ELA/Literacy and ELD Vignettes
The ELA/literacy and ELD vignettes that follow illustrate how teachers might implement the
CA CCSS for ELA/Literacy and the CA ELD Standards using the framing questions and additional
considerations discussed in preceding sections. The vignettes are valuable resources for teachers
to consider as they collaboratively plan lessons, extend their professional learning, and refine their
practice. The examples in the vignettes are not intended to be prescriptive, nor are the instructional
approaches limited to the identified content areas. Rather, they are provided as tangible ideas that can
be used and adapted as needed in flexible ways in a variety of instructional contexts.
ELA/Literacy Vignette
Vignette 7.1 demonstrates how a teacher might implement the CA CCSS for ELA/Literacy and the
CA ELD Standards in tandem during ELA/literacy instruction (in which ELD is integrated into instruction
using the CA ELD Standards) in grade ten. Students consider the history and impact of European
colonization in Africa by reading and interacting with primary source material and the novel Things Fall
Apart by Chinua Achebe.
Vignette 7.1. Examining Diverse Perspectives in World Literature
Integrated ELA/Literacy, ELD, and World History in Grade TenBackground
This year at John Muir high school, the tenth-grade world literature teacher, Ms. Alemi,
and the tenth-grade world history teacher, Ms. Cruz, have decided to collaborate and align
their major units of instruction so that their students can see the connections between the
content taught in each discipline. For example, they have noticed that a number of the reading
selections and novels for the tenth-grade world literature class would support students’
understandings of the historical concepts and time periods addressed in Ms. Cruz’s world history
course. Before the school year begins, they meet to collaborate, to determine where their
curricula already intersect, and then begin planning interdisciplinary units that align content and
literacy in the two courses.
One of their tasks is to ensure that the novels, poems, short stories, and other texts that
students read in Ms. Alemi’s English class are related to and reinforce the ideas taught in Ms.
Cruz’s history class. They read the texts they will use in the interdisciplinary units ahead of
time, analyzing them for their themes and connections to one another, and assessing the texts’
linguistic and rhetorical challenges, particularly for their students who are learning English as
an additional language. About 30% of the students in their classes are ELs, and most are at the
late Expanding and early Bridging levels of English language proficiency. As the two teachers
begin implementing the units in their respective classrooms, they meet frequently after school
to reflect on successes and challenges and to make refinements based on their observations
and assessments of students’ conversations and writing tasks.
Ms. Alemi and Ms. Cruz want to help students understand that an author’s perspective is
socially, historically, and culturally positioned (e.g., Afrocentric versus Eurocentric perspectives).
They want students to critically analyze the messages they encounter in texts as they prepare
for college and careers and responsible and engaged citizenship. To this end, the teachers
employ and teach rhetorical strategies that will enable students to critique texts and to
understand how authors leverage literary devices, linguistic resources, and particular rhetorical
moves to present their ideas. Teachers also help students consider how writers tell their own
stories as they write or rewrite history through varied literary and informational genres.744 | Chapter 7 Grades 9 and 10