Standard 3:

3.a. Teachers align their instruction with the North Carolina Standard Course of Study. 3.b. Teachers know the content appropriate to their teaching specialty. 3.c. Teachers recognize the interconnectedness of content areas/disciplines.

Since 2017, I have been on the Middle School ESL curriculum writing team. We align our UbD framework to the ELA curriculum Expeditionary Learning (EL) that Wake County adopted. We have completed 6th grade ESL I and II and are currently are completing the 7th grade ESL I and II curriculums. Included here is a sample lesson from the C-Mapp 2.0 curriculum, written by me, to demonstrate the alignment with ELA standards and interconnectedness to middle school interdisciplinary subject matter. The 6th grade curriculum is a model for middle school ESL teachers to use as a guide for aligning with EL. The 7th grade curriculum is a model for creating interdisciplinary lessons. Moving forward, the 8th grade instruction will focus on Social Studies integration.

Teachers make instruction relevant to students. Incorporate life skills which include leadership, ethics, accountability, adaptability, personal productivity, personal responsibility, people skills, self-direction, and social responsibility

In order to establish a respectful environment for all students, I promote synergistic collaboration through discourse moves that encourage collegial conversations, discussions which also empower ELs to be active and engaged participants in their content area classes. I also do this to encourage students to practice the art with their peers in hopes that their social conversations will become academically focused and they begin to see their peers as not just social acquaintances but as a collegiate network within which they help each other to excel.