Foster Creative and Critical Thinkers
The Developing Core Literacy Proficiencies Program is an integrated literacy curriculum for grades 6-12. This important resource provides teachers with lessons, activities, and assessments that help students acquire the skills needed to read closely for textual details, make evidence-based claims, research to deepen understanding, and build evidence-based arguments. These skills give students the ability to become independent, creative, and critical thinkers.
The Developing Core Literacy Proficiencies Program focuses on the development of three vital areas:
Knowledge: The texts and topics equip students with key ideas for participating knowledgeably in the important discussions of our time, but also contain the complexity of expression necessary for developing college- and career-ready literacy skills.
Literacy Skills: The program articulates and targets instruction and assessment on twenty CCSS-aligned literacy skills ranging from "making inferences" to "reflecting critically."
Academic Habits: The program articulates twelve academic habits, such as "listening" and "completing tasks," for students to develop, apply, and extend as they progress through the sequence of instruction.
Over the course of the program's activities, students develop their literacy along these three paths in an integrated, engaging, and empowering way. In the Developing Core Literacy Proficiencies series, the text choices and purposeful sequence of instruction work to bring all students, including ELL students and those reading below grade level, into productive conversation and evidence-based writing.
A key component of the program is the Literacy Toolbox: a series of materials including handouts, graphic organizers, checklists, and rubrics that have been carefully designed to support student success. The approaches and materials of the program have also been designed to develop literacy in content areas beyond English Language Arts. Teachers in fields like the Humanities, Art, Science, and Social Studies can use the processes and materials in their own curricular context to provide a coherent and powerful school-wide approach to literacy development across disciplines.
