This chapter provides guidance for supporting all students’ achievement of the grades nine
through twelve CA CCSS for ELA/Literacy and, additionally for ELs, the CA ELD Standards. It begins
with a brief discussion of the importance of the integrated and interdisciplinary nature of the language
arts. It then highlights key themes in English language arts and in literacy across the disciplines,
including selected instructional practices; ways to support students strategically, including those
with disabilities or reading difficulties; and appropriate ELD instruction. Grade-level sections provide
additional guidance for grades nine–ten and eleven–twelve.
An Integrated and Interdisciplinary Approach
The CA CCSS for ELA/Literacy and the CA ELD Standards
recognize the role that complex skills in literacy and
language analysis and applications play across the curricula.
The language arts are used in all content areas to acquire
knowledge and inquiry skills (through reading, listening, and
viewing) as well as present knowledge in a variety of modes
(writing and speaking, incorporating multimedia). Although
presented separately in the CA CCSS for ELA/Literacy, the
strands of Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, and
Language are learned and used by students in an interrelated
fashion. This relationship is made even more visible by the
focus on literacy across the content areas in grades nine
through twelve. The inclusion of the reading and writing standards for history/social studies, science,
and technical subjects in grades six through twelve in the CA CCSS for ELA/Literacy underscores this
relationship.
Students deploy the language arts across content areas, further developing their skills in reading,
writing, speaking, listening, and language for a variety of purposes. More specifically, high school
students read to gain, modify, or extend knowledge and to learn multiple perspectives across content
areas, authors, genres, formats, cultures, and historical time periods. They write to express, refine,
and consolidate their understanding of new concepts, through argumentation, analysis, narration, and
summary, using structures and language appropriate to the topic and audience. To solve problems
and to answer questions generated by themselves or others, they conduct research projects. Students
engage with others in conversations to probe ideas, pose questions, investigate issues, consider
and integrate multiple perspectives, summarize, evaluate, and elaborate on what they have heard
or read, and present and synthesize arguments, ideas, and information. They develop projects and
presentations collaboratively and independently to express their ideas, interpretations, analyses,
evaluations, arguments, and experiences to others. While engaging in all these efforts, they acquire
vocabulary, linguistic structures, and written language conventions which they can apply to better
understand and use precise and nuanced language appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
As students approach the end of their elementary and
secondary education careers, the need to employ language
and literacy strategically and skillfully in all disciplines
becomes more pressing. To graduate from high school
prepared for college, careers, and civic life, students need
to develop the academic literacy skills expected by colleges
and universities, businesses, and the community at large.
These competencies, to which the CA CCSS for ELA/Literacy
are closely aligned, reflect “the intellectual and practical
dispositions of successful students” (Intersegmental
Committee of the Academic Senates [ICAS] 2002, 12) and
... high school students read
to gain, modify, or extend
knowledge and to learn
multiple perspectives across
content areas, authors,
genres, formats, cultures, and
historical time periods.
To graduate from high school
prepared for college, careers,
and civic life, students need to
develop the academic literacy
skills expected by colleges and
universities, businesses, and the
community at large.666 | Chapter 7 Grades 9 to 12