Resources for Educators

There are so many new resources and professional opportunities for teachers who educate English learners (ELs).  The ESL Portal PA is an online resource for professional learning opportunities and instructional materials that supports Pennsylvania educators and community organizations as they strive to provide equitable, high-quality educational programs for English learners and their families. The portal also links to updated federal and state guidance, current educational research, instructional practice and more.  

The Basic Education Circular (BEC) is a document from the Pennsylvania Department of Education that provides guidelines to English Language Development (ELD) teachers and content/classroom teachers.  Once on the website, look for the Educating English Learners (ELs) link in the table. 

The English Language Development Standards and the ELL Overlay can be found by navigating the PDE SAS website.  

The Center for Applied Linguistics is a nonprofit organization promoting access, equity and mutual understanding between linguistically and culturally diverse people around the world. They also offer scaffolding options for teachers of English Learners (ELs) from Kindergarten to 12th grade. 

In addition to the following information, you will also be able to find more information regarding English Learners on the SAS Portal.  You will first need to locate the SAS PDE ESL Community and "Join" in. Once you have joined the community, you will then see the Content Repository, which has an abundance of information for educators.  Here are the directions on how to get to the Content Repository once you are in the ELD Community page: 

1. See the tab at the top of the page when you get into the Community: There are three tabs and you click on Content Repository. Please note the list of entries are only those most recently uploaded. To get to the Folders, scroll down to the blue tab that says "content repository" and the list of folders will appear.
2. Once on the community page, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page and click on the content repository blue tab. Again the list of folders will appear.