We wish to thank the Texas Education Agency and participating educators for a thorough and insightful review of the Grades 3-5 Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) program. We would also like to highlight some of the additional resources we have created to enhance and improve the program. Each of the following items is available on the Amplify CKLA Teacher Resource site. Selected Student Readers in Grades 3-5 are now available in Spanish editions, allowing teachers to flexibly support a variety of dual language and bilingual models as well as individual student needs. These readers are translated by native speakers and are available as interactive e-books and as PDFs that may be downloaded or printed.
Amplify CKLA has just released Text Complexity Guides K-5 for all the program’s student texts. These guides include detailed information about the balance of literary and informational texts at each grade level with accompanying text complexity analysis scores for each text. Amplify CKLA Novel Guides use authentic texts to highlight contemporary characters and events. The target novels were selected for their literary quality and their strengths in representing characters with diverse identities. Through Novel Guides study, students will encounter characters from different geographic regions with varying physical and emotional abilities, racial and ethnic backgrounds, family structures, religions, ages, native languages, and countries of origin.
Essential Questions and Writing Prompts are guides that contain essential and guiding questions, writing prompts, and culminating tasks that enable students to engage deeply with Amplify CKLA content across texts. These may be used to enhance core instruction or with students who are ready for an additional challenge.
The Amplify Vocab App offers students in Grades 3-5 additional opportunity for independent practice with selected Tier 2 vocabulary words from each unit in the Amplify CKLA program. This app is designed to increase the number of times that students see a new vocabulary word, in multiple contexts, while practicing two different vocabulary skills. The app contains various reporting functions, allowing teachers to track each student’s progress and see the total number of activities completed, the longest streak of correct answers, overall accuracy in the app, number of mastered words, and activities completed versus correct on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
Our mission, which has been the driving force behind the Core Knowledge Foundation for three decades, is to provide educational excellence and equity for all children. Amplify CKLA was created to help fulfill that mission. The authors of Amplify CKLA are fully committed to closing the achievement gap by creating a world-class curriculum—one that makes all students college and career-ready. We will continue to provide product enhancements that support that mission, ensuring that all students have opportunities to achieve college and career-readiness.