Standards

Enduring Understandings - important ideas that students should carry with them years beyond the instruction received this year.

• Different strategies and skills are required to understand a variety of texts.

• Independent learners use critical thinking skills.

• An effective communicator knows his/her audience and purpose.

• An effective communicator uses standard English language rules.

• The selection and use of relevant information requires evaluating a variety of sources.

• Literature provides an understanding of human experience.

Essential Questions - most important “big picture” questions students should be able to answer after completing learning activities.

• What is text?

• How do we apply different strategies and skills to understand a variety of texts?

• What is critical thinking?

• How do we think critically in our lives?

• What is responsible research?

• What makes information relevant?

• How do I use information?

• What is literature?

• How can we make personal connections through literature?

• What makes us human?

  Highest Frequency Standards
Reading:
1c. Locate and paraphrase the key/main ideas and supporting details in fiction and poetry
1g. Identify the meaning of unfamiliar words in context using word recognition skills and context clues
4a. Determine author's purpose
4d. Make predictions and draw conclusions from text in various genre
5a. Use organizational features of text
5c. Summarize and organize info about a topic in a variety of ways (graphic organizers, etc.) from various sources
6a. Read and respond to a variety of literature
6b. Identify characters, setting, problem/conflict, plot, resolution, theme, sequence

Writing:
2a. Write in a variety of modes - narrative and descriptive
2b. Organize writing using a logical arrangement of ideas
2g. Develop ideas and content with relevant details, examples, and/or reasons
3a. Identify subject, verb, pronouns, and adjectives.
3c. Write in complete sentences.
3d. Use conventions correctly (end-marks and apostrophes in contractions and singular possessives).
3e. Identify and use conventional spelling.

High Frequency Standards
Reading:
1d. Infer using a variety of texts and genre
4b. Use reading to solve a variety of problems and answer questions
4c. Differentiate fact from opinion in a variety of texts
5e. Locate other's ideas, image, or information in a bibliography
5f. Locate meanings and pronunciations of unfamiliar words
6c. Use knowledge of literary techniques and terminology (dialogue, scene, flashback, figurative language)

Writing:
2c. Use language which supports and enriches the idea.
2d. Plan, draft, revise, and edit for a final copy.
2e. Use transitions to link ideas.
2f. Use a variety of sentence structures.
3b. Use subject/verb agreement, nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, homonyms, and homophones.

Other Standards & E-skills
1a. Compare/contrast different texts with similar themes and ideas
1b. Summarize and synthesize fiction and poetry
1e. Identify sequential order in fiction and poetry
1f. Locate and recall information in text with different structures
4e. Explain the text's main point and use relevant details
5b. Use organizational features of electronic information
5d. Select info to support ideas and justify

District 11 Diamond Units/Lessons Overview - includes information about the purpose, goals and structure of these sample instructional units