Units include pair or group conversation activities that help students hear and imitate more fluent others as they build their abilities to develop and challenge ideas using evidence-based reasoning, allowing them to engage with ideas and ELA practices before writing extensively about them.

Teacher materials provide guidance on how to engage students in productive and sustained academic discussions in which students negotiate meaning (ask and answer questions) and co-construct knowledge about grade-level texts and content.

Teacher materials include instruction on grouping strategies that encourage students to leverage their oral language resources in order to engage with complex disciplinary ideas and practices and to support each other in developing disciplinary language in English.

Writing activities are centered on specific shared texts so all students have shared content for orally communicating about disciplinary content, negotiating meaning collaboratively, gathering evidence from those texts, and other learning activities.

Teacher materials include explicit guidance for grouping of students for productive discussions about complex texts.

Teacher materials include guidance for oral language activities that provide opportunities for students to enter texts at different proficiency points, such as eliciting background knowledge, or discussing topics related to the text.