| Reasoning and Critical Thinking |
- Read a wide variety of increasingly complex or difficult texts from diverse cultures, including literary texts (E.g. short stories, poetry, novels, mysteries, historical fiction, autobiographies, scripts, lyrics)
- Reading graphic texts(E.g. graphs, graphic organizers, charts and tables, diagrams, surveys and maps)
- Reading informational texts (print and online encyclopedias, magazines and newspaper articles, electronic textbooks, non-fictional resources, a variety of dictionaries and thesauri)
- Identify a variety of purposes for reading and choose reading materials appropriate for those purposes (E.g. newspapers to verify information, a local, national or community newspaper for coverage of current/specific issue)
- Analyze a variety of texts both simple and complex, and explain how the different elements in them contribute to meaning and influence the reader’s reaction (E.g. narrative: having ordinary characters caught up in an exciting plot makes the story seem more real)
- Evaluate the effectiveness of both simple and complex texts based on evidence from the text
- Identify the topic, audience and purpose for more complex writing forms
- Generate ideas about more challenging topics and identify those most appropriate for the purpose
- Gather information to support ideas for writing, using a variety of strategies and a wide range of print and electronic resources
- Identify and order main ideas and supporting details and group them into units that can be used to develop a multi-paragraph piece of writing, using a variety of strategies and organizational patterns
- Determine whether the ideas and information they have collected are relevant, appropriate, and sufficiently specific for the purpose, and do more research if necessary
- Identify a variety of strategies they used during, after, and before writing
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| Understanding Form and Style |
- Identify a variety of reading strategies and use them appropriately before, after, during reading to understand increasingly complex texts(activate prior knowledge on a topic through dialogue and discussion, ask questions to monitor learning, summarize texts during reading, synthesize ideas broaden understanding)
- Develop and explain interpretations of increasingly complex texts using slated and implied ideas to support their interpretations
- Write complex texts of different lengths using a variety of forms
- Identify conventions and techniques appropriate to the form chosen for a media text
- Identify the strategies they found most helpful in making sense of and creating media texts and explain how these and other strategies can help them improve as media viewers/listeners/ and producers
- Identify an appropriate form to suit the specific purpose and audience for a media text they plan to create
- Explain how individual elements of various media forms combine to create, reinforce, and/or enhance meaning
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| Knowledge of Language Structures |
- Demonstrate understanding of increasingly complex texts by summarizing important ideas and citing a variety of details that support the main idea (key information in manuals, surveys, graphs, online and print encyclopedias)
- Analyze a variety of text forms and explain how their particular characteristics communicate meaning, with focus on literary texts such as a novel, graphic texts such as a photo essay, and informational texts such as a manual
- Sort and classify information for their writing in a variety of ways that allows them to manipulate the information and see different combinations and relationships in their data
- Vary sentence structures to give their writing rhythm and pacing by using a variety of connecting/ or introducing words and phrases to combine short, simple sentences, into longer complex sentences
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| Vocabulary Building |
- Confirm spellings and word meanings or word choice using a variety of resources appropriate for the purpose
- Spell familiar words correctly
- Spell unfamiliar words using a variety of strategies that involve understanding sound-symbol relationships, word structures, word meanings and generalizations about spelling
- Produce revised draft pieces of writing to meet identified criteria based on the expectations
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| Use of Language Conventions |
- Identify the point of view presented in texts, give evidence of any biases they may contain; and suggest other possible perspectives
- Regularly use vivid and/or figurative language and innovative expressions in their writing
- Use punctuation appropriately to communicate their intended meaning in more complex forms, including forms more specific to different subject areas: with the focus on use of periods after initials, in abbreviations, and in decimal numbers; parentheses, punctuation to indicate intonation, pauses, or gestures
- Use parts of speech correctly to communicate their meaning clearly, with a focus of the use of: relative pronouns; prepositions; adjectives; conjunctions; adverbs; past; present and future verb tenses; present and past participles
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