Language Arts / Social Studies

The Enhanced Assessment project is a federally funded 18-month project that supports New England states in their development of large-scale assessments that address the needs of students with disabilities and English-language learners.

A small team from CLLC is working with the Winchendon (Mass.) superintendent and his leadership team to engage in long-term strategic planning, program coordination, and action planning for 2005–2007. The project is focusing on the areas of leadership development, design, and implementation; mathematics curriculum implementation; and English/Language Arts curriculum selection and implementation.

EDC is developing and testing a middle-grades literacy curriculum that focuses on helping middle school students to develop and apply skills needed for research project. These skills focus on understanding, extracting, and synthesizing information—all key skills needed for carrying out a research project in middle school. The curriculum includes specific teacher-led activities that explicitly teach students these skills and meaningfully takes advantage of key features of the software program, SOLO.

At a time when young adolescents need to read complex texts in all content areas, many students continue to have difficulty with the reading process. Yet, although good models of elementary reading instruction are available, middle schools have few models or resources to meet the needs of their growing numbers of struggling readers.

TinC (Technology in Class) tests the effectiveness of a software tool, Draft:Builder (previously developed at EDC), when it is integrated into an innovative curriculum. The curriculum, The American History Idol, builds basic skills in finding the main idea, locating supporting details, organizing information, and writing a persuasive essay. It draws on biographies of historical figures, thus linking social studies and English language arts. The software tool helps students create outlines and draft text.

This two-year project, funded by the Japan Foundation’s Center for Global Partnership (CGP), will develop and pilot test curriculum materials that use picture books to expose lower primary (grades 1–3) Japanese school children to present-day American culture and all of its diversity. EDC, in partnership with Iwate University’s Faculty of Education, will create teaching materials based on American picture books and design hands-on, highly experiential activities to complement the books.

The National Center Supported e-Text in Electronic Environments, in collaboration with research teams across the country, is conducting a systematic program of research over five years to investigate the following four research questions: (1) What characteristics of supported electronic text (e-text) facilitate or impede access to and learning of academic content for students with a range of disabilities? (2) Does supported e-text improve learning of academic content in actual educational settings with typical resources and levels of teacher support?

EDC is creating a series of online professional development course for teachers of American History. The courses will assist teachers in building their skills as historians, using primary source documents in the classroom, and making use of local historical sites and museums. Each course includes online readings, interactive activities, online discussions, assessments, and other Web-based resources. Additionally, EDC will train and support facilitators to deliver each of the courses to teachers from school districts participating in the project.

The Living Room Candidate is an online exhibition developed by the Museum of the Moving Image that presents more than 250 television commercials from every U.S. presidential election since 1952. The site includes a searchable database and features commentary, historical background, election results, and navigation organized by both year and theme.

Supported Literacy for Adolescents is a research-based literacy program developed over 10 years by EDC, with funding from the U.S. Department of Education (Office of Special education Programs and Institute of Educational Sciences), Annenberg Foundation, and MetLife Foundation. Its goal is to improve reading, writing, and comprehension among both high risk and typically achieving populations. It is deeply rooted in standards-based curriculum design, and all components of the program are aligned with national reading and writing standards, as well as selected content standards.