Secondary English/ Language Arts

  • “No skill is more crucial to the future of a child, or to a democratic and prosperous society, than literacy."
    ~ Los Angeles Times, “A Child Literacy Initiative”

    Through study of the language arts, Alachua County students learn to read, write and think effectively with the goal of becoming positive contributors to society as a whole. Effective language arts educators provide varied and rich learning experiences, enabling the district’s students to consistently perform at the highest level.

    The current Alachua County secondary language arts curriculum is based upon Florida's B.E.S.T. standards. Within these standards, reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing, language and literature competencies are integrated throughout students’ learning experiences. B.E.S.T. ELA benchmarks are repeated as needed in course sequences. As students progress from one course to the next, increases should occur in the complexity of materials and tasks, as well as in the application of skills and strategies. Additionally, 

    • learning tasks and materials are differentiated based upon individual student needs
    • students are taught reading strategies to assist them in constructing meaning from a variety of texts;
    • and students acquire an extensive vocabulary through reading, discussion, listening, and word study.

     
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Textbook Information

  • Student access to textbook resources is available through myPortal.

    Current textbooks

    Textbook Adoption

    • FLDOE Adoption Cycle: English/ Langauge Arts K-12 Adoption Year was 2020-21.
    • EdReports is an independent nonprofit designed to improve education by providing reviews of K-12 instructional materials.

Announcements

myPortal

  • Online Resources Available through myPortal.

    BrainPop is a group of educational websites with over 1,000 short animated movies for students in grades K-12 (ages 6 to 17), together with quizzes and related materials, covering the subjects of science, social studies, English, mathematics, engineering and technology, health, and arts and music.

    CommonLit delivers high-quality, free instructional materials to support literacy development for students in grades 3-12. Our resources are flexible, research-based, aligned to the Common Core State Standards, and are created by teachers, for teachers.

    Gale Ed is a research site with thousands of articles on many areas of interest.

    Khan Academy  is a set of short lessons in the form of YouTube videos that help educate students.

    PBS Learning Media offers phonemic awareness skills games and bilingual games.

    Teaching Books.net is an easy-to-use website that adds a multimedia dimension to the reading experiences of children's and young adult books. Our online database is developed and maintained to include thousands of resources about fiction and nonfiction books used in the K–12 environment, with every resource selected to encourage the integration of multimedia author and book materials into reading and library activities.

    The Learning Network offers rich and imaginative materials for teaching and learning using New York Times content.They offer new educational resources based on the articles, photographs, videos, illustrations, podcasts and graphics published in The New York Times – all for free.

    TumbleBook Cloud is an online collection of eBooks and read-along chapter books, non-fiction books, graphic novels, educational videos, and audio books! This database is a great option for adventurTumblous readers.

    World Book is a full encyclopedia resource.

Other Online Resources

  • Grammar Bytes!

    • Daily Grammar Workout
    • Detailed definitions of common grammar terms.
    • Fun, interactive exercises.
    • Handouts, presentations, videos!!!

    The Learning Network

    • How to Use This Site
    • Every school day since 1998, they have offered fresh classroom resources — from lesson plans and writing prompts to news quizzes, student contests and more — all based on the articles, essays, images, videos and graphics published on NYTimes.com.
    • High-quality, free instructional materials to support literacy development for students in grades 5-12.
    • You can have your students use the site to explore new vocabulary on their own, or you can offer some structured vocab practice to support what you're teaching. 
    • One of the best ways to use the site is to integrate its vocab practice with texts your students are reading. 
    • Thousands of provided lists already on the site
    • You can paste up to 100 pages of text into the site's List Builder, and it will give you a list of words. This is great when you want to create a list ahead of an assigned reading. 
    • This is an online tool used for teaching grammar, usage, mechanics and style to students in 4th through 12th grade.
    •  This resource also has Informative and Argumentative Writing lessons that teach claim, evidence, and reasoning, etc.
    • Teachers can assign a variety of diagnostic and instructional materials to their students through NoRedInk. 
    • Students may also choose to work through the hundreds of activities in NoRedInk’s online independently. 
    • The majority of NoRedInk’s offerings are free to users, however the company does offer access to upgraded features through a paid subscription to NoRedInk Premium.
    • Each Newsela text is offered at multiple tiers, for every student, no matter their level.
    • Students can study the same content and learn at their own pace.
    • Paired textsBuilt-in assessments.
    • Aligned to Common Core standards

    PBS LearningMedia

    • thousands of classroom-ready, curriculum-targeted digital resources aligned to Common Core and national and state standards.
    • You can browse by standards, grade level, subject area, and special collections. You can also favorite and share resources with your class and colleagues.
    • Find Spanish and Alternate Language Content
    • Best of all, PBS LearningMedia is free for PreK-12 educators and students.

    ReadWorks

    • A library of curated nonfiction and literary articles in the country, along with reading comprehension and vocabulary lessons, formative assessments, and teacher guidance.

     ReadWriteThink by National Council of Teachers of English
    • Here at ReadWriteThink, our mission is to provide educators, parents, and afterschool professionals with access to the highest quality practices in reading and language arts instruction by offering the very best in free materials.

    Learning for Justice (formerly Teaching Tolerance)

    • free resources to educators—teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners—who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.