and Ratios

This lesson is about ratios and proportions using candy boxes as well as a recipe for making candy as situations to be considered. It addresses many Mathematical Reasoning standards and asks students to: Use models to understand fractions and to solve ratio problems; think about a ratio as part/part model and to think about the pattern growing in equal groups or a unit composed of the sum of the parts; find a scale factor and apply it to a ratio. (5th Grade Math)

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lecture, Lesson Plan, Teaching/Learning Strategy

Author: Lewis-Wolfsen, Hillary

Jon and Charlie's Run

The purpose of this task is to present students with a context where they need to explain why two simple fractions are equivalent.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Author: Illustrative Mathematics

Locating Fractions Less than One on the Number Line

In this number line task students must treat the interval from 0 to 1 as a whole, partition the whole into the appropriate number of equal sized parts, and then locate the fraction(s).

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Author: Illustrative Mathematics

Patterns in the Multiplication Table

The goal of this task is to look for structure and identify patterns and then try to find the mathematical explanation for this. This problem examines the ''checkerboard'' pattern of even and odd numbers in a single digit multiplication table.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Author: Illustrative Mathematics

Two Interpretations of Division

Both of the questions in this task are solved by the division problem 12Ö3 but what happens to the ribbon is different in each case.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Author: Illustrative Mathematics

Above and Below Sea Level

The purpose of this task is to help students interpret signed numbers in a context as a magnitude and a direction and to make sense of the absolute value of a signed number as its magnitude.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Author: Illustrative Mathematics

Bike Race

The purpose of this task is for students to interpret two distance-time graphs in terms of the context of a bicycle race. There are two major mathematical aspects to this: interpreting what a particular point on the graph means in terms of the context, and understanding that the "steepness" of the graph tells us something about how fast the bicyclists are moving.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Author: Illustrative Mathematics

Algebraic Equations, Inequalities, and Properties

This lesson is about trying to get students to make connections between ideas about equations, inequalities, and expressions. The lesson is designed to give students opportunities to use mathematical vocabulary for a purpose to describe, discuss, and work with these symbol strings.The idea is for students to start gathering global information by looking at the whole number string rather than thinking only about individual procedures or steps. Hopefully students will begin to see the symbol strings as mathematical objects with their own unique set of attributes. (7th Grade Math)

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lecture, Lesson Plan, Teaching/Learning Strategy

Author: Disston, Jacob

Area and Perimeter

This lesson is based on the results of a performance task in which we realized that students' understanding of area and perimeter was mostly procedural. Therefore the purpose of this re-engagement lesson was to address student misconceptions and deepen student understanding of area and perimeter. The standards addressed in this lesson involve finding perimeter and area of various shapes, finding the perimeter when given a fixed area, and using a formula in a practical context. Challenges for our students included decoding the language in the problem and proving their thinking. (7th Grade Math)

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lecture, Lesson Plan, Teaching/Learning Strategy

Author: Villarin, Antoinette

Comparing Linear Functions

The foundation of this lesson is constructing, communicating, and evaluating student-generated tables while making comparisons between three different financial plans. Students are given three different DVD rental plans and asked to analyze each one to see if they could determine when the 3 different DVD plans cost the same amount of money, if ever. (7th/8th Grade Math)

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lecture, Lesson Plan, Teaching/Learning Strategy

Author: Dimas, Cecilio

Estimating Length Using Scientific Notation

This lesson unit is intended to help teachers assess how well students are able to: estimate lengths of everyday objects; convert between decimal and scientific notation; and make comparisons of the size of numbers expressed in both decimal and scientific notation.

Material Type: Assessment, Lesson Plan

Estimations and Approximations: The Money Munchers

This lesson unit is intended to help you assess how well students are able to: Model a situation; make sensible, realistic assumptions and estimates; and use assumptions and estimates to create a chain of reasoning, in order to solve a practical problem.

Material Type: Assessment, Lesson Plan

Evaluating Statements About Length and Area

This lesson unit is intended to help teachers assess how well students can: Understand the concepts of length and area; use the concept of area in proving why two areas are or are not equal; and construct their own examples and counterexamples to help justify or refute conjectures.

Material Type: Assessment, Lesson Plan

Evaluating Statements About Probability

This lesson unit addresses common misconceptions relating to probability of simple and compound events. The lesson will help you assess how well students understand concepts of: Equally likely events; randomness; and sample sizes.

Material Type: Assessment, Lesson Plan