Reading and writing activities are consistently paired with discussion to develop oral language skills and reinforce these reciprocal processes.

Materials include activities and tasks aimed at developing listening comprehension skills, such as prompting students to ask/answer questions, develop ideas, or create notes from information read aloud or presented orally.

Materials include speaking and writing tasks for a variety of audiences and purposes.

Materials ask students to deconstruct and practice using the language in proficient spoken and written disciplinary language samples (e.g., texts, podcasts, videos, etc.).

Materials offer repeated opportunities to develop, refine, and extend spoken and written language over time.

Materials explicitly model and teach the language features associated with high-leverage language functions (e.g., argue, explain, justify, etc.) needed to engage in disciplinary practices such as explanations, argumentation, narration, and analysis.

Language functions and features are mapped out, connected to grade-level content understandings, and spiraled across the curriculum.

Materials include language objectives that focus on the receptive and productive language that students need to engage with grade-level content/disciplinary learning.

Materials align lesson activities and formative assessments to the objectives and, ultimately, the summative assessment.

Materials teach grammar, vocabulary, and syntax in the context of meaning-making and grade-level texts, and not in isolation.

Materials teach students to use knowledge of roots, suffixes, prefixes, and context clues to derive the meaning of new words in texts.

Materials offer explicit teaching of conjunctions, transition words, and connectives that help organize written ideas and unlock the meaning of texts.

Materials explicitly teach vocabulary in the context of meaning-making, through multiple exposures, extended word study, and teaching shades of meaning. Students use vocabulary in sentences connected to the topic they are learning.

Materials regularly engage students in close readings of grade-level texts to support language analysis, fluency, and knowledge building.

Materials ask students to analyze mentor texts to better understand the language features and organization of specific genres and disciplines, and how to apply those to their own writing of grade-level, discipline-specific texts.

Materials provide opportunities for students to analyze sentences to practice developing sentence complexity and expanding their ideas in their own writing.