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A series of Essential Questions
governs the Language Arts Curriculum K-12. These questions are listed
below along with the high school benchmark which measures each question
and a summary of behaviors which reflect a student’s having reached the
goal.
Essential Question #1: What is critical thinking
and why is it important in the Language Arts?
Benchmark: Student effectively processes
written, visual, and auditory text.
Evidence of Achievement: The student
demonstrates a developed understanding of the text supported by
adequate interpretation and the ability to reflect, reshape, and deepen
initial understanding. The Student expresses a defined association
between the text and self, other texts, and outside experiences. The
student demonstrates thoughtful judgments about the literary quality of
the text.
Essential Question #2: How do readers recognize
and writers use elements of good literature?
Benchmark: Student effectively responds to a
range of texts in descriptive, narrative, expository and persuasive
modes
Evidence of Achievement: The student’s
response demonstrates a developed understanding of the text as
well as sufficient interpretation supported by textual examples.
The response revises initial understanding and moves beyond the text
itself. The response adequately balances specific and general detail by
comparing instances from the text with a variety of literary, personal,
world and oral examples. The response evaluates the text by judging its
merits and illustrating with specific and appropriate examples.
Essential Question #3: How do I interact with
language and communicate my ideas effectively?
Benchmark: The student will write with clarity
in descriptive, narrative, expository, or poetic modes.
Evidence of Achievement: The student’s piece
demonstrates clear and generally fluent expression. The piece reflects
an awareness of audience, sufficient supporting detail, and an
adequately developed thesis. The organizational structure is defined
with few digressions. There is some variety in the use of compositional
formats.
Essential Question #4: How can the language arts
lead to meaning, pleasure, and personal experience?
Benchmark: Students will recognize and
appreciate that contemporary and classical literature has shaped human
thought.
Evidence of Achievement: In discussion and
written response, the student demonstrates a sufficient understanding of
the themes that express human ideas, as well as a somewhat developed
interpretation of the work’s contribution to the shaping of those
ideas. Students develop a critical evaluation of classic texts by
adequately judging their merits and illustrating with appropriate
examples the reasons they are considered classics. Students evaluate
contemporary texts by making adequate text to text, text to self, and
text to world connections.
Essential Question #5: How does an examination
of other cultures and human experiences give us an appreciation of
ourselves and others?
Benchmark: Students will recognize that writers
and readers are influenced by social, cultural, and historic contexts.
Evidence of Achievement: Student responses
identify and adequately analyze themes central to diverse human
experience. Students develop an interpretation examining how elements of
bias influence the text. Students are able to sufficiently analyze,
evaluate, and support the basic beliefs, perspectives and assumptions
that underscore an author’s work.
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