Content Standard 1 - READING AND LISTENING FOR COMPREHENSION: Students will apply strategies and skills to comprehend information that is read, heard, and viewed.
A. Listen to, read, react to, and retell information
1. Use meta-cognitive strategies to comprehend text and to clarify meaning of vocabulary (e.g., re-read the text, consult other sources, ask for help, paraphrase, question).
2. Visualize and recall story details, including characterization and sequence.
3. Read a variety of texts, including:
fiction (e.g., legends, novels, folklore, science fiction)
non-fiction (e.g., auto-biographies, informational books, diaries, and journals)
poetry
drama
4. Increase vocabulary through reading, listening, and interacting.
B. Locate and use a variety of resources to acquire information across the curriculum
1. Use key words, indices, cross-references, and letters on volumes to find information.
2. Use multiple representations of information (e.g., maps, charts, photos) to find information.
C. Demonstrate critical thinking skills to comprehend written, spoken, and visual information
1. Respond to fiction, poetry, and drama using interpretive, critical, and evaluative processes by:
analyzing author's word choice and context
examining reasons for characters' actions
identifying and examining characters' motives
considering a situation or problems from different characters' perspectives
2. Respond to non-fiction using interpretive, critical, and evaluative processes.
3. Analyze characters, events, and plots from different texts and cite supporting evidence.
4. Analyze how language and visuals bring characters to life, enhance plot development, and produce a response.
5. Demonstrate deductive and inductive reasoning by drawing logical conclusions.
D. Acquire reading strategies
1. Use word identification strategies appropriately and automatically when encountering words (e.g., graphophonic, syntactic, semantic).
2. Identify key words and discover their relationships.
3. Adjust speed of reading to suit purpose and difficulty of material.
4. Read aloud with fluency and comprehension grade-level text.
5. Increase vocabulary through reading, listening, and interacting.
Content Standard 2 - WRITING AND SPEAKING FOR EXPRESSION: Students will communicate effectively through speaking and writing.
A. Demonstrate competence in speaking to convey information
1. Actively contribute to a discussion.
2. Use language to:
present information and ideas clearly and concisel
interview
solve problems
make decisions
3. Make oral presentations, using technologies when appropriate, with an awareness of audience and purpose.
4. Use appropriate non-verbal communication while giving presentations.
5. Read aloud with fluency and comprehension grade-level text.
B. Apply grammatical and language conventions to communicate
1. Use simple and compound sentences in writing and speaking.
2. Combine short, related sentences with appositives, participial phrases, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositional phrases.
3. Identify and use regular and irregular verbs, adverbs, prepositions, and coordinating conjunctions in writing and speaking.
4. Use parentheses, commas in direct quotations, and apostrophes in the possessive case of nouns and in contractions.
5. Use underlining, quotation marks, or italics to identify titles of documents.
6. Capitalize names of magazines, newspapers, works of art, musical compositions, organizations, proper nouns, and the first word in quotations when appropriate.
7. Spell correctly roots, inflections, affixes, and syllable constructions.
8. Compose multiple paragraphs with:
topic sentences
specific, relevant details
logical progression and movement of ideas
coherence
elaboration
concluding statement related to topic
9. Speak in a manner that guides the listener to understand important ideas by using proper phrasing, pitch, and modulation.
C. Demonstrate competence in the skills and strategies of the writing process
1. Produce a variety of written compositions using:
descriptive writing (e.g., using relevant details and ideas that figuratively recreate an event or experience)
narrative writing (e.g., using sequence, point of view, and character to tell a story)
expository writing (e.g., identifies and stays on the topic; develops the topic with simple facts, details, examples, explanations)
2. Use planning strategies that generate topics and organize ideas (e.g., brainstorming, mapping, webbing, reading, discussion).
3. Focus revision on:
sequence of events and ideas
transitional words
sentence patterns
Content Standard 3 - LITERATURE AND MEDIA: Students will use literature and media to develop an understanding of people, societies, and the self.
A. Use language, literature, and media to gain and demonstrate awareness of cultures around the world
1. Examine the reasons for characters' actions.
2. Identify and examine characters' motives.
3. Consider a situation or problem from different characters' point of view.
4. Trace the exploits of character types across literature and media depicting various cultures.
B. Identify and use the types of literature according to their purpose and function
1. Identify beginning, middle, and end of a story.
2. Describe the contextual differences of various forms of literature.
3. Describe the reasons why an author would choose a particular genre.
4. Compose fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and drama using self-selected and/or assigned topics and forms.
5. Respond to fiction, non fiction, poetry, and drama using interpretive, critical, and evaluative processes by:
analyzing author's word choice and context
examining reasons for characters' actions
identifying and examining characters' motives
considering a situation or problems from different characters' perspectives