The California ELD Standards Companion, Grades 3-5. Jim Burke
time to be a teacher of ELLs in California! Understanding and teaching to the ELD Standards is one way to contribute to language equity. The California ELD Standards Companion should and can be used as a resource to assist educators in understanding the standards deeply so that they can better instruct and prepare ELLs around these more rigorous expectations. We recommend that teachers focus in and study the standards at their grade level, perhaps as a department or grade-level team. Then, they can use this resource to design their own lessons or units of study.
Preface
All too often, teachers who are trying to really make sense of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the California English Language Development Standards will find themselves on a Sunday night with standards documents spread out all over their kitchen tables. And these are no small documents! They leave no room for that cup of tea (or glass of wine) on the surface to accompany lesson planning time.
As educators, we know that scaffolding is meant to be a support, to be used to build understanding and mastery. Scaffolding both the ELA and ELD standards documents is our intent with this ELD Standards Companion series, so that teachers, coaches, and principals can go to one well-organized source for their needs. Over the years, we have heard these kinds of questions from teachers about the ELD Standards:
1 How do I know which ELA standards are correlated with a particular ELD Standard? The California ELD Standards document just cites numbers. Am I really working toward an ELA standard with my lesson?
2 What if I am trying to use the ELD Standards with other content areas, not just ELA? How do I know they will link to other content?
3 What are the important differences between the performance levels of an ELD Standard? What do these differences look like in teaching students at the three levels?
4 What do some of the terms mean in the Standards language? I don’t have time (or space) to add a dictionary to the stuff already on my table.
It is with these questions in mind that we developed the format for the California ELD Standards Companion series. With some adaptations to the Corwin Common Core Companion books (linked to ELA), we have laid out these resources in one convenient place for each ELD Standard within the grade span:
Charts with the correlated ELA standards in easy view, so no more digging across documents
Examples of the ELD Standards used with other content areas, in both the What the Teacher Does and the Snapshots and Vignettes sections
Definitions of terms used in the Standards, in kid-friendly language in the What the Student Does section, and in teacher terms with examples in the Academic Vocabulary section.
The three performance levels of the ELD Standard by grade level, with highlighting of the “build” between the Emerging, Expanding, and Bridging levels
It is our hope that this set of California ELD Standards Companion books, whether you are using the K–2, 3–5, 6–8, or 9–12 versions, will open up some space on your kitchen table and also clear up some space in your thinking to do successful lesson/unit planning for your ELL students. And maybe even for your cup of tea!
Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the Whittier College students who worked alongside of Dr. Soto on this project: Andrianna Negus and Hollie Harrington. You will both make fine teachers!
Publisher’s Acknowledgments
Corwin gratefully acknowledges the contributions of the following reviewers:
Rebecca Castro
Elementary Principal
La Merced Elementary School
Montebello, CA
Michele R. Dean, Ed.D.
University Field Placement Coordinator & Lecturer
California Lutheran University
Thousand Oaks, CA
Mathew Espinosa
Coordinator, Multilingual Literacy
Sacramento City Unified School District
Sacramento, CA
Dr. Kathe Gonsalves
Coordinator, Language & Literacy Department
San Joaquin County Office of Education
Stockton, CA
Overall Introduction
Becoming Familiar With the California English Language Development (ELD) Standards—Like No Other
Whether educators and parents are already familiar with English Language Arts (ELA) standards from California or the Common Core State Standards, or know about ELD standards from other organizations (e.g., Texas, New York, WIDA)—a first look at the California ELD Standards (November 2012) will come as a surprise. Anyone looking for the traditional categories of Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening will come away scratching his or her head and saying, “Where did they go? What are these things in place of the standards that I know?”
Because the CA ELD Standards form the basis of the content for our ELD Standards Companion, it is a good idea to take a brief look at the organization of these standards, revised in November 2012. Here are the distinctive features in the organization of the CA ELD Standards:
The ELD Standards are now organized into two main parts, each with three subcategories based on language function. The page following this introduction provides a summary of each of the main parts and subcategories. The traditional areas of Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking have been subsumed within areas of productive and receptive language, oral and written production, and comprehension.
But that doesn’t mean teachers can’t find how the ELD Standards are related to the ELA standards. On each page of ELD Standards, there is a left-hand column titled “Texts and Discourse in Context,” which lists the corresponding ELA standards for each ELD Standard.
There are now three proficiency levels—Emerging, Expanding, and Bridging—instead of the five from earlier standards documents. The reduction from five to three offers a broader “catchment area” for describing student performance within the level. The highest level, Bridging, has been aligned with the California and Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts.
But Wait . . . There’s More!
In addition to the ELD Standards themselves in grade spans K–12, the California ELD Standards document also contains several chapters related to the research and practice of teaching English Learners.
Chapter 4, “Theoretical Foundations and the Research Base of the California ELD Standards,” provides research evidence and theory that was used in the development of the CA ELD Standards. These underpinnings ensure that the ELD Standards are aligned with current language and content learning research, and also that they provide commensurate expectations with ELA standards and content standards in other disciplines.
Chapter 5, “Learning About How English Works,” provides a current base in supporting ELLs in understanding academic English and in using it proficiently.
Chapter 6, “Foundational Literacy Skills for English Learners,” offers key findings regarding foundational literacy skills instruction for ELLs.