Benchmark Advance©2022 is designed to support educators in meeting the needs of all learners through systematic, evidence-based methods which offer differentiated and scaffolded instruction to promote access to grade level texts and grade level standards. Routines and procedures are key to providing scaffolding and access for all students, but special population students like English learners and striving learners, especially benefit.

Each of the ten units of Benchmark Advance©2022 were intentionally designed to teach a cluster of standards that cut across the ELA strands across each unit. Instruction of the cluster of standards, skills and strategies spirals across the unit as they are applied to the core set of grade-level complex texts. This provides students the opportunity to transfer their learning of the standards from one text as they apply them to the next text in the unit. This spiral of instruction continues across the year as standards that are introduced in one unit are revisited in later units, giving students multiple opportunities and access points to learn the standards. All standards that are tested on state assessments are taught by the end of Unit 7.

The Science of Reading Foundational Reading-Skill Competencies of phonological and phonemic awareness, phonics and word study, fluency and high-frequency words are taught in Benchmark Advance©2022 through Phonics and Word Study lessons that are provided for grades K– 3. Spiraled mini-lessons integrate new and previously learned skills using topic-based unit texts and resources. Language foundations are reinforced through explicit phonics and word study instruction that is linked to authentic reading and writing practice, with reading and writing independence achieved through gradual release of responsibility from whole-group to small-group/independent time.

Eden Elementary School