K-12 English Language Arts

To achieve the goal that each student graduates from high school ready for college, career, and life with 21st-century skills, educators in Everett Public Schools focus on the rigorous Washington State Standards, the English Language Arts Common Core State Standards (ELA CCSS), and 21st-century skills as the foundation of course content and outcomes in English Language Arts courses in Everett Public Schools. The ELA CCSS in reading, writing, language, speaking, and listening delineate the knowledge and skills students need to be future-ready. The 21st-century skills, integrated with educational technology skills, provide students and teachers with clarity about competencies that are also essential for students to be prepared for the future. District-adopted instructional materials provide support for standards-aligned learning, instruction, and assessment.

District teachers have worked collaboratively to create instructional maps for each course to ensure common content and outcomes for the same courses across the district. These maps provide teachers across the district with a common instructional plan for purposeful planning by professional learning communities (PLCs) at each grade level in buildings. In addition to in-depth unit planning, PLCs also agree upon their standards-aligned assessment map for the year utilizing Reach for Reading assessments in grades K-5 and SpringBoard embedded assessments in grades 6-12. English Language Arts teachers may also utilize Smarter Balanced Assessment interim assessments to determine student progress in meeting proficiency with regard to the standards.

These common assessments provide formative and summative assessment data to guide instruction and align with the Eight Step Process to provide teachers targeted data points for their collaborative work as they work to ensure that students meet or exceed the levels of proficiency called for by the ELA CCSS and measured by the Washington State English Language Arts Smarter Balanced Assessment (ELA SBA).