12th Grade - Gateway 3

The materials reviewed for Grade 12 meet the criteria for Indicator 3a. Grade 12 materials are well-designed and take into account effective lesson structure and pacing.

Grade 12 materials are purposefully arranged around five units, each with a range of activities or lessons designed with a consistent instructional plan. Each of the five units is divided into two halves, each half concluding with an embedded assessment. Each unit opens with teacher guidance: Planning the Unit and Unit Overview. Planning the Unit describes all instructional and assessment goals for the unit as well as providing the pacing structure and listing unit texts. Instructional activities are designed to be delivered over single and multiple days while the lessons within activities are designed for a 50-minute class period. The Unit Overview provides a descriptive narrative of the unit’s breadth and a sequential listing of unit activities and associated texts.

The first lesson in each unit provides learners with a preview of the unit’s general learning targets and learning strategies and is followed by Making Connections to develop links between new learning, existing knowledge, and the culminating assessments. Thereafter, each activity or lesson opens with an introduction of specific learning targets, followed by a specific learning strategy, grammar structure, or reading strategy, and the establishment of the reading purpose. The prereading activities are followed by the text or texts, Second Read questions, Working from the Text practice, and Writing to Sources, all crafted to support learning targets in developing literacy skills Throughout, teachers are supported by Teacher Wrap, “the inclusion of an instructional roadmap alongside the student pages” indicating the suggested pacing for the activity. The pacing of individual lessons is appropriate for classes with time allowed for supplementary activities as well.

The materials reviewed for Grade 12 meet the criteria for Indicator 3b. Grade 12 materials are designed to allow the teacher and student to reasonably complete the content within a regular school year, and the pacing allows for maximum student understanding.

The five-unit curriculum can be effectively delivered over the course of a 30-36 week academic year allowing sufficient time for practice with instructional materials to ensure opportunities for standards’ mastery by the end of the course. Instructional Activities and Pacing Guide, provided in Planning the Unit, indicate the total number of 50-minute class periods for the unit’s completion and further delineates the associated activity number and suggested class periods for delivery of those lessons. Additionally, the Teacher Wrap, within the margins of the Teacher’s Edition, indicates the time to be allotted for each lesson and offers support for block scheduling by indicating combinations of 50-minute sessions or extensions of lessons, optional instructional materials, and the expectation of homework as part of enrichment and/or the class assignment.

The materials reviewed for Grade 12 meet the criteria for Indicator 3c. Grade 12 student resources include ample review and practice resources, clear directions and explanations, and correct labeling of reference aids (e.g., visuals, maps, etc.)

The student resources include a variety of resources demonstrating specific and clear directions, easy-to-find references and accurate labels. Other resources available to students include text collections, close reading, performance tasks, independent reading plans, as well as digital interactive tools such as Writer’s Notebook, text boxes to record answers, and highlighting tools for annotations.

Close reading questions and guides provide students with questions for key details, craft, and structure. Second Read materials include guiding questions engaging students in careful textual analysis. Text-dependent and text specific writing opportunities and writing workshops appear with regularity throughout the units to deepen thought and allow practice with newly taught skills as well as integration of ideas among concepts and skills. Directions for activities are clear and often make use of graphic organizers and rubrics to help students more clearly see the relationship of concepts as well as understand the expectations set before them.

The materials reviewed for Grade 12 meet the criteria for Indicator 3d. Grade 12 materials include publisher-produced alignment documentation of the standards addressed by specific questions, tasks, and assessment items.

Examples of materials of publisher-produced alignment documentation of the standards addressed include the Common Core Correlations page which can be found on the homepage of the digital materials adjacent to the login portal. Additionally, the Teacher Wrap lists The College and Career Readiness Standards associated with each activity and delineates both Common Core focus standards as well as additional Common Core Standards addressed in each lesson.

The materials reviewed for Grade 12 meet the criteria for Indicator 3f. Grade 12 materials contain a teacher’s edition with ample and useful annotations and suggestions on how to present the content in the student edition and in the ancillary materials. Where applicable, materials include teacher guidance for the use of embedded technology to support and enhance student learning.

Planning the Unit, opening each of the five units, offers teachers a roadmap in preparation for the unit’s presentation while Teacher Wrap and Teacher to Teacher, found in the digital and print versions respectively, provide teachers daily step-by-step instructions for delivery. Within the digital teacher edition, sample responses to Second Read questions and completed graphic organizers are provided for teachers as an indication of what student responses should include. In addition to detailing discrete components of the unit, e.g., goals, pacing, assessments, etc., Planning the Unit unpacks the embedded assessments, suggests texts for independent reading, lists English Language Development resources available for each activity, describes instructional activities within the pacing guide, suggests advance preparation of learning guides for differentiated instruction, provides a detailed unpacking of language demands for embedded assessments, and suggests cognates appropriate to the unit for inclusion on a word wall.

The Teacher Resources tab on the SpringBoard dashboard provides background material for teachers and students on the various literary theories to be discussed throughout the Grade 12 course.

Daily support and suggestions are provided to the teacher through Teacher Wrap and Teacher to Teacher following SpringBoard’s 4-step approach to instruction: Plan--Teach--Assess--Adapt. Additionally, the marginal guides offer suggestions for student support with instruction on approaches found effective for other teachers and methods for scaffolding questions to differentiate instruction to support of student learning. For example, in Unit 3, Activity 3, the Teacher Wrap suggests, “If students need additional help showing effective use of meter and rhythm, model marking up another section of ‘The Canonization’ and ask students to read aloud in pairs, stressing the iambic meter. Students can work together to mark up and read aloud self-selected sections. To extend learning, have students mark up the lyrics to ‘The Right to Love’ or other song lyrics of their choosing.”

Within the digital teacher edition, sample responses to Second Read questions and completed graphic organizers provide teachers an indication of what student responses should include.

The materials reviewed for Grade 12 meet the criteria for Indicator 3g. Grade 12 materials contain a teacher’s edition that contains full, adult-level explanations and examples of the more advanced literacy concepts so that teachers can improve their own knowledge of the subject, as necessary.

The Teacher’s Edition Front Matter supports teacher knowledge regarding the relevance of academic vocabulary as well as knowledge differentiating between Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary, i.e. “Academic Vocabulary features that discuss Tier 2 terms and concepts that students will use in academic discourse” and “Literary Term features that equip students with Tier 3 language from the domains of literature, literary analysis, writing, and rhetoric.” Additionally, the front matter establishes the relevance of text features and rigor to preparation for College and Career Readiness. Key Themes of English Language Arts Instruction explains: “SpringBoard is designed to help students make meaning of complex texts and prepare them for the rigorous textual analysis expected of them in Advanced Placement (AP) English and college courses. The skills students acquire in SpringBoard allow them to think critically about and respond thoughtfully to important topics in all disciplines, and in society.”

The Teacher Edition End Matter provides teachers with a complete list of reading and writing strategies both defining strategies and establishing purpose behind the strategies. For example, the definition of the reading strategy SOAPSTone is “Analyzing text by discussing and identifying Speaker, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, Subject, and Tone,” and its purpose is “to facilitate the analysis of specific elements of nonfiction, literary, and informational texts, and show the relationship among the elements to an understanding of the whole.”

Teacher Wrap provides teachers with information necessary to frame lessons and establish relevance for students. For example, Activity 1.9 provides framing in Step 1: “Read the Preview and the Setting a Purpose for Reading sections with your students. Introduce the idea of a prologue, or introductory passage or speech before the main action of a novel, play, or long poem. Explain that they should highlight lines in the prologue where Ellison conveys what the speaker is and what he is not.”

The materials reviewed for Grade 12 meet the criteria for Indicator 3h. Grade 12 materials contain a teacher’s edition that explains the role of the specific ELA/literacy standards in the context of the overall curriculum.

Connections between specific ELA/literacy standards and the context of the overall curriculum are offered within the Teacher Edition Front Matter, Planning the Unit, and Teacher Wrap. Specifically, the Teacher Edition Front Matter explains the “instructional design assures teachers and students that everyday activities are building a foundation of skills and knowledge that will help students perform on the assessments, which ultimately align with the standards” and promises to help “students develop the knowledge and skills needed for Advanced Placement as well as for success in college and beyond without remediation.” The Front Matter continues by explaining, “While not every student will take an AP class, we believe strongly that ALL students should be equipped with the higher-order thinking skills, knowledge, and behaviors necessary to be successful in AP classes and post-secondary education. SpringBoard focuses on content connections, pre-AP strategies, and writing tasks anchored in the skills and knowledge necessary to be successful on the AP exams.”

Planning the Unit provides a list of activities within the unit that focus on refining “important skills and knowledge areas for AP/College Readiness.” Found in the 2014 Edition of SpringBoard Digital but not in the 2018 edition, are clickable CC icons linked to standards associated with the task at hand. Inclusion of a similar link in the 2018 Edition would aid in promoting the connection between specific ELA/literacy standards and unit activities.

Teacher Wrap lists Focus Standards and Additional Standards Addressed at the beginning of each lesson. Within the instructional guide are also listed the Common Core standards associated with each of the Second Read questions.

The materials reviewed for Grade 12 meet the criteria for Indicator 3i. Grade 12 materials contain explanations of the instructional approaches of the program and identification of the research-based strategies.

The Teacher Edition Front Matter provides both clear explanation of instructional approaches and identification of research-based strategies relied on throughout the text. Additionally, the text provides an explanation for SpringBoard’s instructional approach. The section “Research-Based Pedagogy” sites the use of Wiggins and McTighe’s Understanding by Design instructional model and the American Institute for Research “focus on students moving through multiple levels of cognitive engagement: progressing fluidly from understanding and comprehension, to analysis, and ultimately to synthesis.” SpringBoard also sites application of Charlotte Danielson’s facilitation and flexibility methodologies, Marzano and Pickering’s research on “building students’ background knowledge in the area of Academic Vocabulary development” and “Robyn Jackson’s work on rigorous instruction.”

The materials reviewed for Grade 12 meet the criteria for Indicator 3k. Grade 12 materials regularly and systematically offer assessment opportunities that genuinely measure student progress.

Short-cycle and long-term assessments integrated within each of the five units provide opportunities for measuring student progress both formatively and summatively. Most activities/lessons feature Check Your Understanding and Writing to Sources, short-cycle assessments allowing teachers to measure student proficiencies and adjust or adapt instructional methods. Long-term assessments are offered twice during the unit, one midway through the unit’s activities and the second at the unit’s end. Lessons and related formative assessments preceding the embedded assessments typically lead towards the culminating performance task.

Also provided within the program materials are supplementary workshops for close reading and writing as well as supplementary materials for grammar instruction. Each of these lesson sets also includes assessment components consistent with the organization and structure of the core curriculum. Additionally, the SpringBoard Digital dashboard provides an Assessments link offering teachers short-cycle End of Lesson/Activity assessments and End of Unit assessments as well as choices between SpringBoard-developed assessments or custom-built assessments.

The materials reviewed for Grade 12 meet the criteria for Indicator 3li. Grade 12 assessments clearly denote which standards are being emphasized.

Common Core Standards emphasized by instruction and assessment are noted in the Common Core Correlations chart found on the SpringBoard Digital log-in page. Each ELA Common Core Standard is correlated to unit and activity numbers and/or embedded assessments (denoted by EA) addressing the listed standard. Additionally, Teacher Wrap lists both Focus Standards and Additional Standards Addressed for each embedded assessment.

The materials reviewed for Grade 12 meet the criteria for Indicator 3lii. Grade 12 assessments provide sufficient guidance to teachers for interpreting student performance and suggestions for follow up.

SpringBoard’s four-step structure, Plan-Teach-Assess-Adapt, provides a roadmap towards assessment that includes checkpoints and suggestions for adapting lessons and strengthening student skills before they are asked to demonstrate specific skills on culminating embedded assessments. The progression of these four steps is found in Teacher Wrap on the margins of the digital page of the Teacher Edition. For example, after following Plan and Teach steps in Unit 1, Activity 4, Assess guides teachers in evaluating student work: “Students’ summary statements and responses to the Check Your Understanding should demonstrate an understanding of the three elements of Reader Response Criticism and the ways these elements may contribute to a reader’s interpretation of a text.” After the assessment, Adapt suggests, “If you find that your students need additional help with Reader Response Criticism, model interpreting the first two stanzas of the poem (or the entire poem), using the read aloud strategy before asking volunteers to share their interpretations.”

The materials reviewed for Grade 12 meet the criteria for Indicator 3m. Grade 12 materials include routines and guidance that point out opportunities to monitor student progress.

Teacher Wrap indicates opportunities for monitoring student progress in reading and expression of ideas. Teacher Wrap provides sequentially detailed steps for teaching each lesson. Included within instructional notes for teachers are guides and prompts for monitoring student progress. Additionally, instructional notes indicate what teachers should be monitoring. For example, in Unit 4, Activity 7, teachers are instructed to be sure students “are engaged with the text, recording ideas about rhetorical context, noting critical lenses, and circling unknown words and phrases.” The Assess portion of the Teacher Wrap indicates what teachers should be assessing in each activity and offers suggestions for adapting the lesson for students who are struggling or needing more practice.

The Front Matter of the Teacher Edition introduces teachers to two supplemental resources that “support the development of foundational reading skills for students who need continued support with these foundations to become successful at the secondary level.” The first of these resources is the Foundational Skills Workshop which “supports teachers in planning and delivering intervention instruction to those students who will benefit from one-on-one or small-group lessons in phonics, word recognition, and fluency.” These materials include Observational Look-Fors, Foundational Reading Skills Screening Assessment, Diagnostic Checklist, Individual Progress Monitoring Chart, and Group Planning Chart. The second resource is Routines for Teaching Foundational Skills which “presents mini-lessons and techniques that teachers can incorporate into the core ELA instruction to differentiate for students who need it.”

The Teacher Edition provides an Independent Reading Log for students to record “progress and thinking” about “independent reading during each unit.” Also provided are a range of graphic organizers for ELA and ELD tasks that can be used to monitor student reading and understanding before moving students into writing assignments.

The materials reviewed for Grade 12 meet the criteria for Indicator 3o. Grade 12 materials provide teachers with strategies for meeting the needs of a range of learners so the content is accessible to all learners and supports them in meeting or exceeding the grade-level standards.

SpringBoard curriculum provides accessible content through the integration of texts at varied Lexile level texts in the core curriculum and as suggested titles for independent reading. The unit texts range from slightly below grade level, typically used with introducing a new concept, to at grade level and above grade level. “The Practice of Reading Closely,” found in The Teacher Edition Front Matter explains the range of texts as a means of bringing “readers up to the level of the text, not the level of the text down to the reader.” Each unit also offers a list of text titles for the Independent Reading Assignments occurring twice in each unit. As in the core curriculum, suggested texts range from below grade level to above grade level, allowing students to choose a text of interest that also connects at reading level.

Teachers are provided with strategies to support learners within the core curriculum and through the Teacher Resources tab on the SpringBoard dashboard. Within the core curriculum, Teacher Wrap provides step-by-step guidance in teaching each lesson. Within most steps, teachers are offered advice, alternatives, and suggestions for connecting new and existing knowledge and skills, and methods for scaffolding in-class reading and assignments. Additionally, Teacher to Teacher and Leveled Differentiated Instruction call out boxes within Teacher Wrap provide specific instruction and guidance for learners needing extra support and English language development.

The materials reviewed for Grade 12 meet the criteria for Indicator 3p. Grade 12 materials regularly provide all students, including those who read, write, speak, or listen below grade level, or in a language other than English, with extensive opportunities to work with grade-level text and meet or exceed grade-level standards.

Specific resources for below grade-level students and English language learners are provided within the Teacher Resources accessible through the SpringBoard Digital dashboard. English Language Learner Support Guides, available at each grade, offer general guidelines for instructional strategies associated with each of the five units. “Differentiation in SpringBoard is organized around Process, Product, and Content. For ELL support, it may be necessary to adapt the content, the product...or the formative assessments...” The resource guide urges teachers to “refer to the Differentiated Instruction call-outs in the TE Wrap.” Call-outs typically provide additional ideas for practice with the lesson concepts. For example, in Unit 4, Activity 11, the call-out box suggests “supporting students who are at an early stage in their English language development by turning on the closed caption subtitles while viewing Trouble in the Water. Viewing film with English subtitles can boost English learners’ engagement with the film while also helping them develop vocabulary, recognize word boundaries, and improve listening comprehension.”

Also provided within the Teacher Resources tab at each grade level is an English-Spanish Glossary, although currently the resource bears a 2014 copyright. Foundational Skills Workshop material provides resources for interventions at grades 7-11. Seventeen lessons range from phonics and word recognition to fluency as well as an Initial Screening Assessment “that provides teachers with essential information about students’ education history, home language proficiency, and English language proficiency.” Also provided within the Teacher Resources tab is a Flexible Novel Unit allowing teachers to replace the novel suggested in the core curriculum with a novel differentiated for student needs. The Flexible Novel Unit provides a teacher planning dashboard, a student view of the adjusted embedded assessment, and a teacher view complete with marginalia guidance following the four-step Plan-Teach-Assess-Adapt protocol. Also provided within the Teacher Resources tab are materials for grammar instruction and interventions, graphic organizers (also provided in the Teacher Edition End Matter), and learning strategies.

Within the core curriculum, Planning the Unit, a detailed teacher tool is provided at the beginning of each unit. Planning Support for English Learners is included in the planning page and outlines “unit-specific resources for differentiation.” Found in this section of the unit planning are Digital Resource: English Language Development Activities correlated to specific text selections and unit activities, guidance on logging onto ELD resources on SpringBoard Digital, Leveled Differentiated Instruction providing “suggestions on how to differentiate challenging tasks for students at various levels of language proficiency,” and a Cognate Dictionary specifically designed for each unit. Also provided are directions for Unpacking the Language Demands of the Embedded Assessments, a resource unpacking the “word-, sentence-, and text-level features of academic language that English learners may need to develop as they work toward the Embedded Assessments.” Integrated into each unit are at least three English Language Development Activities which are “supplementary digital activities for every unit that offer a scaffolded approach to vocabulary study, guided close reading, and collaborative activities.”

The materials reviewed for Grade 12 meet the criteria for Indicator 3q. Grade 12 materials regularly include extensions and/or more advanced opportunities for students who read, write, speak, or listen above grade level.

The Leveled Differentiated Instruction call-out within Teacher Wrap offers opportunities to extend the learning for those students who read, write, speak, or listen above grade level. For example, in Unit 1, Activity 9, Leveled Differentiated Instruction suggests teachers challenge students to select “another text from the unit and to describe their perception of themselves in the style of that author” rather than to revising “a few phrases or sentences from your quickwrite, or write new sentences, to practice using different syntax for effect.”

Occasionally, the Adapt step of Teacher Wrap or the Teacher to Teacher call-out will provide an extension for learning through a challenge. For example, in Unit 1, Activity 11, Adapt suggests teachers extend learning by asking students to analyze “multiple images from an ad campaign or create their own original commercials or print ads incorporating concepts from this activity (framing, angles, strategic placement of objects, rhetorical appeals).”

The materials reviewed for Grade 12 meet the criteria for Indicator 3r. Grade 12 materials provide opportunities for teachers to use a variety of grouping strategies.

Every lesson in the SpringBoard program offers opportunities for students to work in groups whether reading, writing, or speaking and listening about texts. “Specific strategies for collaboration and oral communication are taught and practiced leading to the development of independent, skillful conduct of academic discussions.” Both the Teacher Edition and the Student Edition regularly and repeatedly ask students to work as partners and in small groups. Among the means used to and for grouping are Think-Pair-Share, heterogeneous groups, simple partnering, forming small groups based on interest, working as whole class in discussions and guided writing, and forming jigsaw groups to build and share information and ideas. Additionally, students are grouped for purposes of peer editing and feedback, practice with speaking and speech delivery, and reading discussion groups.