ELA Guidelines

Multiple texts (including multimedia) serve to build background knowledge on crucial and engaging topics and disciplinary practices.

Materials support students in noticing and comprehending sentences that are either essential for understanding the reading or that represent challenging structures. Syntax development should be an explicit and regular focus in reading tasks, and that focus should occur in the context of collaboratively working with meaningful texts.

Reading tasks include a regular focus on vocabulary presented in the context of meaning-making, communicating and drawing inferences, not merely to acquire academic English. Materials draw student attention to high-value vocabulary words (often Tier II and Tier III vocabulary) essential to the text and likely to appear in future texts.

Tasks frequently focus on an author's use of language (e.g. tone, sentence formation, use of words) and literary devices (e.g. imagery, allusion, metaphor).

Materials feature purposeful illustrations chosen deliberately that direct students to examine illustrations, interpret them, and consider their purpose and relationship to the text.

Materials include a range of texts for comparison within a unit to elevate subtleties within each genre.

Student materials ensure that students have many opportunities to communicate ideas to others and to consistently reflect on and use strategies to improve their communication (meta-awareness strategies).

Materials provide models of strong writing annotated to draw attention to essential features of texts.

Models of strong writing build student understanding of purpose and audience of genre.

Student materials provide opportunities for students to analyze, reflect on, and improve their own writing (meta-awareness) using models, rubrics, and other reflection tools.