Content Area Language and Literacy (CALL)

What is CALL?

CALL institutes provide secondary educators with the tools and skills necessary to analyze the academic language demands of course-specific texts and materials. CALL supports teachers in designing effective instruction that meets these demands by providing a framework for teaching disciplinary literacy in science, history-social science, math, language arts, and other subject matter areas.

The CALL framework is unique in the way that:

  • It is based on a comprehensive framework for literacy that helps to demystify the particular components that are causing challenges for students.

  • It helps teachers access and respond to needs through differentiated instruction.

  • There is a focus on academic content-area text and scaffolded support to access the text. 

  • It contains teacher tools to support text analysis and lesson planning.

  • It provides models for explicit instruction inacademic and comprehension strategies.

  • It includes strategies for differentiation across level of English Proficiency for English Learners.

  • It addresses multiple factors that influence student motivation and engagement.

  • There is a focus on sustained collaboration and implementation through a professional learning community model geared towards secondary teachers. 

Outcomes

  • CALL offers middle and high school content teachers practical, research-based instructional routines that help students access and engage with a variety of complex text across content areas

  • CALL provides teachers instructional routines that make challenging text accessible, relevant, and comprehensible to all students, including English learners

  • CALL promotes reading independence as students learn to systematically employ the reading comprehension routines implemented and modeled by their teachers

CRLP Signature Professional Learning Programs meets criteria for professional learning in LCFF, and ESEA’s High-Quality Professional Development for Title I, III, V and VII, Part A; and for Title II, Part A and B.
CALL
I was introduced to a new strategy for building background knowledge. I liked how it was "just enough" and not too revealing of the upcoming text.
Teacher, Taylor Middle School