Books about Proficiency from Amazon.com

"With all the offerings that Margo Gottlieb provides in this book, she makes us yearn to not only cross the bridge of assessment, but also to feel confident when we get to the other side."
-From the Foreword by Else Hamayan
Illinois Resource Center

"This book is long overdue! Appropriate assessment and placement of ELLs is the most basic of all instructional processes. Without this, we cannot be sure we can measure student progress or address individual instructional needs."
-Margarita Calderón, Research Scientist
Center for Data-Driven Reform, Johns Hopkins University

"Here, finally, we have a text that empowers teachers by giving them practical strategies for harnessing assessments of language and content in ways that benefit their teaching and their students' learning."
-Timothy Boals, WIDA Consortium Director, Wisconsin Dept. of Public Instruction

"Assessing English Language Learners includes a multitude of evaluation instruments that readers can use as they assess their students. Margo Gottlieb helps teachers adjust assessment to different language proficiency levels and then evaluate language proficiency and content learning appropriately."
-David E. Freeman, Yvonne S. Freeman, Professors, Curriculum and Instruction, University of Texas, Brownsville

Discover how to bridge the gap between equitably assessing linguistic and academic performance!

Student assessment is the cornerstone of standards-based education. For the growing population of English Language Learners, however, measuring their acquisition and learning is a multifaceted process. This well-documented text examines the unique needs of English Language Learners and describes strategies for implementing instructional assessment of language and content.

With both depth and breadth, this practical resource covers how to equitably and comprehensively assess the language proficiency and academic achievement of English Language Learners. Both practicing and aspiring educators will benefit from

• Rubrics, charts, checklists, surveys, and other ready-to-use tools
• Professional development activities
• An integrated approach to teaching standards, language, and content
• Guidance on how best to address standardized testing and grading

Use this timely text to advance the academic language proficiency of English Language Learners through enhanced teaching and assessment techniques. 

(20050629).
Price: $29.36 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In California, students age 16 and older and adults who pass the CHSPE receive a certificate that is the legal equivalent of a high school diploma This updated manual prepares test takers for that exam with a diagnostic test, a detailed subject review, and two full-length model tests with answer keys and answer explanations. The subject review presents separate chapters on the basics of writing, reading, and mathematics. The basics of writing chapter offers a short grammar review plus detailed advice on answering the CHSPE essay question. The reading chapter presents reading comprehension selections with questions for practice and review. The math chapter reviews arithmetic, algebra, graphs, measures, and geometry..
Price: $10.37 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Writing Smarter! provides 106 detailed lesson plans with reproducibles to help students begin writing better immediately! These writing improvement materials are complete and self-contained, can be used with individual students or an entire class in any order, and are organized into 13 sections: Orientation, Description, Character Sketch, Sentence Structure, Personal Narratives, Persuasion, Research, Interviews, The News, Writing Letters, Short Fiction, Poetry, and Peer Editing..
Price: $18.83 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Updated to reflect the most recently given exams and requirements, this manual focuses on the several writing proficiency exams given to college students in California. Students in the State University System must pass a writing proficiency exam as a prerequisite for receiving a bachelor’s degree. This book’s three model tests reflect California writing exam standards, which entails both a written essay and multiple-choice questions..
Price: $10.20 [Notify me when price goes down.]

With over 400 reading and more than 8 recorded hours of listening exercises, Ace My Language Arabic is ideal for those with a foundation in Arabic who want to dramatically improve their acquisition and retention, as well as their performance on standardized tests, including the DLPT. The exercises, from current authentic sources, are statistically engineered to achieve amazing results by maximizing exposure to the language most frequently encountered in real-world contexts. This book was formerly called Ace the DLPT..
Price: $69.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This volume of Ready-to-Use Writing Proficiency Lessons & Activities gives classroom teachers and language arts specialists a powerful and effective tool for addressing curriculum standards and competencies at the eighth-grade level and preparing their students for comprehensive assessment testing.

Writing Proficiency Lessons & Activities books are also available from Jossey-Bass at the fourth-grade level and the tenth-grade level.

Included are a variety of easy-to-use, reproducible activity sheets that provide application and review the basic language skills as well as extensive practice in producing the types of writing called for in standardized tests.

For easy use, the 240-plus student activity sheets are printed in a big 8-1/2" x 11" format that lays flat for photocopying. The activities are organized into nine sections. Here is just a sample of the topics covered in Sections 1-5:

• CHOOSING THE RIGHT WORD: words often confused, prefixes, suffixes, synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, adverbs vs. adjectives, sensory words, similes, metaphors, and double negatives
• MAKING MECHANICS AND USAGE WORK FOR YOU: apostrophes, hyphens, end marks, commas, semicolons, colons, quotation marks, titles, and misplaced modifiers.
• WRITING SENTENCES: subjects and predicates, subject-verb agreement, simple and compound sentences, complex sentences, sentence fragments, run-on sentences, and sentence types
• WRITING PARAGRAPHS: writing a topic sentence, writing a concluding sentence, developing the topic, using tense consistently, using transitional words, and staying on the topic
  
• ESSAY-WRITING TECHNIQUES: brainstorming, clustering, outlining, writing an introductory paragraph with a question or a surprising statement, developing the topic using examples, avoiding irrelevant details, writing a concluding paragraph, proofreading, and writing a five-paragraph essay.

.
Price: $18.62 [Notify me when price goes down.]

For secondary reading specialist and English teachers, this unique resource provides over 200 ready-to-use exercises to help you introduce and reinforce basic literary and reading concepts and develop essential thinking and interpretive skills with students of varying abilities.

The activities are organized into 12 sequential units and build naturally to higher levels of reading proficiency. Each unit also includes reproducible reading selections plus an introductory section with suggestions for teaching the skills in that unit. Here's just an overview of unit topics with sample worksheet titles:

1. THE GOOD READER IN ACTION presents a variety of warm-up exercises, such as "Filling in Famous Quotations," to help students become more flexible in working with words.

2. ALL WORDS ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL focuses on different kinds of reading in activities such as "Reading for Proof" and "Search & Scan Exercise."

3. WHEN TO USE A DICTIONARY features activities to help students determine when to use a dictionary, for example, "Making an Educated Guess" and "What's in a Name?"

4. A MEETING OF MINDS teaches students to look beyond the surface for the writer's meaning through exercises such as "Recognizing Charged Words" and "Dealing with Doublespeak."

5. THE READER AS REPORTER provides 20 exercises focusing on a reporter's five W's and an H (how) to develop the habit of looking for answers to these things in reading.

6. WHEN COMPLICATIONS ARISE prepares students for reading literary masterpieces that might otherwise overwhelm them with activities such as "Breaking Up Busy Sentences."

7. COMING TO TERMS WITH TECHNIQUES OF LITERATURE features exercises to build students' understanding of literary techniques, for example, "Seeing the Logic in an Analogy."

8. THE TRUTH IN LITERATURE develops understanding of differences and similarities between nonfiction and fiction through exercises such as "Taking Sides in a Conflict."

9. SETTING & POINT OF VIEW focuses on some of the elements readers can absorb from the first paragraph in activities like "Omniscient or Outside Observer"

10. PLOT introduces the basics of plot and types of fiction passages in exercises such as "Plotting the Action" and "Drawing Conclusions from Dialogue."

11. CHARACTER: THE HEART OF THE STORY presents various methods by which authors achieve effective characterization through activities such as "Shades of Differences."

12. SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT feature authorial comments, elements of symbolism, and thematic references in activities such as "And the Moral is..." and "Familiar Symbols."

For easy use, all material is printed in a big lay-flat binding that folds flat for photocopying of the reproducible pages. And complete answer keys to all activities are provided at the end.

You can use individual activities in conjunction with your classroom literature assignments'to introduce a concept or reinforce specific skills-or as an integrated program to focus on your students' special needs. In Reading Smarter! you'll find a wealth of exercises and ideas that not only prepare students for higher level reading, but also help them approach reading as a lively art!.
Price: $17.22 [Notify me when price goes down.]