Goals

“Language is a sacred trust and truth is an obligation we assume when we are empowered with words.” (Ernest Boyer). In [this] district, students who graduate from high school will have mastered the following language arts strands:

1. History of language
2. Listening
3. Reading
4. Writing
5. Ethics of Communication
6. Technology

Annual Outcomes

Reading

By the end of the third-grade academic year, students will be able to:

• read, describe, and use comprehension strategies such as visualization, inferring, making connections, questioning, determining importance, and synthesizing to understand a variety of texts in different genres.
• connect personal knowledge, experiences, and understanding of the world to themes and perspectives ni text through oral and written responses.

Writing

By the end of the third grade academic year, students will be able to:

• demonstrate in written form the various stages of the writing process, such as brainstorming, pre-writing, drafting, revision, editing, proofreading, etc.
• produce cohesive and comprehensive written texts in the genres of personal and fictional narratives, essays, poetry, friendly letters, and research papers.

Listening

By the end of the third-grade academic year, students will be able to:

• retell in their own words what a speaker said, paraphrasing and ex- plaining the main idea.
• orally extend their response to a speaker by connecting and relating it to personal experiences.
• demonstrate appropriate audience behavior, such as eye contact, attentiveness, and supportiveness.

History of Language

By the end of the third-grade academic year, students will be able to

• use response journals to study and write about historical texts such as poems, odes, and elegies.
• use thinking generated in class discussions to work toward an interpretation of historical texts such as poems, odes, and elegies.

Ethics of Communication

By the end of the third-grade academic year, students will be able to

• use constructive feedback from peers to inform the editing and revision of written and oral projects.
• use the editing and revision process as a tool to clarify written and oral communication with an audience.

School and learning are lifelong experiences that thread throughout human life, and they can be and should be fun and engaging, not toil and drudgery.