Students with intellectual disabilities are among the least likely students to spend a significant amount of time in general education classrooms. When they are included, they may spend their time on non-academic learning experiences. Universal Design for Learning is a lesson planning framework that can guide teachers in inclusive lesson planning.…

In the United States, educational thought leaders have called for higher expectations (Gordon Commission, 2010), more rigorous college and career readiness standards for K-12 education (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010), and new constructs such as 21st century skills…

A brief list of questions is offered as a checklist for local school districts who have developed a language arts curriculum plan and who want to appraise their work. The questions elicit information on curriculum design, key components and elements of the curriculum plan, teacher role, continuity, sequence, flexibility, implementation, and…

Designed to assess consistency in teacher judgment of student essays and to assess conformity of teacher judgment with expert judgment, the Composition Rating Scale (CRS) requires the taker to rank-order five brief compositions. Requiring twenty minutes to complete, the scale can be used to evaluate the consistency of teacher judgments of…

Designed to provide a scale for assessing the quality of short expository essays, this material includes a group of six expository essays about 250-300 words in length arranged in order of quality. Each essay is followed by critical comments and a general discussion of the characteristics of essays at that level of quality. No validity or…

Designed to assess the quality of pieces of creative writing in the intermediate and junior high grades, the Sager Writing Scale (SWS) is intended for use by both students and teachers or by researchers. The SWS contains four scales with four ratings possible in the areas of vocabulary, elaboration, organization, and structure. Validity for the…

To evaluate the quality of written compositions, researchers at Educational Testing Service developed the Composition Evaluation Scales (CES), after factor-analytic studies of the reasons teachers gave for their judgments of compositions. This is a set of eight scales: ideas, organization, wording, flavor, usage, punctuation, spelling, and…

Presents an inservice, appropriate for elementary and secondary school teachers, that examines 10 language arts Web sites. Transparencies, handouts, and an evaluation tool are provided. Objectives, resources, activity and procedures for completion, and evaluation and follow-up methods are also included. (LRW)

This practicum was designed to develop performance-based assessment tools to document language arts achievement for use in eighth-grade language arts classes. Two eighth grade language arts classes (55 students) participated in the program for an entire school year, maintaining a writing portfolio and a record-keeping portfolio. A video portfolio…

This report describes a program that was implemented to improve student assessment through the use of portfolios. The targeted population consisted of a first and third grade classroom in a suburb of a large Midwestern metropolitan area. The problems related to assessment were documented by state mandated test scores, teacher determined grades,…

This booklet shows teachers and administrators how their school districts can use the Reading Authority List of the Reading Information System I (I-RIS), an analytic process for making decisions about language arts curriculum materials. Following an outline of I-RIS, pages of the Reading Authority List are accompanied by guidelines for using the…

Third in a series, this loose-leaf guide reviews resources for evaluating, selecting, and using software for teaching reading and communication skills. Sources of educational software listed include both commercial publishers and public domain sources. Software selection information sources are divided into journals, newsletters, and special…

Describes a play-based procedure for assessing young children's knowledge of the functions of writing. A case study highlights this discussion. (BB)

This sampler discusses California's English-language arts assessment program and presents examples of high school reading assessments, writing assessments, and writing prompts. The first section of the sampler takes an integrated look at Year One of the California Learning Assessment System (CLAS). The second section presents the scoring guide for…

This sampler discusses California's English-language arts assessment program and presents examples of elementary school reading assessments, writing assessments, and writing prompts. The first section of the sampler takes an integrated look at Year One of the California Learning Assessment System. The second section presents the scoring guide for…