Overview of the Span
T
he grades two to three span is a pivotal time for children as they build more sophisticated
comprehension and decoding skills and develop the fluency necessary to propel them
into more advanced reading, including independently reading chapter books. During this
span, children engage with wide-ranging, high quality,
increasingly complex text both as listeners^1 and readers,
and their teachers provide carefully designed instruction and
appropriate levels of scaffolding to support meaning making
with these texts. At the same time, children’s language
(especially academic language) continues to expand, and
they become more proficient at writing different types of
texts for a variety of purposes. They use digital tools to
produce and publish writing. They build knowledge through
content area instruction and through interactions with
literary and informational texts, including history/social
studies, science, and technical texts. They also engage in
wide reading and research projects, both which contribute
mightily to knowledge. They continue to gain skill in expressing themselves effectively as they
participate in collaborative discussions about texts and topics and provide formal presentations of their
knowledge to an audience.
Children who are English learners (ELs) participate fully in the ELA and other content area
curricula while they are also learning English as an additional language and developing as bilinguals.
(See chapters 2 and 9 of this ELA/ELD Framework.) They continue to develop their metalinguistic
awareness, learning new and nuanced ways of using English to convey ideas and messages that are
appropriate for the discipline, topic, purpose, and audience. They also build their understanding of
how vocabulary and other language resources are used to organize, expand and enrich, and connect
ideas in texts.
When they speak and write, EL second and third graders adopt some of the same ways of using
language they learn through their close reading of complex texts and their analysis of how language
works in these texts. Students produce an increasing variety of language in their writing, speaking,
and creating as they work to convey their understandings of the world, and they develop discourse
practices that enable them to participate in a range of
contexts, both social and academic. English learners
at grades two and three achieve awareness about how
language works and the ability to use language skillfully
and flexibly through a carefully designed instructional
program that immerses them in intellectually engaging and
meaningful content with appropriate levels of scaffolding.
It is important to note that, even as children are learning
English as an additional language, California values the
primary languages of its students and encourages continued
development of those languages. This is recognized by
the establishment of the State Seal of Biliteracy. (See the
introduction to this ELA/ELD Framework.) In addition, and
1 As noted throughout this framework, speaking and listening should be broadly interpreted. Speaking and listening should
include students who are deaf and hard of hearing using American Sign Language (ASL) as their primary language. Students
who are deaf and hard of hearing who do not use ASL as their primary language but use amplification, residual hearing,
listening and spoken language, cued speech and sign supported speech, access general education curriculum with varying
modes of communication.
The grades two to three span
is a pivotal time for children as
they build more sophisticated
comprehension and decoding
skills and develop the fluency
necessary to propel them
into more advanced reading,
including independently
reading chapter books.When they speak and write,
EL second and third graders
adopt some of the same ways
of using language they learn
through their close reading
of complex texts and their
analysis of how language
works in these texts.Grades 2 and 3 Chapter 4 | 285