Area of Focus IV
Leveraging Students’ Assets
Specification 10A
Curricular texts include diverse perspectives and engaging topics, suggestions for culturally responsive teaching methods and learning activities that accommodate diverse students with a range of interests, abilities, experiences, and cultures.
related resources →Specification 10B
Teacher materials should guide educators on how to elicit and incorporate cultural knowledge and students’ interests into instructional writing activities.
related resources →Specification 10C
Oral language activities represent multilingualism throughout all oral language activities as an asset and as a resource for learning academic content, disciplinary skills, and English simultaneously. Students are explicitly encouraged to use their home language strategically for learning.
related resources →Specification 11A
Tasks and topics for oral language activities and text engagement should be authentic, relevant, and representative of different backgrounds, languages, interests, and life experiences.
related resources →Specification 12A
Materials present multilingualism as an asset in reading, and students are explicitly encouraged to develop home language literacy and to use their home language strategically for learning how to negotiate texts in the target language.
related resources →Specification 12B
Teacher materials should include instruction on how to garner information that will aid in learning, including the family’s preferred language of communication, schooling experiences in other languages, literacy abilities in other languages, and previous exposure to academic or everyday English.
related resources →Specification 13A
Materials contain scaffolds designed to foster student independence by providing support when needed and removed when the student can access disciplinary concepts or perform disciplinary skills independently.
related resources →Specification 13B
Student and teacher materials provide a broad repertoire of strategies for constructing meaning from disciplinary texts and discussions.
related resources →Specification 13C
Teacher materials and rubrics that emphasize the purpose of a writing task, and not the mode of writing (e.g. compare/contrast), should be given primary emphasis in the presentation of tasks.
related resources →Specification 13D
Writing tasks should encourage students to produce original text and guide them in doing so.
related resources →Specification 13E
Writing tasks avoid relying heavily on fill-in-the-blank writing templates and formulaic guidelines (e.g. write a 5 paragraph letter requesting x, y, z).
related resources →
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