STANDARD 3.2: Language Arts Literacy

Language Arts Literacy

Mission: Learning to read, write, speak, listen, and view critically, strategically and creatively enables students to discover personal and shared meaning throughout their lives.

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	Comments and Examples
By the end of Grade 12:
1. Employ the most effective writing formats and strategies for the purpose and audience.
2. Write a variety of essays (for example, a summary, an explanation, a description, a literary analysis essay) that: • Develops a thesis; • Creates an organizing structure appropriate to purpose, audience and context; • Includes relevant information and excludes extraneous information; • Makes valid inferences; • Supports judgments with relevant and substantial evidence and well-chosen details; and • provides a coherent conclusion.
3. Evaluate the impact of an author’s decisions regarding tone, word choice, style, content, point of view, literary elements, and literary merit, and produce an interpretation of overall effectiveness.
4. Apply all copyright laws to information used in written work.
5. When writing, employ structures to support the reader, such as transition words, chronology, hierarchy or sequence, and forms, such as headings and subtitles.
6. Compile and synthesize information for everyday and workplace purposes, such as job applications, resumes, business letters, college applications, and written proposals.
7. Demonstrate personal style and voice effectively to support the purpose and engage the audience of a piece of writing.
8. Analyze deductive arguments (if the premises are all true and the argument’s form is valid, the conclusion is true) and inductive arguments (the conclusion provides the best or most probable explanation of the truth of the premises, but is not necessarily true.)

Link to Standard 3.2 Grade 8

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