Instruction for Diverse Groups of ELLs

The population of English Language Learners is enormously diverse. Teachers face the complex challenge of providing them with opportunities that allow them to attain the Common Core State Standards despite their various needs and abilities. The authors offer and discuss five principles of instruction for ELLs, which can be enacted within classrooms in ways that are responsive to individual students.

Material Type: Lecture, Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy

Author: Aida Walqui, Margaret Heritage

How Effective Were the Efforts of the Freedmen’s Bureau?

Students will analyze documents from the War Department’s Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands — better known as the Freedmen’s Bureau — that Congress established on March 3, 1865, as the Civil War was coming to an end. Using the scale in Weighing the Evidence, students will evaluate the effectiveness of the Freedmen’s Bureau in assisting formerly enslaved persons. Learning Objectives: Students will be able to identify and draw conclusions about the roles of the Freedmen’s Bureau (Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands), critically analyze primary sources, formulate opinions about the effectiveness of the Bureau, and back up their opinions verbally or in writing.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Diagram/Illustration, Interactive

Author: National Archives Education Team

Analyzing Word Problems Involving Multiplication

In this task, the students are not asked to find an answer, but are asked to analyze word problems and explain their thinking. In the process, they are faced with varying ways of thinking about multiplication.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Author: Illustrative Mathematics

Digital Storytelling: Through the Eyes of Others

This website on digital storytelling has been created as a resource for those who would like to pursue digital storytelling for educational, personal, or collaborative purposes. You will find links to a variety of resources that will help you get started.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Teaching/Learning Strategy

Author: Sindy Quigley and Cynthia Sistek-Chandler

Reading Like a Historian, Unit 4: Expansion/Slavery

Unit 4 primarily cover topics dealing with westward expansion during the nineteenth century. The exceptions are the lessons on Nat Turner and Irish immigration. These are included for chronological reasons, and to show students how historical trends can occur simultaneously. Both themes (slavery and immigration) are revisited in Units 5 and 6. This unit features several elaborate lesson structures: a Structured Academic Controversy (SAC) and and Inquiry. In the SAC on Lewis and Clark, students debate whether or not Lewis and Clark were respectful to the Native Americans they encountered on their journey, while the Inquiry asks students to investigate what motivated Texans to declare their independence. Several lessons, especially on Manifest Destiny and Indian Removal, ask students to consider the perspectives of historical actors whose world views may seem foreign or even incomprehensible.

Material Type: Lesson

Making It Visual for ELL Students: Teaching History Using "Maus"

Spark the engagement of English-language learners or reluctant readers with the graphic novel "Maus". The visual information provided by the genre serves as a support for reading and critical engagement.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Unit of Study

Author: Christian W. Chun, Martha Atwell

Twain: Tom Sawyer's Mythic Adventurer

Learn about the source for "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." Read, and analyze the novel, with attention to character and style.

Material Type: Lesson Plan, Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy

Authors: Jayne Karsten, Rebecca Haden

Rise and Fall of Jim Crow

That Jim Crow was a tremendously important period in United States history is undisputable. Less obvious is how to properly address the violence, politics, and complexities that mark the era. This site looks at the century of segregation following the Civil War (1863-1954). Jim Crow, a name taken from a popular 19th-century minstrel song, came to personify government-sanctioned racial oppression and segregation in the U.S. This website describes pivotal developments during that time дус the Emancipation Proclamation, the Compromise of 1877, the Brown v. Board of Education decision, and others.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Grade 4 ELA Module 3A

In this module, students engage in reading, writing, listening, and speaking to build knowledge of simple machines and how they impact force, effort, and work.

Material Type: Module

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

Common Core State Standards for ELA and Literacy

See an introduction to the new Common Core state standards including background on the design process, key features, and major differences.

Material Type: Lesson Plan, Teaching/Learning Strategy

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

Common Core State Standards: Middle School

This 14-minute video lesson for middle school educators introduces working with Common Core State Standards. How will teaching to the Common Core affect teaching practice in the classroom? See how Common Core has affected teaching and learning at two pilot schools where they have already been adapted. Does the dialogue in the pilot school math classroom sound like your classroom now? What has the culture shift been like for teachers and students? How will the shift in emphasis on non-fiction reading and expository and persuasive writing benefit students? Teachers and principals discuss the opportunities Common Core offers for their students and for their own focus and teaching practice.

Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy

Dan Meyer: Math class needs a makeover

Today's math curriculum is teaching students to expect -- and excel at -- paint-by-numbers classwork, robbing kids of a skill more important than solving problems: formulating them. In his talk, Dan Meyer shows classroom-tested math exercises that prompt students to stop and think. (Filmed at TEDxNYED.)

Material Type: Lecture

Author: Dan Meyer

$20 Dot Map

This problem helps students practice adding three numbers whose sum are 20 or less.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Author: Illustrative Mathematics

Feed That Dog

The CyberSquad solves the problem of giving equal parts of two apples to Cerberus, the three headed dog of Greek mythology, in this video from Cyberchase.

Material Type: Lecture

Authors: U.S. Department of Education, WNET

Common Core State Standards for Math

This 14-minute video introduces the key features and differences of the new Common Core State standards for math. It looks at the purpose of the standards for mathematical practice and how they should be integrated with content. It looks at how teaching fewer topics in each grade will change educator planning. And it discusses how the new standards can help close the achievement gap.

Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy

Common Core: Publishers' Criteria

Document Publishers’ Criteria for the CCSS in ELA/Literacy for Grades K-8 Provides criteria for publishers and curriculum developers as they work to ensure alignment of materials in grades K-8 with the Common Core State Standards in English language arts and literacy for history/social studies, science, and technical subjects. 9-pg PDF.

Material Type: Reading

3RC (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Compost)

In this lesson, students expand their understanding of solid waste management to include the idea of 3RC (reduce, reuse, recycle and compost). They will look at the effects of packaging decisions (reducing) and learn about engineering advancements in packaging materials and solid waste management. Also, they will observe biodegradation in a model landfill (composting).

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Authors: Amy Kolenbrander, Janet Yowell, Jessica Todd, Malinda Schaefer Zarske

Language Demands and Opportunities in Relation to Next Generation Science Standards for ELLs

This paper highlights challenges and opportunities as English Language Learners engage with the Next Generation Science Standards. These new standards represent a major shift in science instruction, toward an explicit focus on scientific sense-making, language use, and scientific practices. These practices also place significance on developing explanations and argumentation from evidence as well as on language learning opportunities. The authors discuss in detail how four core science and engineering practices provide opportunities for ELLs: Developing and using models. Developing explanations (for science) and designing solutions (for engineering). Engaging in argument from evidence. Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information.

Material Type: Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy

Author: Helen Quinn, Okhee Lee, Guadalupe Valdés