With the rigorous content of College and Career Readiness standards, academic language use has moved to the forefront of educational priorities. School leaders and teachers must ensure that academic language becomes the focus of new curricula, instruction, and assessment, with special attention to linguistically and culturally diverse students. Margo Gottlieb and Gisela Ernst-Slavit's six-book series on academic language is already the definitive resource on the topic. This companion volume provides a concise, thorough overview of the key research concepts and effective practices that underlie the series. It includes, Definitions and examples of the dimensions of academic language, A step-by-step template to incorporate academic language use into plans for student learning, Graphic models that illustrate the construct of academic language and its classroom application, Language is the most fundamental building block of education. Be sure your school is as strong as it can be with this indispensable book.

Help your students unlock important mathematical concepts If youve ever watched a student struggle with learning math concepts, you know that academic English can sometimes create stumbling blocks to understanding. To grasp complicated concepts, build skills, and demonstrate achievement, students need to master academic language in math. But how do you teach academic language when youre so busy teaching math? With this guide, youll build a curricular framework that integrates language and cultural supports with math content during lesson planning, implementation, and reflection. Youll learn to Understand the role of language within the math principles of the Common Core Identify potential obstacles to understanding Incorporate academic language into standards-referenced unit targets and lesson objectives Collaborate with ELL specialists to help students access the curriculum Each grade-specific chapter models the types of interactions and learning experiences that help students master both math content and academic language. This essential book shows you why mastery of academic language is the key to students academic success.

This title offers guidance to educators in how to target academic language in planning for student learning as states undergo the implementation of the Common Core and corresponding English language proficiency standards in preparation for the upcoming consortia-led assessments.

With its user-friendly question and answer format, Teaching Health Education in Language Diverse Classrooms guides prospective and current health education teachers in elementary and secondary school settings in designing, implementing, assessing, and evaluating active, achievement focused activities for diverse learners. The activities in this text are designed to increase all student learning, achievement, and success in the learner diverse regular education classroom. Each chapter provides best practices and models for replication and suggestions for instructional success. The variety of instructional strategies in Teaching Health Education in Language Diverse Classrooms helps facilitate the student’s development in critical thinking, problem solving, and performance skills.

“Of the over one hundred new publications on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), this one truly stands out! In the second edition of Building Academic Language, Jeff Zwiers presents a much-needed, comprehensive roadmap to cultivating academic language development across all disciplines, this time placing the rigor and challenges of the CCSS front and center. A must-have resource!” —Andrea Honigsfeld, EdD, Molloy College “Language is critical to the development of content learning as students delve more deeply into specific disciplines. When students possess strong academic language, they are better able to critically analyze and synthesize complex ideas and abstract concepts. In this second edition of Building Academic Language, Jeff Zwiers successfully builds the connections between the Common Core State Standards and academic language. This is the ‘go to’ resource for content teachers as they transition to the expectations for college and career readiness.” —Katherine S. McKnight, PhD, National Louis University With the adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) by most of the United States, students need help developing their understanding and use of language within the academic context. This is crucially important throughout middle school and high school, as the subjects discussed and concepts taught require a firm grasp of language in order to understand the greater complexity of the subject matter. Building Academic Language shows teachers what they can do to help their students grasp language principles and develop the language skills they’ll need to reach their highest levels of academic achievement. The Second Edition of Building Academic Language includes new strategies for addressing specific Common Core standards and also provides answers to the most important questions across various content areas, including: What is academic language and how does it differ by content area? How can language-building activities support content understanding for students? How can teachers assist students in using language more effectively, especially in the academic context? How can academic language usage be modeled routinely in the classroom? How can lesson planning and assessment support academic language development? An essential resource for teaching all students, this book explains what every teacher needs to know about language for supporting reading, writing, and academic learning.

Conversing with others has given insights to different perspectives, helped build ideas, and solve problems. Academic conversations push students to think and learn in lasting ways. Academic conversations are back-and-forth dialogues in which students focus on a topic and explore it by building, challenging, and negotiating relevant ideas. In Academic Conversations: Classroom Talk that Fosters Critical Thinking and Content Understandings authors Jeff Zwiers and Marie Crawford address the challenges teachers face when trying to bring thoughtful, respectful, and focused conversations into the classroom. They identify five core communications skills needed to help students hold productive academic conversation across content areas: Elaborating and Clarifying Supporting Ideas with Evidence Building On and/or Challenging Ideas Paraphrasing Synthesizing This book shows teachers how to weave the cultivation of academic conversation skills and conversations into current teaching approaches. More specifically, it describes how to use conversations to build the following: Academic vocabulary and grammar Critical thinking skills such as persuasion, interpretation, consideration of multiple perspectives, evaluation, and application Literacy skills such as questioning, predicting, connecting to prior knowledge, and summarizing An academic classroom environment brimming with respect for others' ideas, equity of voice, engagement, and mutual support The ideas in this book stem from many hours of classroom practice, research, and video analysis across grade levels and content areas. Readers will find numerous practical activities for working on each conversation skill, crafting conversation-worthy tasks, and using conversations to teach and assess. Academic Conversations offers an in-depth approach to helping students develop into the future parents, teachers, and leaders who will collaborate to build a better world.

The achievement gap is a language gap—and you can bridge it! As teachers, we take the language of school—academic language—for granted. But for many of our students, academic language is more than a new language. It is the "make or break" skill for school success. This exciting and much-needed book shows how teachers can help students become fluent, confident speakers of academic language. Debbie Zacarian shares a step-by-step, research-based approach to scaffolding K-12 instruction for students who do not have the language and literacy skills that are needed in school. Readers will find Practical teaching strategies based on the four key facets of academic language fluency Richly detailed case studies about students’ experiences with academic language across the content areas Guidance on family involvement Thought-provoking study questions, along with performance assessment tools An ideal resource for school- and district-wide Common Core initiatives, this book provides teachers with the foundation and tools to ensure an equitable education for all students. "This book engages teachers in active reflection on the nature of academic language and how it is used in different content areas across the curriculum. It represents an extremely useful tool for school communities to promote academic learning for all students." —Jim Cummins, Professor OISE/University of Toronto "Mastering Academic Language provides a practical look at the sociocultural foundations of academic language, relevant classroom and student examples, and a helpful framework for organizing and enacting the complex processes of developing language across a variety of contexts." —Jeff Zwiers, Researcher Stanford University, CERAS 527