Welcome to the English Language Arts Homepage
This website serves as an initial stop for resources, information, links, and professional development opportunities in Maine English Language Arts. The navigation bar to the left provides links to supportive materials, resources, information, and effective classroom practices for each particular grade span.
If you have questions or comments regarding anything found on this website, please contact Patsy Dunton (patsy.dunton@maine.gov).
NCTE Convention Presentation
Four Maine educators will be presenting a session titled “AYP and the SAT: What Happens When Your State High School Test is the SAT?” at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) annual convention in Philadelphia. An excerpt from the convention program includes the following session description: “Panel discussion of the impact on curriculum and instruction of adopting the SAT as Maine’s high school reading and writing assessment. Strategies once found only in AP and ‘honors’ courses are now being used with success in all levels of English classes.”
Presenters:
Patsy Dunton, Maine Department of Education
John Emerson, John Bapst High School
Elements of Sense, the Principles of Editing
Life at the Sentence Level: Teaching Students To Be Editors
Cindy Allen, Camden Hills Regional High School
AYP and the SAT
Beth Carlson, Kennebunk High School
Cover
Analysis Sheet
Fortunate Son / Born in the USA
Universal Soldier / Masters of War
The session is from 8:00 a.m. to 9:15 a.m. on Saturday, November 21, 2009.
To view the session presentation, click here.
The Common Core State Standards Initiative
A significant and historic opportunity for states to collectively develop and adopt a core set of academic standards in mathematics and English language arts, the Common Core State Standards Initiative is being jointly led by the National Governor's Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers in partnership with Achieve, ACT, and the College Board. It builds directly on recent effort of leading organizations and states that have focused on developing college- and career-ready standards and ensures these standards are evidence- and research-based and internationally benchmarked to top-performing countries. - National Governors’ Association
The Common Core Standards can be found online at http://www.corestandards.org/
Maine ELA Listserv
The English Language Arts listserv is now up and running. This service is a notification only format which will allow those interested in ELA to receive current information about professional development opportunities, resources, and hot topics. To subscribe, click on the following link:
http://mailman.informe.org/mailman/listinfo/englishlanguagearts
Other notifications will be sent when urgent matters arise.
Standards, Assessment, and Instruction: Connecting the Dots
Portland and Brewer, November 12 & 13, 2009
Instructional Planning for the 2009/2010 School Year. The Maine Department of Education announces the first in a series of workshops to help Maine educators understand accountability standards and their relation to the Maine Learning Results: Parameters for Essential Instruction, and plan classroom instruction to support student learning.
Click here for more information.
Presentation Materials:
PowerPoint
PDF
New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP)
A series of online NECAP informational workshops were presented the week of April 13 for Maine educators, including two sessions focusing specifically on English Language Arts: grades 3 - 5, and grades 6 - 8. The presentations were recorded, and are provided here.
Reading and Writing, grades 3-5 Online Presentation - Audio/Video Recording of the 4/16 Web Presentation (Flash *)
Reading and Writing, grades 3-5 Presentation - PowerPoint (Slides only)
Reading and Writing Grades 6-8 Online Presentation - Audio/Video Recording of the 4/14 Web Presentation (Flash *)
Reading and Writing Grades 6-8 Presentation - PowerPoint (Slides only)
NECAP Reading and Writing Standards
NECAP Released Items
Maine Learning Results
The Maine State Board of Education has officially approved Regulation 132, Learning Results: Parameters for Essential Instruction. The final changes are online and can be found at this link: http://www.maine.gov/education/lres/pei/index.html.
Supporting Materials for Maine Learning Results
The Maine Department of Education is developing several supporting materials to encourage deeper understandings of the revised Maine Learning Results: Parameters for Essential Instruction English Language Arts document.
ELA PowerPoint- Provides an introduction to the structure and content of the revised Learning Results and addresses some considerations when implementing these new Learning Results.
Updated 11/16/09 -pb
* The audio/visual recordings linked on this site are in Flash format. In order to view these presentations, you will need to have the Adobe Flash Player loaded on your computer. Most computers are already equipped with this program; if your computer does not have the Flash Player, or you wish to upgrade, you can download the program for free by clicking on the icon below. This is a safe and quick download.
Many of the documents on this website are in PDF format. In order to view these materials, you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. If you do not currently have this software on your computer, or would like to upgrade to a more recent version of Reader, click on the icon below for the free download. This is a safe and quick upgrade directly from Adobe.
