As schools work to increase success for all students, it is important to recognize the impact of bias in classrooms, instructional materials and teaching strategies. Bias in general may be identified by determining whose interest is being portrayed and whose interest is being excluded. Evaluating for bias requires us to learn about others and to respect and appreciate the differences and similarities. This evaluation guide includes components on gender/sex, culture/ethnicity, socio-economic status, disability/status, and family structure.

Developed in 2009, this framework was designed for Washington educators to evaluate instructional content for bias using five dimensions: Gender/Sex, Multicultural, Persons with Disabilities, Socio-Economic Status, and Family.Visit the updated 2020 version: Screening for Biased Content in Instructional Materials | OSPI

In this lesson, designed for a heterogeneous group of students that includes English-language learners, students work together to plan a website based on their home knowledge. An introductory lesson outlines the structure and components of simple websites (home page, titles, headings, links). Students take home and complete a bilingual student and family interest survey, then work in groups of four or five to identify common themes among the responses. Each group makes a flow chart to think graphically about the contents of their planned website. Each student keeps a project notebook to record new ideas, summarize group work, and share the project with family members. The teacher can make the planned websites a reality using one of the online website-building platforms in the Resources list.

This paper addresses the implications, for ELLs, of the new standard's requirement that students be able to read and understand complex, informationally dense texts. The authors discuss the types of supports that learners need in order to work with complex texts. They also provide a sample of what academic discourse involves, using an excerpt from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail. They demonstrate how English learners can be provided with strategies for accessing complex texts, such as closely examining one sentence at a time. The authors argue that instruction must go beyond vocabulary and should begin with an examination of our beliefs about language, literacy and learning.

Created by NHPRC Teacher Participant/Creator Deirdre H. Tuite for US History; Adaptable to other grades. Throughout this year we study how the United States came to fruition. We evaluate the reasons behind the establishment of the United States and the key figures in our history. However, it is important to remember that students too are part of America’s history. The student's history is our nation’s history. As we progress through the year, these assignments have students documenting their own history, through various projects: an interview, a community snapshot, and family artifact, ending with a personal essay.

Wide Open School is a free collection of online learning experiences for kids curated by the editors at Common Sense.This site has a very user friendly interface, an excellent organizational structure, and reputable partners providing quality content. Though the connected resources are free for viewing online, please note that not all are openly licensed so your permitted use of the materials will vary.

Phonics word lists: introduction and lists of closed syllable words with different vowels and patterns.

This is a remixed version of World History: Culture, States, and Societies to 1500 by Berger, et al. It's a textbook suitable for the World History survey. I have reorganized the text in order to provide a more globally integrated narrative. Each chapter invites students to compare and contrast developments across regions during a period of time.

This version of the book retains the text of the original but with updated references to chapters. I verified and, if necessary, updated links to online resources. In cases where the exact illustration used in the original version was not available, I have substituted equivalent ones. I also created and edited segues and other “connective tissue” as well to (hopefully) ensure that this version of the book reads as smoothly as the original.

Additional changes include:

More concise lists of “key terms” in each chapter
Expanded coverage of the Persian Empire
Expanded coverage of the end of the Yuan Dynasty
Added brief overview of the early Ming Dynasty including the voyages of Zheng He
Work on this adaption was generously sponsored by a grant from Michigan Colleges Online, a project of the Michigan Community College Association.