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See what the test is like for students! Make note of the language needed to be be successful. Can choose desired grade-level cluster and domain. Also a great tool to have students practice and prepare for WIDA!

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Produced by the Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, and the Department of Justice, this document outlines legal obligations for ELs.

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The English Learner Tool Kit (now updated to align with ESSA) helps state and local education agencies help English Learners (ELs) by fulfilling these obligations. The Toolkit has 10 chapters (one for each section of the DCL), and contains an overview, sample tools, and resources.

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The Newcomer Toolkit is designed to help U.S. educators; elementary and secondary teachers, principals, and other school staff who work directly with immigrant students—including asylees and refugees—and their families.

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This guidance document explores how to serve and support Oklahoma's Newcomers, including legal obligations, programming options, instructional strategies, recommendations for family engagement, and suggested professional development.

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OSDE-created guidance document discussing the legal responsibilities involved in serving ELs as well as instructional and administrative best practices regarding EL-specific supports and services.

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Guidance document summarizing Oklahoma's English Learner identification and placement process.

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Hundreds of scientific articles. Written for kids. Approved by scientists.

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It's time to improve literacy skills during social studies instruction and ensure that readers of all abilities have what they need to access grade-level social studies concepts.

Join us on Thursday, December 7 for a look at scaffolded materials that provide extra literacy support while building key social studies concepts and skills.

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Newsela | Content and assessment platform

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Content Aligned To National & State Standard, Flexible To Support Relevant Curriculum. Find the Perfect Piece Of Content For Lessons. Go beyond the book.

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For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Click here for instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your web browser.

World-class content

Access thousands of reading lessons and our comprehensive ELA curriculum, CommonLit 360.

Accessible for all learners

Tailor instruction to students' needs with text-to-speech, translation, and digital note-taking.

Actionable data

Track students' reading performance, set goals, and plan instructional next steps.

CommonLit
Digital Library

Discover thousands of free, supplemental lessons and quizzes in English and Spanish - all featuring great authors.

CommonLit
Assessment Series

Measure growth in reading comprehension with three benchmark assessments when you unlock our premium packages.

CommonLit 360 &
Professional Development

Support a successful rollout of our research-backed ELA curriculum with personalized webinars and on-demand trainings.

"

CommonLit has made a tremendously positive impact on my teaching practice. I'm very proud to teach CommonLit!

Jennifer Lane ELA Teacher

"

CommonLit definitely keeps me organized. It's easy for me to grade and it's easy for me to see students' reading growth increase throughout the year.

"

The CommonLit assessment questions are aligned to our ELA standards, which is extremely helpful when prepping for the state exam.

Teachers trust CommonLit to foster students' reading comprehension

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CommonLit | Free Online Reading Passages and Literacy Resources

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CommonLit is a comprehensive literacy program with thousands of reading lessons, full-year ELA curriculum, benchmark assessments, and standards-based data for teachers.

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ReadWorks | Award-Winning, EdTech Nonprofit Organization

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ReadWorks is an edtech nonprofit organization that is committed to helping to solve America’s reading comprehension crisis.

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Tools for simplifying/adapting text: Text Rewriter, Text Leveler, Text Scaffolder, Academic Content, Informational Texts, Text Summarizer

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MagicSchool.ai - AI for teachers - lesson planning and more!

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Join over a million teachers saving hours of time using the #1 AI Platform for Education, MagicSchool, to help lesson plan, differentiate, write assessments, write IEPs, communicate clearly, and more!

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Vocabulary for the Common Core

A teacher can facilitate effective vocabulary discussions in several ways.

For instance, he or she can use response techniques that let all students know there is a possibility that they will be called on. Stahl and Charles Clark (1987) investigated the effects of discussion on vocabulary learning and found that students who anticipated being called on learned as much as students who were actually called on. Students who didn't expect to be called on learned less. In other words, students don't necessarily need to talk during a vocabulary discussion to learn. They just need to anticipate being asked to talk. (p. 34).

Academic games are an extremely effective (but typically underutilized) way to help students engage with academic content. Thomas Malone (1981a, 1981b) described three characteristics of effective games as:

1. Games should present challenges that are appropriate and manageable for students.,/li>

2. Games should arouse students' curiosity.

3. Games should prompt students to imagine different circumstances and situations. (p. 36).

Description and explanation of a term must be accompanied by examples, such as the following:

Experiences (field trips or guest speakers)

Stories (personal experiences with the term)

Images (videos, descriptions of mental pictures, or drawings)

Drama (skits or pantomimes)

These techniques involve both linguistic and nonlinguistic ways of interacting with a term. Depending on the amount of time a teacher has, each of these types of examples can be extensive or brief (p. 18).

Direct vocabulary instruction can be implemented using a research-based six-step process.

The six steps of the vocabulary instruction process are:

1. Provide a description, explanation, or example of the new term.

2. Ask students to restate the description, explanation, or example in their own words.

3. Ask students to construct a picture, symbol, or graphic representing the term or phrase.

4. Engage students in activities that help them add to their knowledge of the terms in their vocabulary notebooks.

5. Periodically ask students to discuss the terms with one another.

6. Involve students in games that allow them to play with terms.

The six-step process can be used with students of all ages and works equally well in self-contained classrooms (usually at the elementary level where one teacher teaches every subject) or in content-specific classes (as are usually used at the middle and high school levels). Teachers can devote as much or as little time to each step as they have available (p. 14).

Academic games are an extremely effective way to help students engage with and practice new vocabulary terms.

For all practical purposes, the number of potential vocabulary games is infinite. Some games, such as word walls-in which students are encouraged to look and listen for new words and add them to a classroom poster-are ongoing throughout the course of a year. Other games are confined to smaller periods of time. Vocabulary games are engaging and give students opportunities to extend their knowledge about specific vocabulary terms. Each game should be followed by an opportunity for students to return to their vocabulary notebooks to record new knowledge and information about various terms (pp. 36-40).

There are many simple activities that help students add to their knowledge of vocabulary terms.

For example, a teacher might ask students to say or write any words they think of when they hear a target word. When used orally, this is an excellent activity for small intervals of time, such as when students are waiting in line to go to lunch or recess or during the last minutes before it is time for students to change classes. Students can complete this activity as a class, in small groups, in pairs, or individually. The teacher should allow students to brainstorm related words for a specific period of time and then ask students to stop. If students have been saying words aloud, the last person to say a word then briefly explains how that word is related to the target word. If students have been writing individual lists of words, students could trade lists and ask their partners to explain any words that are unfamiliar or don't make sense (p. 24).

Students' vocabulary knowledge is directly linked to their success in school.

Not only is vocabulary an important part of reading comprehension, but knowing what words mean also allows students to make connections between previously learned information (background knowledge) and new information. Studies have shown that students with greater background knowledge about a topic learn more, remember more, and are more interested in what they are learning (p. 5).

Using dictionary definitions to teach vocabulary is usually ineffective.

Dictionary definitions are not necessarily designed to give the clearest explanation for a word; in fact, they are designed to save space. Alternatively, descriptions rather than definitions can be used to explain and exemplify words by illustrating the word in sentences or explaining it in contexts in which it is commonly used. This helps students gain a clearer understanding of the word and how it is generally used (pp. 15-16).

A good way to augment students' vocabulary knowledge is to have them examine similarities and differences between words or concepts.

Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock (2001) identified four strategies that students can use to identify similarities and differences: (1) Comparing and contrasting allows students to identify attributes that are the same or different between concepts. (2) Classifying involves grouping concepts into categories based on their attributes. (3) Creating metaphors asks students to find connections between ideas that do not seem connected at a surface level. (4) Creating analogies involves describing the relationship between a pair of items or concepts by comparing the pair to another pair (p. 24).

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For instance, he or she can use response techniques that let all students know there is a possibility that they will be called on. Stahl and Charles Clark (1987) investigated the effects of discussion on vocabulary learning and found that students who anticipated being called on learned as much as students who were actually called on.

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Oklahoma State Department of Education (265)

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The School Report Card allows the opportunity for sites to take a pause and think about the story of their school. What is the story of the site? What are the "spotlights" within the data? What are the identified areas of improvement? What is the plan to address those areas? The considerations and linked resources in this document will help sites to address these questions.
The ELPA Indicator Explained
Ahead of the release of the Oklahoma School Report Cards, the Office of English Language Proficiency would like to provide the Slide Deck to reacquaint LEAs with:

The ELPA Indicator

Automatic exit scores and ELP band exits

How an anticipated year to exit a Language Instruction Educational Program (LIEP) is determined

How an English Learner's annual growth target is determined

How the ELPA Indicator is calculated

English Learner Data ToolKit 11/6/23
This document explains how to access and understand the data in the English Learners tab in the Accountability Reporting application, including how to analyze the data, export and strategically use the data to better serve and support English Learners and provide necessary interventions.

English Language Proficiency Assessment (ELPA) Progress Module
Module detailing information of ELPA indicator, what it measures, how points are determined, how letter grades are determined for this indicator and available resources.

English Language Proficiency Assessment (ELPA) Progress Spotlight Document
OSDE guidance document describing the ELPA Indicator, what it measures and frequently asked questions.

ACCESS for ELLs Scale Score to Grade Level Proficiency
OSDE guidance document correlating the ACCESS for ELLs 4.8 Composite/Overall scores with the equivalent Lowest Obtainable Scale Scores (LOSS) for all grades and domains.

WIDA Scale Score to Proficiency Levels
WIDA guidance document detailing the Lowest Obtainable Scale Scores (LOSS) across all performance levels and grades

Recently Arrived English Learner (RAEL) Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs for RAEL students

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The School Report Card allows the opportunity for sites to take a pause and think about the story of their school. What is the story of the site? What are the "spotlights" within the data? What are the identified areas of improvement? What is the plan to address those areas?

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There are many local and online resources related to supporting ELs. Try joining these Facebook Groups:

Advocating for MLs

Leading ELLs

Oklahoma also has local conferences and professional associations for working with ELs. Keep an eye out for:

OABE (Oklahoma Association for Bilingual Education) - find them on Facebook!

University of Central Oklahoma Multicultural Education Institute (MEI)

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OSDE has FREE online professional learning courses for working with EL.

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View Course: Integrating Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking into Lessons

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WIDA has online professional learning courses. Contact your EL Coordinator for an account in order to access.

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ELLevation Education is another great company that has free Webinars available. They also have many content-specific resources!

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Ellevation: EL Program Management Tools for K-12

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Districts that Ellevation works with see impact in the classroom every day. Explore our partners’ stories and how they use Ellevation to support their English Learners.

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Seidlitz is one of our favorites! They also have links to many of their webinars on their website.

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giving kids the gift of academic language

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This link will automatically create your own copy of the session's digital packet, and add it to your Drive.

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Working with English Learners (ELs) - Digital Packet