English Language Development

Figure 7.1. Circles of Implementation of ELA/Literacy and ELD Instruction

Figure 7.2. Motivation and Engagement

Educators should keep issues of motivation and engagement at the forefront of their work to

assist students in achieving the CA CCSS for ELA/Literacy and the CA ELD Standards. The panel

report Improving Adolescent Literacy: Effective Classroom and Intervention Practices (Kamil, and

others 2008) makes clear the importance of addressing motivation and engagement throughout

the grades and recommends the following practices in classrooms with adolescents:

1. Establish meaningful and engaging content-learning goals around the essential ideas of a
   discipline as well as the specific learning processes students use to access those ideas.
   
   
   • Monitor students’ progress over time as they read for comprehension and develop more
     control over their thinking processes relevant to the discipline.
   
   
   • Provide explicit feedback to students about their progress.
   
   
   • Set learning goals. When students set their own goals, they are more apt to fully
     engage in the activities required to achieve them.
   
   
   
   


2. Provide a positive learning environment that promotes students’ autonomy in learning.
   
   
   • Allow students some choice of complementary books and types of reading and writing
     activities.
   
   
   • Empower students to make decisions about topic, forms of communication, and
     selections of materials.
   
   
   
   


3. Make literacy experiences more relevant to students’ interests, everyday life, or important
   current events (Guthrie, and others 1999).
   
   
   • Look for opportunities to bridge the activities outside and inside the classroom.
   
   
   • Find out what your students think is relevant and why, and then use that information to
     design instruction and learning opportunities that will be more relevant to students.
   
   
   • Consider constructing an integrated approach to instruction that ties a rich conceptual
     theme to a real-world application.
   
   
   
   

670 | Chapter 7 Grades 9 to 12