UC Berkeley PLI

To support PLI students in understanding issues of instruction in light of educational theory and new state and federal policies affecting instruction.
45 members | 40 affiliated resources

All resources in UC Berkeley PLI

Instruction for Diverse Groups of ELLs

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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?

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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

Reading Like a Historian, Unit 4: Expansion/Slavery

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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

Rise and Fall of Jim Crow

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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

Along the Trail of Tears

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A part of history is often forgot when teaching younger students. This is the relocation of the Cherokee Indians when the white settlers wanted their property. The US Government moved whole groups of Indians under harsh conditions. This trip became known as the Trail of Tears. Using this as a background students will explore and experiment with persuasive writing as they try to express the position of Cherokee leaders.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Author: Glenda Bullard

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

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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

Proportions and Ratios

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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

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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

Common Core State Standards for Math

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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

Dan Meyer: Math class needs a makeover

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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

Progressions Documents for the Common Core Math Standards

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The Common Core State Standards in mathematics were built on progressions: narrative documents describing the progression of a topic across a number of grade levels, informed both by research on children's cognitive development and by the logical structure of mathematics. These documents were spliced together and then sliced into grade level standards. From that point on the work focused on refining and revising the grade level standards. The early drafts of the progressions documents no longer correspond to the current state of the standards.

Material Type: Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy

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