STANDARD 3: Language Arts Literacy

Standard 3.1 Reading

All students will understand and apply the knowledge of sounds, letters, and words in written English to become independent and fluent readers and will read a variety of materials and texts with fluency and comprehension.

Big Idea: The ability to read a variety of texts requires independence, comprehension, and fluency.
3.1 A. Concepts About Print
Essential Questions	Enduring Understandings
- How does understanding a text’s structure help me better understand its meaning?	- Understanding of a text’s features, structures, and characteristics facilitate the reader’s ability to make meaning of the text.
Cumulative Progress Indicators	Comments and Examples
By the end of Grade 12:
1. Interpret and use common textual features (e.g., paragraphs, topic, sentence, index, glossary, table of contents) and graphic features, (e.g., charts, maps, diagrams) to comprehend information.
2. Identify interrelationships between and among ideas and concepts within a text, such as cause-and-effect relationships.
3.1 B. Phonological Awareness
By the end of Grade 12:
No additional indicators at this grade level
3.1 C. Decoding and Word Recognition
Essential Questions	Enduring Understandings
- How do I figure out a word I do not know?	- Readers use language structure and context clues to identify the intended meaning of words and phrases as they are used in text.
Cumulative Progress Indicators	Comments and Examples
By the end of Grade 12:
1. Decode new words using structural and context analysis.
3.1 D. Fluency
Essential Questions	Enduring Understandings
- How does fluency affect comprehension?	- Fluent readers group words quickly to help them gain meaning from what they read
Cumulative Progress Indicators	Comments and Examples
By the end of Grade 12:
1. Read developmentally appropriate materials at an independent level with accuracy and speed.
2. Use appropriate rhythm, flow, meter, and pronunciation when reading.
3. Read a variety of genres and types of text with fluency and comprehension.
3.1 E. Reading Strategies (before, during, and after reading)
Essential Questions	Enduring Understandings
-What do readers do when they do not understand everything in a text?	- Good readers employ strategies to help them understand text. Strategic readers can develop, select, and apply strategies to enhance their comprehension.
Cumulative Progress Indicators	Comments and Examples
By the end of Grade 12:
1. Assess, and apply reading strategies that are effective for a variety of texts (e.g., previewing, generating questions, visualizing, monitoring, summarizing, evaluating).
2. Use a variety of graphic organizers with various text types for memory retention and monitoring comprehension.
3. Analyze the ways in which a text’s organizational structure supports or confounds its meaning or purpose.
3.1 F. Vocabulary and Concept Development
Essential Questions	Enduring Understandings
-What do readers do when they do not understand everything in a text?	- Words powerfully affect meaning
Cumulative Progress Indicators	Comments and Examples
By the end of Grade 12:
1. Use knowledge of word origins and word relationships, as well as historical and literary context clues, to determine the meanings of specialized vocabulary.
2. Use knowledge of root words to understand new words.
3. Apply reading vocabulary in different content areas.
4 Clarify pronunciation, meanings, alternate word choice, parts of speech, and etymology of words using the dictionary, thesaurus, glossary, and technology resources.
5 Define words, including nuances in meanings, using context such as definition, example, restatement, or contrast.
3.1 G. Comprehension Skills and Response to Text
Essential Questions	Enduring Understandings
- How do readers construct meaning from text?	- Good readers compare, infer, synthesize, and make connections (text to text, text to world, text to self) to make text personally relevant and useful.
Cumulative Progress Indicators	Comments and Examples
By the end of Grade 12:
Literary Text
1. Apply a theory of literary criticism to a particular literary work.
2. Analyze how our literary heritage is marked by distinct literary movements and is part of a global literary tradition.
3. Compare and evaluate the relationship between past literary traditions and contemporary writing.
4. Analyze how works of a given period reflect historical and social events and conditions.
5. Recognize literary concepts, such as rhetorical device, logical fallacy, and jargon, and their effect on meaning.
6. Interpret how literary devices affect reading emotions and understanding.
7. Analyze and evaluate the appropriateness of diction and figurative language (e.g., irony, paradox, metaphor, simile, personification).
8. Recognize the use or abuse of ambiguity, contradiction, paradox, irony, incongruities, overstatement and understatement in text and explain their effect on the reader.
9. Analyze how an author’s use of words creates tone and mood, and how choice of words advances the theme or purpose of the work.
10. Identify and understand the author’s use of idioms, analogies, metaphors, and similes, as well as metrics, rhyme scheme, rhythm, and alliteration in prose and poetry.
11. Identify the structures in drama, identifying how the elements of dramatic literature (e.g., dramatic irony, soliloquy, stage direction, and dialogue) articulate a playwright’s vision.
12. Analyze the elements of setting and characterization to construct meaning of how characters influence the progression of the plot and resolution of the conflict.
13. Analyze moral dilemmas in works of literature, as revealed by characters’ motivation and behavior.
14. Identify and analyze recurring themes across literary works and the ways in which these themes and ideas are developed.
Informational Text
15. Identify, describe, evaluate, and synthesize the central ideas in informational texts.
16. Distinguish between essential and nonessential information.
17. Analyze the use of credible references.
18. Differentiate between fact and opinion by using complete and accurate information, coherent arguments, and points of view.
19. Demonstrate familiarity with everyday texts such as job and college applications, W-2 forms contracts, etc.
20. Read, comprehend, and be able to follow information gained from technical and instructional manuals (e.g., how-to books, computer manuals, instructional manuals).
21. Distinguish between a summary and a critique.
22. Summarize informational and technical texts and explain the visual components that support them.
23. Evaluate informational and technical texts for clarity, simplicity and coherence and for the appropriateness of graphic and visual appeal.
24. Identify false premises in an argument.
25. Analyze foundational U.S. documents for their historical and literary significance and how they reflect a common and shared American Culture (e.g., The Declaration of Independence, The Preamble of the U.S. Constitution, Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”).
H. Inquiry and Research
Essential Questions	Enduring Understandings
- Why conduct research?	- Researchers gather and critique information from different sources for specific purposes.
Cumulative Progress Indicators	Comments and Examples

By the end of Grade 12:
1. Select appropriate electronic media for research and evaluate the quality of the information received.
2. Develop materials for a portfolio that reflect a specific career choice.
3. Develop increased ability to critically select works to support a research topic.
4. Read and critically analyze a variety of works, including books and other print materials (e.g., periodicals, journals, manuals), about one issue or topic, or books by a single author or in one genre, and produce evidence of reading.
5. Apply information gained from several sources or books on a single topic or by a single author to foster an argument, draw conclusions, or advance a position.
6. Critique the validity and logic of arguments advanced in public documents, their appeal to various audiences, and the extent to which they anticipate and address reader concerns.
7. Produce written and oral work that demonstrates synthesis of multiple informational and technical sources.
8. Produce written and oral work that demonstrates drawing conclusions based on evidence from informational and technical text.
9. Read and compare at least two works, including books, related to the same genre, topic, or subject and produce evidence of reading (e.g., compare central ideas, characters, themes, plots, settings) to determine how authors reach similar or different conclusions.

Standard 3.2 Writing

All students will write in clear, concise, organized language that varies in content and form for different audiences and purposes.

Big Idea: Writing is the process of communicating in print for a variety of audiences and purposes.
3.2 A. Writing as a Process (prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, postwriting)
Essential Questions	Enduring Understandings
- How do good writers express themselves? How does process shape the writer’s product?	- Good writers develop and refine their ideas for thinking, learning, communicating, and aesthetic expression.
Cumulative Progress Indicators	Comments and Examples
By the end of Grade 12:
1. Engage in the full writing process by writing daily and for sustained amounts of time.
2. Define and narrow a problem or research topic.
3. Use strategies such as graphic organizers and outlines to plan and write drafts according to the intended message, audience, and purpose for writing.
4. Analyze and revise writing to improve style, focus and organization, coherence, clarity of thought, sophisticated word choice and sentence variety, and subtlety of meaning.
5. Exclude extraneous details, repetitious ideas, and inconsistencies to improve writing.
6. Review and edit work for spelling, usage, clarity, and fluency.
7. Use the computer and word-processing software to compose, revise, edit, and publish a piece.
8. Use a scoring rubric to evaluate and improve own writing and the writing of others.
9. Reflect on own writing and establish goals for growth and improvement.
3.2 B. Writing as a Product (resulting in a formal product or publication)
Essential Questions	Enduring Understandings
- How do writers develop a well written product?	- Good writers use a repertoire of strategies that enables them to vary form and style, in order to write for different purposes, audiences, and contexts.
Cumulative Progress Indicators	Comments and Examples
By the end of Grade 12:
1. Analyzing characteristics, structures, tone, and features of language of selected genres and apply this knowledge to own writing.
2. Critique published works for authenticity and credibility.
3. Draft a thesis statement and support/defend it through highly developed ideas and content, organization, and paragraph development.
4. Write multi-paragraph, complex pieces across the curriculum using a variety of strategies to develop a central idea (e.g., cause-effect, problem/solution, hypothesis/results, rhetorical questions, parallelism).
5. Write a range of essays and expository pieces across the curriculum, such as persuasive, analytic, critique, or position paper.
6. Write a literary research paper that synthesizes and cites data using researched information and technology to support writing.
7. Use primary and secondary sources to provide evidence, justification, or to extend a position, and cite sources, such as periodicals, interviews, discourse, and electronic media.
8. Foresee readers’ needs and develop interest through strategies such as using precise language, specific details, definitions, descriptions, examples, anecdotes, analogies, and humor as well as anticipating and countering concerns and arguments and advancing a position.
9. Provide compelling openings and strong closure to written pieces.
10. Employ relevant graphics to support a central idea (e.g., charts, graphic organizers, pictures, computer-generated presentation)
11. Use the responses of others to review content, organization, and usage for publication.
12. Select pieces of writing from a literacy folder for a presentation portfolio that reflects performance in a variety of genres.
13. Write sentences of varying length and complexity using precise vocabulary to convey intended meaning.
3.2 C. Mechanics, Spelling, and Handwriting
Essential Questions	Enduring Understandings
- How do rules of language affect communication?	- Rules, conventions of language, help readers understand what is being communicated.
Cumulative Progress Indicators	Comments and Examples
By the end of Grade 12:
1. Use Standard English conventions in all writing, such as sentence structure, grammar and usage, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling.
2. Demonstrate a well-developed knowledge of English syntax to express ideas in a lively and effective personal style.
3. Use subordination, coordination, apposition, and other devices effectively to indicate relationships between ideas.
4. Use transition words to reinforce a logical progression of ideas.
5. Use knowledge of Standard English conventions to edit own writing and the writing of others for correctness.
6. Use a variety of reference materials, such as a dictionary, grammar reference, and/or internet/software resources to edit written work.
7. Create a multi-page document using word processing software that demonstrates the ability to format, edit, and print.
3.2 D. Writing Forms, Audiences, and Purposes (exploring a variety of forms)
Essential Questions	Enduring Understandings
- Why does a writer choose a particular form of writing?	- A writer selects a form based on audience and purpose.
Cumulative Progress Indicators