Colorín Colorado Blog: Helping ELLs Succeed

Welcome to our Colorín Colorado blog!  This blog is focused on helping English language learners (ELLs) succeed in the classroom, with a special focus on strategies and tools that that support the use of college- and career-ready standards with ELLs.

The blog includes updates from the ELL field about topics such as language proficiency standards and assessments, as well as practical tips for developing academic language, helping ELLs tackle grade-level content, and collaborating with colleagues.

For related content, see our  Common Core and ELLs resource section.  You can also browse blog posts by topic.

cover of "Changes in the Expertise of ESL Professionals: Knowledge and Action in an Era of New Standards"

In this blog post, I’ll focus on some take-aways from a new paper about the role of ESL professionals in the Common Core era that ties together a lot of the themes I heard from teachers in March.

Department of Education, State of California seal showing books, quill pens, a lap, and paper

Big news at the end of the last week: On Friday, Education Week’s Michele McNeil reported that a months-long standoff between the state of California and the U.S. Department of Education has ended, with federal officials approving a waiver allowing the state to administer the Smarter Balanced field tests this year instead of its state testing program.

Common core state standards curriculum rubric

When asked to review these curricular units, I realized I needed a rubric to help me take an objective look at them and be able to share the results with the curriculum writers.Dr. Sydney Snyder and I developed the rubric below and found that it’s been helpful in framing our own thinking.

Welcome to Florida, the Sunshine State road sign

Since Education Week continues to provide excellent, in-depth coverage of the Common Core State Standards roll-out, this week we wanted to share a few highlights from their recent headlines.

A panda bear in the snow

This week we'd like to take a break from text-dependent questions to share some resources with you on implementing the Common Core with ELLs that have become available recently.

Screenshot of a man in a suit on CNN.

While Diane is working away on her text-dependent questions, we wanted to share a few notable points from President Obama’s State of the Union speech last night related to Latino students and ELLs, and chime in on the subsequent reading of the tea leaves.

A glass ball in a snowy forrest.

For this post, I wanted to look ahead and share a few of the topics that we anticipate featuring during the next few months. We will also be welcoming some more guest bloggers in coming months who can write on their area of expertise.

Students writing at their desks.

Here, in no particular order, are some of the most popular posts she wrote last year, each of which features in-depth information as well as multiple links to recommended resources and related posts. 

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