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    Basal Alignment Project

    WHAT IS IT?

    The Council of the Great City Schools and Student Achievement Partners partnered together to launch an initiative called the Basal Alignment Project (BAP). Our goal is to build district capacity for writing text-dependent questions to current Reading/ELA textbooks that would be available for teachers to use during the 2012-2013 school year. BAP provides focused training on evaluating existing questions for alignment and writing good text-dependent questions to sources. These new resources will require students to read and respond to questions that require a closer reading of the text.

    The BAP Project involves convening district teams comprised of literacy, English Language Learners, Students with Disabilities, and other educators from across the nation to align and write questions for curriculum materials to implement the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts and Literacy. The sessions focus specifically on the work that must be done with district writing teams to align current basals by developing text-based questions to selections in grades 3-5.

    WHY IS THIS PROJECT IMPORTANT?
    BAP builds district capacity to better align existing materials to the English Language Arts and Literacy Common Core State Standards while new CCSS-aligned materials are developed and published. School districts, publishers, education organizations and others can link to the site or download and adapt materials that can be widely available to teachers and students.

    We acknowledge the support of the publishers in the Basal Alignment Project including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Medallion, Reading, StoryTown, and Trophies; McGraw-Hill’s Imagine It!, Open Court and Treasures; and Pearson’s Reading Street. Ultimately, BAP is a temporary solution for providing access to CCSS aligned materials. However; the long-term benefit is the deep professional learning for each district team to then provide professional development at the district level so that teachers can apply these strategies across grade levels and content areas.
     
    WHERE CAN I FIND THESE RESOURCES?
    The new repository is located at "Basal Alignment Project" on the education site Edmodo -- www.edmodo.com. Create a teacher user name and password on Edmodo. The group code "jsv4r7" must be used to join the Basal Alignment Project group.