Practical Approaches to Developing Stand-alone Curriculum

Abstract

This featured article shares practical approaches to developing stand-alone curriculum using the myriad of resources provided by the New York State Department of Education to ensure that stand-alone instruction provides opportunities for multilingual students to acquire the English language needed for success in core curriculum content areas and meet the New York State Next Generation Learning Standards. We outline the curriculum development process we have used with educators to develop thematic instructional units based on grade-level and content-rich big ideas that are aligned to standards with an explicit focus on academic language and literacy development. We provide examples of templates and a thematic instructional unit which culminate into a language production project to show how backward design principles can be used to align content and language standards, assessment, and instruction. Finally, we offer suggestions for engaging in collaborative review and reflection to empower English-as-a-new-language (ENL) teachers to develop a year-long curriculum for stand-alone classes.