"Next Generation Learning Models for English Language Learners" seeks to highlight the promising practices and trends in new designs to advance learning for English language learner (ELL) students. This paper is designed for practitioners, including educators and education leaders, who want to advance next generation learning models to…

This book examines the current trends in K-12 curriculum and instruction. It shows how the trends interrelate and provides a higher order, comprehensive model for curriculum reform. The model is based on critical, content-based concepts. Chapter 1 describes the complexity of the change process and illustrates dilemmas encountered in school-based…

This book explores ways to design courses and units to emphasize understanding and uncoverage rather than coverage, offering practical solutions for teacher-designers. It focuses on a different use for performance assessment, concluding that performance is the key to assessing understanding. The book analyzes the logic of backward design as an…

Contends that an interdisciplinary curriculum and cooperative learning are well suited to middle school students. Asserts that the approaches help students learn higher order thinking skills and improve social skills. Maintains that authentic or performance-based assessment is appropriate for these techniques and this age group. (CFR)

Contends that few educational issues rival the California Learning Assessment System (CLAS) for comment, controversy, and confrontation. Defines the CLAS test and discusses its characteristics, anticipated student responses, and scoring procedures. Outlines four implications for instructional methods. (CFR)

Portfolios, collections of student work representing a selection of performance, are being used in classrooms today in the tradition of the visual and performing arts in which they serve to showcase a student's best pieces and the student's evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the pieces. Portfolios are useful as a support to new…

This curriculum framework provides a model for developing appropriate and meaningful language arts curricula for high ability learners in kindergarten through grade 8. It is intended as a guide to making decisions about traditional curricular emphases within the language arts areas of reading, writing, speaking, and listening, as well as…

Contends that understanding history is more than remembering isolated facts: it involves interpreting, hypothesizing, and evaluating. Provides recommendations for preparing elementary students for the California Learning Assessment System (CLAS). (CFR)

This booklet focuses on understanding authentic learning and assessment practices and their effect on students and teachers at the middle level. After an examination of what is meant by authentic learning, five guidelines are suggested for use in selecting authentic content for middle level students. Specifically, authentic materials: (1) should…

This paper presents recommendations designed to ensure that limited-English-proficient (LEP) children are included in proposals embodied in "Goals 2000." These are as follows: persons knowledgeable about the education of LEP students should be included in national, state and local panels; all educational reform activities should address…

These two newsletter issues are designed for users of the Council for Exceptional Children's Life Centered Career Education (LCCE) curriculum. The newsletter's goal is to inform practitioners of curriculum implementation ideas and transition issues and to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas. Featured articles discuss how one district used…

Provides of examples of performance-based assessments in three categories: (1) projects; (2) performances; and (3) question strategy sessions. Describes a typical performance-based assessment project including setting up the project, peer evaluation, the class presentation, and the test used. (CFR)

Presents a classroom teacher's experiences in preparing a fifth-grade class for the California Learning Assessment System (CLAS) test. Discusses an integrated curriculum approach, disagreements between teacher associations and the state department of education, and student and parent attitudes toward the test. (CFR)