EL Education recommends particular structures and priorities for curricular and instructional planning. The purpose of this document is to describe four types of long-term plans that EL teachers create: curriculum maps, learning expeditions, projects, and standards-targets-assessments (STAs).
Students in EL Education schools achieve more than they think possible.
Sixth grade students in San Diego, CA created a fictional book for young readers that explains mathematical concepts through an illustrated fantasy story. Inspired by the book The Number Devil, students created a narrative to transform the mathematics they were studying into compelling and clear concepts for readers. This film features an interview with the teacher, and investigates this question: If we want to students to persevere to solve problems, what will give them the motivation to persevere?
Enhancing communication in the classroom without saying a word.
This film features a project from 2007 in which first and second graders at the Santa Fe School for the Arts and Sciences were given the opportunity to design experiments to answer their own questions about the physical world. Eight years later, two students and their teacher are asked to reflect on this project and speak about the value of learners behaving as scientists, a skill encouraged by the Next Generation Science Standards. This film celebrates the results of their physics investigations and inspires science teachers to create more authentic learning experiences for students of any age.
This video demonstrates how Common Core literacy standards can come to life naturally, thoughtfully and joyfully for kindergartners, who engage in real-world research in their own school. Through interviewing school staff members, the kindergarteners come to understand their contributions to the school and the meaning of community, and create beautiful informational cards to honor staff.
What happens when students take ownership over their education and push their learning beyond the walls of their school buildings to activate change in their communities? They develop impactful and transformational projects like the Peacekeepers of Chicago. This video highlights a collection of high quality, student-driven projects that were produced by a group of 7th-grade students from Polaris Charter Academy in Chicago, IL (2012-2013). Additionally, this video illuminates what can happen when schools, families, and communities establish partnerships with one another in an effort to boost student achievement and simultaneously cover Common Core State Standards. In this video, you will learn how projects like the Peacekeepers of Chicago not only help to drive basic skill work and deeper learning amongst students, but also help to grow and develop lifelong learners and community organizers.
This video features a student project of extraordinary sophistication: a professional-quality field guide to San Diego Bay, published commercially, with a forward by Jane Goodall. The research, writing, photography, and graphics of the book exemplify what students can do when trusted and supported to do the work of adult scientists and authors.
Blair Baron's twelfth-grade humanities students at Codman Academy Charter Public School in Boston read complex texts about policing in America, including The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and the Department of Justice's Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department, in preparation for an academic discussion.
This protocol can be used to offer critique and feedback for revision of work. It is appropriate to use during a draft phase, so that students have the opportunity to revise based on the feedback they receive. This process will help students see what is working, and then consider questions and suggestions that will lead to revision and improvement. It is important that students understand that the focus should be on offering feedback that is beneficial to the author/creator. Explicit modeling by the teacher is necessary for this protocol to be used successfully.
In this two-part video, students in Hillary Mills' eleventh-grade biology class at Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School in New York City prepare for a bio-ethical debate about TALEN gene therapy. On day one, they analyze a complex scientific figure. On day two, they make connections among concepts and technical vocabulary, using a science notebook to organize their thinking, in preparation for their bio-ethical debate.
In this second part of a two-part video, students in Hillary Mills' eleventh-grade biology class at Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School in New York City prepare for a bio-ethical debate about TALEN gene therapy. On day one, they analyze a complex scientific figure. On day two, they make connections among concepts and technical vocabulary, using a science notebook to organize their thinking, in preparation for their bio-ethical debate.
A recommended process for analyzing the modules before teaching them, looking first at the year to get the big picture, then zooming in on the module overview, unit overviews, and finally preparing to teach a lesson.
Tenth-grade students in Claire Wolff's humanities class at Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School in New York City think like historians to curate a collection of primary source documents that are the best match for a Document-Based Question similar to what they will encounter on New York State's global history and geography Regents exam.
Teacher Karen Crounse at Codman Academy in Boston, MA checks for understanding in her eleventh-grade math class to help all students discover the patterns behind trigonometric ratios.
This video accompanies the book Leaders of Their Own Learning: Transforming Schools through Student-Engaged Assessment.
An EL Education school culture is planned for, developed, and sustained through practices that bring the community together, promote shared understandings, and encourage all community members to become crew, not passengers. Students in EL schools are known well and supported by adults. In EL schools, each student is known well by at least one adult within the school. One structure for developing this relationship—and supporting students socially, emotionally, and academically—is crew.
EL Education is distinguished in the educational landscape by an explicit focus on high-quality student work as an essential part of student achievement. One reason that others avoid this topic is that it is messy. Quality cannot be easily defined and quantified. We believe, however, that when schools regularly engage in the difficult process of working together to define, recognize, and analyze quality work (and even quantify when possible), the results are positive and powerful. When a student is done with schooling, she is judged for the rest of her life not primarily by her ability to perform on tests, but by the quality of person she is and the quality of work she does. Developing an ethic of quality in students is vital.
This film features a project in which students interviewed leaders of different faiths in their community, asking questions about life, morality and meaning. It addresses a range of Common Core Literacy standards, and in particular illuminates the process of creating high-quality informative writing. Interview, critique, and editing processes are featured in the film, as well as a powerful and engaging connection between literacy and social studies work with the exploration of fundamental life questions.
Eighth grade students in Portland, ME tackle a real world problem by designing devices for developing countries that transform energy and benefit society during a five-month interdisciplinary project. The project combined sophisticated STEM learning with social studies and language arts content and skills. This film features interviews with former students and with a range of teachers, documenting in particular the collaboration of the teaching team.
Anne Simpson, from Two Rivers Public Charter School in Washington, DC, supports her kindergartners' developing understanding of text-to-text connections. When her lesson doesn't go exactly as planned, she redirects the class by using one student's exemplar.