In the EL Education model, school leaders support teachers to use curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices that meet high standards for student achievement, including required district and/or state frameworks. School leaders engage teachers in a collaborative process for curriculum mapping that identifies assessments associated with standards-based learning targets. School leaders allocate the resources teachers need to provide the materials, accommodations, interventions, and extensions that ensure all students can and do access the curriculum. After putting adequate plans and resources in place, school leaders carefully and consistently monitor implementation of agreed-upon curriculum, instruction, and assessment through frequent classroom visits and feedback to teachers. Supervision and evaluation structures are designed to support teacher growth and learning while also maintaining high expectations for follow-through and instructional effectiveness.

The EL Education model prepares all students for college and career success by providing a college-bound curriculum with high expectations for all students, fostering a schoolwide college- and career-bound culture, and setting up structures that allow time for the post-graduation search and application process.

In the EL Education model, leaders and teachers recognize that they must prepare students for global citizenship in an increasingly complicated and interconnected world and that multilingualism is a key tool and a vital global skill that deepens understanding of other countries and cultures. Curricula that prepare students for global citizenship are cross-disciplinary and include developing knowledge of diverse cultures, languages, and political systems, as well as knowledge of the physical terrains, ecosystems, and natural forces of the planet. Fully integrating global skills and knowledge into the curriculum is tied closely to environmental stewardship and social justice as students are challenged to grapple with the most complex problems facing the world (such as climate change, structures of economic inequities, and international terrorism and conflict). Teachers also ask students to discover and attend to how others see themselves, their histories, and the world’s problems that is, to hear and analyze multiple perspectives along the way to determining what young people can do to make a difference.

The EL Education model promotes social, emotional, mental, and physical health and wellness throughout the curriculum and schoolwide culture. Schools choose curricula that promote character development through social and emotional learning, a healthy relationship with the outdoors, and physical challenge. Healthy relationships, growth mindset, intellectual courage, exercise, stress reduction, sleep, spending time outdoors—the key elements of physical and mental health—are all included in a school’s wellness approach.

In the EL Education model, the term “case study” means two things. First, it is an approach to research: using a narrowed topic as a window into big ideas and concepts. This kind of case study is usually incorporated into projects and learning expeditions. Second, a case study can be a structure itself, outside of a project or learning expedition—a focused investigation that does not require (as a project does) a culminating product.

The EL Education model connects students to the world beyond school through meaningful fieldwork, collaboration with experts, and service learning. In addition to learning from text and classroom-based experiences, students use the natural and social environments of their communities as sites for purposeful fieldwork and service connected to academic work. They collaborate with professional experts and community members with firsthand knowledge of events and issues to ensure accuracy, integrity, and quality in their work.

In the EL Education model, teachers engage students in skills- and knowledge-rich learning experiences (projects) that result in high-quality products or performances for audiences beyond the classroom. EL Education defines a project as not just the tangible product resulting from learning, but as the series of classroom lessons, discussions, labs, work sessions, student research, and fieldwork that provide an in-school structure for teaching core skills and content. Projects are used to teach literacy, mathematics, and other disciplinary content and skills, as well as collaboration and problem solving.

Learning expeditions are the signature EL Education curricular structure. They make standards come alive for students. These long-term, in-depth studies offer real-world connections that inspire students toward higher levels of academic achievement. Learning expeditions involve students in original research, critical thinking, and problem solving, and they build character along with academic skills. All learning expeditions explicitly focus on building literacy skills particularly in reading and writing nonfiction text and writing from evidence.

This film features a cross-disciplinary project which resulted from a collaboration between a mathematics teacher and an art teacher, celebrating the beauty of both fields. Although its sub-title is Making Calculus Delicious, the math featured in the book is primarily geometry and algebra, with students creating artistic interpretations of mathematical concepts and formulas. The translation of mathematics to art promoted fresh conceptual discussion and creative thinking, and inspires consideration of the elegance in mathematics.

Data inquiry teams are teams of teachers that meet regularly to analyze student data, to reflect on student progress, and to create action plans that will improve instructional effectiveness. Data inquiry teams focus exclusively on analyzing data for the students they teach and developing plans for responding to the needs and strengths of individual students, groups of students, and particular areas of curriculum. However, data inquiry teams are part of a larger system for using data to raise student achievement and close achievement gaps. In EL schools, data is defined as information that has been systematically collected and organized to support analysis, inquiry, and decision-making.

Leadership teams increase the achievement and engagement of every student through continuous improvement of curriculum, instruction, assessment, and culture in alignment with the EL Core Practices and each school’s unique mission. They represent one form of shared leadership; model healthy practices in all interactions; and make leadership a function rather than a person in a school.

This film features an interdisciplinary project in which a student created the life history—fictional, but realistic—of a person—in this case, a young Deaf girl. In addition to addressing Common Core writing standards, the project explored the College and Career Readiness Habit, “They come to understand other perspectives and cultures.” The project provided a deep, transformational, real-world immersion into Deaf culture. The film itself is ASL-interpreted through picture-within-picture technology.

EL Education professional development asks teachers and administrators to be active learners and to experience fully what it means to read, write, assess, problem solve and learn the "EL way." This means that facilitator’s model effective instructional practices, and participants engage in the social construction of meaning by collaborating in small and large groups. Our facilitators skillfully attend to both the content and process of the group’s learning. The following are foundational characteristics of how EL delivers professional development, either nationally or at schools.

Tenth grade students from San Diego, CA created a professional-quality book that fuses chemistry and history in an exploration of the power of chemical elements and compounds to shape our world. In science and humanities classes, students explored how chemical substances, such as carbon, have been instrumental in human progress and conflict.The book is illustrated with student-created, oxidized copper etchings. This film asks the question: What if learning in school was like learning in life?

Using the language of choice and giving students options builds maturity and ownership.

This video shows primary students using the Back-to-Back and Face-to-Face protocol as a simple and fun way for all students to get a chance to move, think, talk, and learn from others. The teacher first has students model: stand back-to-back with a partner, listen to the question and think, turn face-to-face, taking turns speaking and listening, then turning back-to-back. The class next practices with an easy question from personal experience, then with one that is text-based. This video is narrated by students, and can be shown to students to help them learn this simple routine for productive conversations.

This video shows primary students using a Science Talk protocol as way to collectively theorize, build on each others' ideas, work out thoughts, build literacy, and think, wonder, and talk about how things work. First, the teacher revisits the guiding question ("How does a spider's body help it survive?") and has students review information. She then reviews the Science Talk norms and has a small group of students model. She reviews sentence frames (e.g., "I agree with... because...") that will help students speak like scientists. Students then participate in Science Talks in small groups; the teacher circulates to listen, probe, and coach. We see students building on each others' ideas in a format that promotes equitable conversation. Finally, students reflect on their learning, revisiting the guiding question and the big idea (every part of a spider has an important function that helps it survive).

This video shows primary students learning and using the Think-Pair-Share protocol as a simple way for all students to get a chance to think, talk, and learn from others. Students first practice with an easier question from personal experience, and then with one that is text-based. This video is narrated by students, and can be shown to students to help them learn this simple routine for productive conversations.

This video shows primary students using an Interactive Word Wall, a protocol, with words related to the unit of study (both domain specific and academic vocabulary). Students manipulate the words as they discuss relationships among the words and ideas. There are many ways to use an Interactive Word Wall; this video shows students doing concept mapping. First, the teacher restates the guiding question "How does a spider use its body to survive?" She has students pantomime to review key ideas and vocabulary. She then reviews with students the purpose of concept mapping: to articulate how the words are related to each other. Next, students work in small groups, manipulating vocabulary cards and symbols (e.g., arrows, equals) that help convey the relationships. The teacher circulates to check for understanding, clarifying misconceptions, and push student thinking. The teacher ends the class with students reviewing other groups' concepts maps to give specific feedback on what they thought was strong.