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Alaska Department of Education & Early Development
English/Language Arts Framework

Chapter 3: Content

Using Standards to Build Educational Excellence

English/Language Arts Standards

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Introduction

Language is the primary way human beings name, organize, communicate, and reflect upon themselves and the world. Language is verbal and visual thinking. It is the means by which a person solves problems, comes to know, and remembers that knowing. It is the dominant means through which all other subjects are expressed and learned and, for this reason, in most American schools English/language arts is the bedrock subject which all others cling to when setting schedules or priorities. Language is also that particular voice and story which we use to tell of the extraordinary experience of being human.

We emphasize that the assumptions in this document refer to any language that is the principal language of instruction.

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Speaking and Writing

Standard A:

A student should be able to speak and write well for a variety of purposes and audiences.

Rationale: The complexity of the modern world demands literate, creative individuals who understand the power of language. Precision and accuracy with language are crucial. Effective writers and speakers apply the conventions of language correctly, and yet they realize that conventions alone do not produce effective writers and speakers. Alaska students must be competent speakers and able writers.

A student who meets this standard should be able to

1. apply elements of effective writing and speaking; these elements include ideas, organization, vocabulary, sentence structure, and personal style;
2. in writing, demonstrate skills in sentence and paragraph structure including grammar, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation;
3. in speaking, demonstrate skills in volume, intonation, and clarity;
4. write and speak well to inform, to describe, to entertain, to persuade, and to clarify thinking in a variety of formats including technical communication;
5. revise, edit, and publish the student's own writing as appropriate;
6. when appropriate, use visual techniques to communicate ideas; these techniques may include role playing, body language, mime, sign language, graphics, Braille, art, and dance;
7. communicate ideas using varied tools of electronic technology; and
8. evaluate the student's speaking and writing and that of others using high standards.

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Reading, Listening, and Viewing

Standard B:

A student should be a competent and thoughtful reader, listener, and viewer of literature, technical materials, and a variety of other information.

Rationale: Alaska students must be capable readers and active listeners to take in and evaluate the information and ideas that shape their daily lives. Across all subjects in schools, the ability to read and listen, to write and speak, is paramount. Students must be active users of media centers and the many resources technology has made available. Students must also become critical viewers of all media. Applying what they view, read, and hear to their own circumstances can enrich their lives, give them models to emulate, and create visions for what their future can become.

A student who meets this standard should be able to

1. comprehend meaning from written text and oral and visual information by applying a variety of reading, listening, and viewing strategies; these strategies include phonic, context, and vocabulary cues in reading, critical viewing; and active listening;
2. reflect on, analyze, and evaluate a variety of oral, written, and visual information and experiences including discussions, lectures, art, movies, television, technical materials, and literature; and
3. relate what the student views, reads, and hears to practical purposes in the student's life, to the world outside, and to other texts and experiences.

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Completing Independent and Cooperative Projects

Standard C:

A student should be able to identify and select from multiple strategies in order to complete projects independently and cooperatively.

Rationale: To be productive citizens and workers, students must be flexible as they face the problems and challenges of our changing world. Everyone must learn to solve problems and complete tasks with efficiency and eloquence, at home and in the workplace. Effective communication and clear thinking are essential. Students must work well with others in a variety of situations. They must also know how to work independently, claiming responsibility for their decisions and actions.

A student who meets this standard should be able to

1. make choices about a project after examining a range of possibilities;
2. organize a project by:
   • understanding directions,
   • making and keeping deadlines, and
   • seeking, selecting, and using relevant resources;
3. select and use appropriate decision-making processes;
4. set high standards for project quality;
5. when working on a collaborative project;
   • take responsibility for individual contributions to the project;
   • share ideas and workloads;
   • incorporate individual talents and perspectives;
   • work effectively with others as an active participant and as a responsive audience; and
   • evaluate the processes and work of self and of others.

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Presenting and Explaining Positions

Standard D:

A student should be able to think logically and reflectively in order to present and explain positions based on relevant and reliable information.

Rationale: Students must examine their own and others' perspectives, and communicate their opinions and ideas. They must be able to craft new knowledge based on serious research and systematic inquiry.

A student who meets this standard should be able to

1. develop a position by:
   • reflecting on personal experiences, prior knowledge, and new information,
   • formualting and refining questions
   • identifying a variety of pertinent sources of information,
   • analyzing and synthesizing information, and
   • determining an author's purposes,
2. evaluate the validity, objectivity, reliability, and quality of information read, heard, and seen;
3. give credit and cite references as appropriate; and
4. explain and defend a position orally, in writing, and with visual aids as appropriate.

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Understanding and Respecting Others' Perspectives

Standard E:

A student should understand and respect the perspectives of others in order to communicate effectively.

Rationale: Diversity of peoples, languages, and cultures is an Alaskan hallmark and demands respect, understanding, and appreciation among its residents. Tolerance and empathy must be taught. Successful communication among Alaskans, in the many languages they speak, promotes harmony, permits progress, and enables diverse issues to be resolved.

A student who meets this standard should be able to

1. use information and literature, both oral and written, of many types and cultures to understand self and others;
2. evaluate content from the speaker's or author's point of view;
3. recognize bias in all forms of communication; and
4. recognize the communication styles of different cultures and their possible effects on others.

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Assumptions and Implications

These assumptions recognize the cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity of students in Alaska and are applicable to all students regardless of primary language, geographic location, limited English proficiency or special needs.

Assumptions about Curriculum Development

• Curriculum development must support classrooms which provide both stability and uncertainty, the familiar and the unknown, the safe and the challenging. Learners must have the opportunity to retrace their steps as necessary.
  
• Every aspect of curriculum development should model the inclusive, learner-centered instruction which the Alaska Standards for English/Language Arts describe. In other words, district curriculum development committee meetings and district professional development should mirror best teaching practices. To begin the process in your district, your curriculum development committee should ask yourselves a series of questions to establish your goals and purposes. (See Reference Kit for an example: Pacific Region Education Laboratory’s “Critical Questions for Implementation and Aligned Curriculum.”)
  
• The goal of all levels and groups should be to encourage individuals to be independent, yet collaborate effectively; be self-evaluative yet take others' perceptions into account; be voracious learners, yet commit themselves to a balanced education.
  
• Curriculum development should reflect the fact that learning is not confined by the arbitrary limits of disciplines and subject matter. Students learn better when topics and concepts are tied together (Interdisciplinary curriculum, thematic instruction).
  
• Throughout the curriculum development process, planners should draw upon the wisdom of practice and research, particularly in Alaska, in both rural and urban districts. School districts must study elements which have been effective in the past, curriculum which has been tried and tested in classrooms by teachers and students, and ways of supporting instruction which have resulted in the greatest good for the most learners.
  
• Curriculum development must be driven by student standards and evaluated by a variety of assessments; both standards and assessments must be credible to the entire community.
  
• Curriculum for educating and assessing young children should follow early childhood education guidelines and include involvement of parents and the early childhood community.
  
• Curriculum development must assume that students develop at different times; levels or stages must be looked at as ranges rather than specific grade levels or single-age categories.
  
• Educational accountability means that the district has a clear statement of standards and expectations for students, teachers, instructional aides, parents, district officials, and all others who participate in the particular education community. The statements of accountability must be understandable to the community.
  
• Any evaluation process must identify the measurement processes and instruments, the purposes for measuring, the measurement points or descriptors, and the consequences of meeting or not meeting the stated expectations.
  
• Curriculum development, instruction, and assessment should be open, fair processes. Everyone involved must know the purposes for every activity, the materials or processes to be used, the definition of success, and the consequences of failure.
  
• A significant investment in professional development must be an integral part of any curriculum development process.
  
• These assumptions must lead to rethinking the conventional structure and schedule of schools K-12 in terms of school day, school year, grade levels, subject areas, graduation requirements, student grouping, and physical plant.
  
• Districts and their learning partners will need to keep always in mind that reform is an organic process; change in any one area will affect all areas.
  

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Implications

Each of the above assumptions will have far-reaching implications for curriculum development and for all individuals in the educational community. Curriculum development committees must thoroughly explore the implications below before making recommendations to educational policy makers regarding everything from school governance to daily schedules, from materials selection to graduation requirements.

• Professional development will focus on the achievement of the Alaska standards for students and teachers, will be locally designed, and will address the needs of staff across a continuum of experience and responsibilities.
  
• Curriculum development will be a process, not an event.
  
• Education will be a lifelong cycle between a formal school setting and the work place; students will know how to learn as well as what to learn.
  
• Instructional delivery will focus on Alaska standards and district expectations. In other words, teachers will "teach to the test" because the "test" is worth teaching to.
  
• Each district will provide the resources (including appropriate technology) necessary for all students to have the opportunity to achieve Alaska student standards and district expectations.
  
• Schools and their learning partners must understand that providing for school-to-work transitions will require participation by all in school improvement from classroom to community through public policy. Business and social agencies will take on new and more substantive roles throughout the range and scope of publicly funded education.

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Assumptions About Teaching And Learning Language Arts

• Children come to school already knowing a great deal about oral and written knowledge in whatever language the child brings to school.
  
• Students learn best through real-world experiences which each individual perceives as personally relevant. These experiences are more powerful if they are guided and purposeful.
  
• Language programs are concerned with both speaking/writing (expressive) and listening/reading /viewing (receptive) skills as they relate to language development.
  
• Students learn to write by writing and learn to read by reading. Students can demonstrate what they know about writing by writing; they can show what they know about reading by reading, retelling, and responding.
  
• Literacy-reading, writing, speaking, listening , and viewing-is a process, sometimes linear, always recursive. Students go through various stages as their literacy skills develop. Educators need to observe, describe, and understand the stages of language learning in helping all students become literate.
  
• Students learn more effectively in a program which integrates reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing within a context which applies these components to authentic situations.
  
• Problem solving and reflecting on one's own thinking (metacognition) is important to all learning, and the development of thinking skills needs to be integrated into all classroom instruction, including language arts. Thinking skills must not be taught as a discrete unit.
  
• Collaborative work enhances the development of literacy since it requires the use of language in authentic situations.

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Reading

These factors positively affect students’success in reading:

• regular opportunities to read and respond to literature, both fiction and nonfiction;
• many opportunities for students to explore independent reading;
• rich writing experiences;
• the opportunity to read for personally significant purposes;
• the opportunity for students to use reading as a tool for learning in all subject areas;
• rich and varied opportunities for vocabulary development;
• links between student background knowledge and new content presented in text;
• opportunities to become independent readers who use varied cueing systems-semantics, syntax, and graphophonics;
• opportunities to use recognized strategies before, during, and after reading in order to read literature, textbooks, primary and other sources successfully.

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Writing

These factors positively affect student success with writing:

• regular practice in writing, with the initial focus on fluency development, stressing form and accuracy once the student has developed confidence in committing thought to paper;
  
• the opportunity to write for real, personally significant purposes;
  
• opportunities to write for a variety of audiences;
  
• rich reading experiences;
  
• opportunities for students to use writing as a tool for learning in all subject areas;
• opportunities to evaluate and discuss writing conventions, such as grammar and punctuation, using student-written pieces;
• clear expectations and models for effective writing (rubrics, scoring guides).
  

Speaking, Listening, and Viewing

• Implicit in the teaching of reading and writing is the integration of speaking, listening, and viewing.

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English/Language Arts Process Skills

The following pages include graphic explanations of processes of reading and writing as they have been developed and/or adapted and used by Alaskan educators for the last decade. These samples are meant to be illustrative rather than prescriptive. Other such graphics or charts describing the processes alluded to in the Assumptions about Teaching and Learning Language Arts are available in a wide variety of current literature. (See Reference Kit.)

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Writing Process

The writing process is recursive thinking leading to writing leading to thinking and writing some more. Not every writer will commit every step in the process to paper. Nor will every idea or piece of writing be carried through the entire process. Only pieces that have completed the process-and not all of those-should be assessed.

adapted by John Rusyniak, Alaska Gateway Schools, from the Alaska State Writing Consortium

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The Reading Process

Ken Goodman describes reading as a psycholinguistic guessing game occurring at the intersection of the author's knowledge and the reader's knowledge. Therefore, the reader's prior knowledge facilitates comprehension of written material. Readers are constantly predicting words and concepts as they read. When these predictions are confirmed, readers look back to the material for re-examination. Predicting, confirming, and comprehending are a continuous cycle, building concepts onto concepts. The following diagram represents strategies used in the process of reading.

Goodman, Yetta M. and Caroyn L. Burke,. Reading Strategies: Focus on Comprehension. Katonah, NY: Richard C. Owne Publisher, Inc. 1980

The Three Cueing Systems

The three cueing systems allow the reading process to be viewed diagrammatically:

adapted by Susan Hanson, Juneau School District

Cueing sources help a person read. The proficient reader automatically integrates all of the cueing sources while reading fluently. A struggling reader may not be attending to one or more of the cues or may be over relying on one to the exclusion of the other ones.

For example, there are readers who sound out every letter of an unknown word and when they've finished reading, cannot close on a recognizable word. That student is utilizing the grapho-phonics cueing source in isolation from the other two sources. (i.e.. The student sounds out each letter of the word p-u-r-s-e but can't blend them together to make a meaningful word.)

Semantic cues (context: what makes sense) and syntactic cues (structure and grammar; what sounds right grammatically) are cues the reader needs to be using already in order for phonics (letter-sound relationships: what looks right visually and sounds right phonetically) to make sense.

Another problem can occur if the student uses only semantic and syntactic cues. In this example, the student may read a word that makes sense and sounds right but it is not the correct word. (i.e.. The word is purse and the student reads it as wallet. The word makes sense because the picture shows something that could be a wallet or a purse. It sounds right syntactically, but it doesn't match grapho-phonetically.)

The goal is that readers will make use of all the cueing sources in an integrated manner so that all the cueing sources match. (The child is unsure of the word purse. He/she looks a the picture and sees that the person is putting money away in an object that looks like a wallet or purse. The child predicts that the word will be wallet or purse and rereads the sentence to check the letters to see which it is. After reading the word purse, the reader decides it makes sense (semantic cues), sounds right (syntactic cues), and looks right (graphophonic cues) and reads on.

When teaching children to read, we want to instruct them on how to integrate all the cueing sources illustrated in the diagram in an independent manner so that every time they read, they become better readers who read accurately, fluently, and with good comprehension.

Routeman. Invitations. p. 147.

Stages of Expressive Language Proficiency
Oral Language Proficiency	Written Language Proficiency
Stage 1 No comprehension of language Active listener	Stage 1 Nonwriter Active observer
Stage II-Preproduction Some comprehension No verbalization	Stage II-Preproduction Pictures Scribbles Letters
Stage III-Early Production Imitated verbalization Lacks structure	Stage III-Early Production Letter-sound relationships Inventive spelling Beginning fluency
Stage IV-Speech Emergence Simple spontaneous verbalization Combines words and phrases Limited accuracy	Stage IV-Writing Emergence Isolated words Short phrases Simple lists
Stage V-Intermediate Fluency Controls basic structure Uses social language Limited academic language	Stage V-Intermediate Fluency Practical writing needs Notes/letters General school work Grammar consistent/not accurate Growth in fluency Using form Developing accuracy
Stage VI-Advanced Conversation clear and participatory Satisfies academic situations Fluency and ease of speech	Stage VI-Advanced Narration-description-summaries Good vocabulary Good work order-simple sentences Difficult-complex sentences Good fluency, form Fairly accurate

Adapted and compiled by Bev Williams/LSKD/1993

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