Dear County and District Superintendents and Charter School Administrators:

Announcing the California Literacy Professional Learning Pack: California’s New Resources to Support Literacy Instruction

Literacy remains one of the most important learning goals that we have for our students. When our students become confident and fluent readers, countless doors open for their future success.

I am pleased to announce that the California Department of Education (CDE) has now published a Literacy-Biliteracy Professional Learning Pack to support educators across our state as we move the needle on student achievement, particularly for our youngest readers.

The Literacy Professional Learning Pack includes the release of two crucial literacy guidance documents:

• California Literacy Roadmap’s Literacy Content Blocks for English-Medium Classrooms for Transitional Kindergarten Through Grade Five (TK–5)
  The Literacy Roadmap Content Blocks provide instructional recommendations that educators can use to support students as they develop across all areas of literacy and biliteracy.
• Preschool Through Third Grade (P–3) Learning Progressions for Language and Literacy Development
  The P–3 Learning Progressions clarify important milestones for our youngest learners on their journey to reading by third grade.

These documents reflect professional consensus on the literacy content and expectations for California’s youngest students and effective classroom instruction necessary to achieve improved literacy outcomes. Both sets of documents are envisioned as valuable components of ongoing and future professional learning and system improvement efforts. We are proud that these professional learning tools have been endorsed by a broad coalition of experts in literacy and biliteracy instruction, including the Reading League, the California Association for Bilingual Education, and Californians Together.

The aim is to renew and reinforce California educators’ understandings and application of existing state literacy standards and learning foundations, including guidance set forth in the English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework for California Public Schools, and to deepen their knowledge and use of evidence-based literacy practices and learning progressions contained in these new resources. Both documents integrate the themes of the framework—language development, meaning making, effective expression, foundational skills, and content knowledge—and support the CDE goals for biliteracy.

The “Literacy Content Blocks” are intended to guide literacy instruction based on local context and students’ identified assets and assessed needs in the areas of language, foundational literacy skills, integrated reading and writing, and comprehensive English language development. The blocks reflect an intentional approach to literacy that promotes carefully sequenced initial instruction, appropriate practice and reinforcement, intervention as necessary, and meaningful application in English language arts and other content areas.

The “P–3 Learning Progressions in Language and Literacy Development” present the knowledge and skills children develop over the P–3 continuum and in-practice examples that illustrate how educators can use playful, inquiry-based teaching practices to engage children in developmentally appropriate, culturally sustaining language and literacy development experiences in English and their home languages. The themes of the ELA/ELD Framework organize the document, which is intended to be used by educators to support all students regardless of where they are in the continuum of language and literacy development.

These new resources are now available to be incorporated in your upcoming summer and school year professional learning and planning activities. Please find the California Literacy-Biliteracy Professional Learning Pack on the CDE California Literacy web page at https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cl.

Together with pre-existing guidance, including our standards and frameworks, these new resources help strengthen and make visible the coherence and comprehensiveness of California’s approach to literacy and biliteracy.

On behalf of every student and family in California, I applaud your efforts to move the needle for student achievement, no matter what. I hope these new resources bolster your work to ensure that every child in California can access the life-transforming power of literacy.

Sincerely,

Tony Thurmond
State Superintendent of Public Instruction