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ASB MS Humanities Book Club Unit Design - Feb 2025

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Achieve the Core

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Steps for Designing a Cold Read Assessment

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Steps for Designing a Cold Read Assessment

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Steps for Designing a Cold Read Assessment

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Teaching for Understanding: Ongoing Assessment (English)

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Teaching for Understanding: Ongoing Assessment (English)

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Teaching for Understanding: Ongoing Assessment (Castellano)

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Teaching for Understanding: Ongoing Assessment (Castellano)

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Teaching for Understanding: Ongoing Assessment (Castellano)

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ASBarcelona Knowledge Building Session - Feb 2025

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ASBarcelona Knowledge Building Session - Feb 2025 (1)

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Building Background Knowledge Through Reading: Rethinking Text Sets

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Building Background Knowledge Through Reading: Rethinking Text Sets

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Achieve the Core

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Cultural Relevant Pedagogy (Achieve the Core)

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Cultural Relevant Pedagogy (Achieve the Core)

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Text sets are intentionally grouped collections of texts and media resources focused on a specific topic, and are a research-based way to grow vocabulary and knowledge for all students. This collection of text sets intentionally elevates culturally relevant content and pedagogy. You might use a culturally relevant text set to fill a gap in relevance, perspectives or representation in your instructional materials, center student interests, or enhance an existing unit.

Each culturally relevant text set:

Centers on a single topic (e.g., women of the Montgomery Bus Boycott; the sun, moon, and stars)

Is designed to elevate connections to counternarratives, current events, student identities/languages, multiple perspectives and/or social justice

Contain a variety of open source resources (i.e., articles, videos, websites, art, music) at a variety of complexity levels

Purposely orders resources to support students in building vocabulary and knowledge through a volume of reading

In this resource, we wanted to amplify ways to focus on building knowledge and vocabulary through text sets that center culturally relevant pedagogy and students, particularly students who are often marginalized by schools. We focused on the question: How might we design text sets that elevate connections to counternarratives, current events, student identities/languages, multiple perspectives and/or social justice?

Our deepest appreciation to our educator co-designers for their collaboration, guidance, and brilliance: Ifetayo Abdus-Salam, Crystal Graham, Tanya Hill, Tawana Jordan, Tempest NeuCollins and Islah Tauheed.

We hope to expand on this set of prototypes and welcome your feedback on any of these resources by using the "Send Feedback" button at the bottom left hand side of the page.
Explore more:

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Creating Text Sets to Support Culturally Relevant Instruction

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Text sets are intentionally grouped collections of texts and media resources focused on a specific topic, and are a research-based way to grow vocabulary and knowledge for all students. This collection of text sets intentionally elevates culturally relevant content and pedagogy.

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Creating Literacy & Language Rich Classrooms: A Few Tips!

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Creating Literacy & Language Rich Classrooms: A Few Tips!

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Such a great account to follow for learning new words, etymology, and language!

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Welcome back to Instagram. Sign in to check out what your friends, family & interests have been capturing & sharing around the world.

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ASB MS Humanities Book Club Unit Design - Feb 2025 (1)

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G7 Cold Read HFBC Unit Assessment OR BOY Benchmark Assessment - DRAFT

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G6 Cold Read Unit 3 Assessment OR MOY Benchmark Assessment - DRAFT

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Great source for finding texts!

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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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What are Lexile Student Measures by Grade?A research study was conducted to describe Lexile ranges for each grade. Data for these national student norms came from a sample of over 3 million students across the United States and the Virgin Islands who were administered tests that reported Lexile measures from 2010 to 2019.

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Knowledge about the world fuels a child's reading comprehension and critical thinking. We share stories from schools that use "knowledge-building" curricula from the earliest grades to inspiring effect.

Introducing the Knowledge Matters Review Tool

A Guide for Evaluating K-8 ELA Curriculum

Developed by literacy experts, the Knowledge Matters Review Tool helps to determine if an ELA curriculum is truly "content-rich" and aligned to research on the role that background knowledge plays in reading comprehension.
Learn More

New study guide for our podcast, as it hits 100,000 downloads

Reading Comprehension Revisited, the inaugural season of our podcast, has achieved 100,000 downloads - and counting! With six short episodes (which are roughly 30 minutes each), it is perfect for professional learning. Host Natalie Wexler has developed a new companion study guide in response to numerous requests from educators.
Learn More

Knowledge is an essential pillar of the "Science of Reading"

Broad knowledge about the natural and human world is an essential ingredient in reading comprehension, as shown by long-standing research. A group of distinguished reading researchers calls on the growing movement for evidence-based reading instruction to elevate the role of background knowledge in reading success.
Read Their Statement

Every student deserves a knowledge-building literacy curriculum

To develop students' reading comprehension muscles from the earliest grades, leading schools use English language arts (ELA) curricula that are carefully designed to build background knowledge in science, history, literature, and the arts, alongside sound foundational skills instruction.

Introducing all young children to rich disciplinary content and vocabulary levels the playing field for learning. Knowledge is like an interest-bearing savings account: the more you know, the faster you learn. Therefore, growing knowledge about the natural and human world in the early grades is an essential equity investment, and it sets the stage for a lifetime of critical inquiry and analysis.
Explore Curricula

Follow our School Tour into classrooms

Our Knowledge Matters School Tour has traveled the country visiting schools that use knowledge-building curricula, and we have been inspired in each district!

Hear classroom stories in our collection of School Tour videos and feature articles.
Explore Videos and Articles

We collected helpful resources for understanding the importance of background knowledge to literacy and learning.
Explore Resources

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Knowledge about the world fuels a child's reading comprehension and critical thinking.

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Curriculum Directory - Knowledge Matters Campaign

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In our estimation, 10 English language arts curricula currently meet the criteria for knowledge-building detailed here.

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Common Core Standards Qualitative Features of Text Complexity Explained

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Common Core Standards Qualitative Features of Text Complexity Explained

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Common Core Qualitative Rubric- Literature

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Common Core Qualitative Rubric- Literature

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Achieve the Core

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Fishtank Learning helps teachers engage, challenge and inspire their students with free, high-quality K-12 math and ELA curriculum.

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Just Tell Them: The Power of Explanations and Explicit Teaching

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Just Tell Them: The Power of Explanations and Explicit Teaching [Groshell, Zach] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Just Tell Them: The Power of Explanations and Explicit Teaching

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G6-10 Knowledge Audit for ASBarcelona (February 2025)

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ASB MS Humanities Reading Assessment Plan 2025-2026