Integrating Language and Content: The Knowledge Framework

Teaching English Language Learners (ELLs) academic literacy skills—academically appropriate ways of thinking, talking, writing, and problem solving—is an important goal of our school systems, and subject-based literacy is critical for students to succeed both academically and professionally. Given that language is the primary means through which teaching and learning is carried out, teachers need strategies to ensure that they can develop these skills in all their students. This article describes a non-commercial heuristic called the knowledge framework (KF), which provides a springboard for developing classroom tasks that aim to bridge language and thinking skills so that students can learn content and academic language simultaneously. We present selected work that has been carried out on the KF for more than twenty years and offer ideas for thematic units as an illustration of how to implement the KF