Standards-Based Sentence Stems

For Expressive Language Expectations

Our newest resource offers a collection of sentence stems crafted to align with the North Carolina English Language Development (ELD) Standards. Sentence stems are effective scaffolds for multilingual learners (MLs) as they provide a structure for MLs to organize and express their ideas. Additionally, sentence stems help MLs understand the structure and grammar of the English language and build their vocabulary with common phrases and expressions.

It is the NCDPI ML/Title III Team’s recommendation that teachers use these sentence stems to provide scaffolding for MLs as well as opportunities to be more independent in expression-- relying less on the sentence stems as students progress in their mastery of English and the ELD Standards.

Please note that the sentence stems in this resource are not exhaustive and should be adapted to suit different levels of language proficiency making them useful for MLs at all stages of their language learning journey.

Start exploring this resource now!

Collaboration Comic

From WIDA

Collaboration is one of the four Big Ideas of the WIDA ELD Standards Framework. This two-page "comic" strip shows the story of how a science teacher and an ESL teacher work together on their multilingual learners' language development and ways of meaningfully engaging with the content of a science unit. This step-by-step example can be used in tandem with Section 4 of the WIDA ELD Standards Framework, 2020 Edition, that has a more detailed look at the collaborative planning process (WIDA 2023).