Diocese of Covington - Education at PO Box 15550, Covington, KY 41015-0550 US - Language Arts Part 1

This curriculum is designed to provide a fluent scope and sequence for grades K-8. It is the responsibility of the individual classroom teacher to follow their particular curriculum guidelines to insure that content gaps and overlaps do not exist. Many of the writing objectives are new to the Diocese, having been adapted from the Kentucky State Program of Studies and National Standards. Writing pieces in grades 3-8 are supposed to be student driven and contain authentic, "real world" audiences and purposes. This will give students ownership of pieces and make them more relevant to them. Schools may need to provide in-service to teachers to train them on "The writing Process" as discussed on the following pages.

The Language Arts Curriculum Guide exists to develop skills and instill an appreciation for the fundamental tool of human communication and interaction – language. The student will acquire a command of language necessary for the understanding and expression of ideas. Skill development and appreciation take place throughout the years of schooling in an ever-increasing sophistication and level of integration.

The Language Arts Curriculum provides a variety of experiences to allow for individual differences and interests as well as challenging each student to reach his or her potential and develop the power to be a discriminating reader and viewer.

"Language" includes literature, reading, writing, spelling, listening, speaking, and thinking skills. Through a command of language, the student is able to interpret personal experiences as well as others’ experiences and cultures.

The following pages were taken from the Writing Teacher Handbook developed by the Kentucky Department of Education. This information is important in putting into practice the curriculum guidelines that follow. Teachers should be trained in the writing process and other forms of writing that take place within the classroom. For the complete Handbook, go to www.kde.state.ky.us.

In all classrooms students should be provided opportunities to experience three kinds of classroom writing:

All of this writing can be directly relevant to learning in a unit of study and all of these categories of writing can support students in developing Portfolio-appropriate work. However, it is important to note that each of the three is usually driven by different instructional purposes with different audiences for the student to consider. An examination of each of these kinds of writing will demonstrate how each fits into classroom instruction across the curriculum.

Students use this kind of writing in order to process information, develop thinking, learn new content, and synthesize new concepts. Since the purpose of writing to learn is to assist students in assimilating and remembering information, the audience for these pieces is the learner himself. There are other factors to keep in mind, however. Writing to learn…

• often is a response to a prompt provided by the teacher, but sometimes is a writing "prompted" by the individual student (that is, the student determines what he or she will focus on in the response).
• is intended to promote the student’s understanding of content and ability to think; to apply concepts, skills, and principles; to enhance reading comprehension; to make connections; to raise and address questions; to identify and discuss problems, etc. Writing to learn is used to promote learning and also may be used to assess learning; however, assessment is not the primary purpose of the writing.
• indicates how well students understand what has been taught, how well they can think and apply concepts, and how well they can communicate their understanding of subject matter relevant to the study area and their lives.
• even if teacher prompted, usually is "open" to an individual student’s choice and requires thinking.
• usually is a brief, single-draft writing, is not completed in a "real-world" form, and is not intended for an "authentic" readership.

Writing-to-learn practices help students to learn, to internalize the content, to think, and to reflect on their learning through metacognitive activities embedded throughout the instructional units. In general, metacognitive activities cause students to think about their thinking and learning. Teachers can use writing-to-learn strategies to promote learning and thinking in all study areas. The following strategies can be adapted to any setting for any age level.

Writer’s Notebook: responses that encourage students to see the world around them as writers do. Students record the people, events, quotes, poems, words, reminders, clippings, etc., that are the seeds of genuine pieces of writing. Writer’s notebooks often contain many of the elements listed in the journal types below.

Reading Response Journal: entries that allow students to respond to their reading, extend their thinking, support their ideas, and promote their understanding of materials read.

Learning Log: a collection of writings recording and promoting students’ active learning, thinking, and application of skills. The log may include a variety of the strategies noted in this section.

Class Journal: a daily record of class activities, reflections about the learning in class, opinions about the issues brought up in class, questions, even notes. The CJ can be a cumulative record that the entire class keeps or an individual record of student learning.

Dialogue Journal: a written conversation between learners. Two partners write comments, questions, or notes to each other in relation to something being read or studied in class. This works especially well with two students reading the same book or working on a similar project.

Opinion Journal: a way to get students to think about issues and support for their opinions. In social studies, students may be asked to read the newspaper for current events or controversial issues. Students could clip out articles, tape them into their journals, write their opinions and then leave the entries for others to respond to, agree with, or refute. As students see others’ responses, they may learn to provide more support in order to strengthen their arguments.

Sketch Journal: a journal that combines art and writing. By including sketches of students’ rooms for family and consumer science, flowers in a science study, maps in social studies, and geometric figures found in the real world, sketch journals provide opportunities for students to demonstrate multiple intelligences.

Personal Journal: a journal that allows students to write about what is happening in their lives, events they want to memorialize, sad times they need to reflect on, happy times they want to share. This is a good place for memories to work into personal writing. Maintaining students’ privacy and building a sense of trust are essential with these journals.

Grammar Notebook: a record of students’ own grammatical strengths and weaknesses. Students learn valuable lessons as they record their own personal hints and reminders in their notebooks and, as a result, get a personalized grammar book by which to evaluate their own progress with grammar. This can also be a record of personal spelling demons and vocabulary lists.

Observation Logs: a record of students’ observations. Students keep records as they watch classroom videos, observe people, follow a scientific process, write poetic descriptions, hear intriguing conversations, find oddities or paradoxes, or take a nature walk. On field trips, on the school property, at a local mall, during a science experiment – all areas of curriculum are appropriate for observation logs.

Double Entry Logs: entries allow for students not only to see but also reflect on what they see. Students draw a vertical line down the middle of the page. On the left, they record what they have actually seen, read, heard, observed, etc. On the right, they record their opinions, reflections, connections, concerns, questions, or reactions. This practice works well when students are reading a chapter or story, watching a video, or taking notes on a lesson or presentation.

Traveling Logs: an offshoot of the class log. Each day a different student records class notes and activities. The log is especially valuable for use by students who have missed class time due to other activities or absences.

Entrance (Admit) or Exit Slips: Entrance slips are completed before class and are brought in as the students enter the door. Exit slips are the students’ passes out of the classroom. This writing-to-learn strategy can be used across the curriculum for many purposes:

• Focusing student attention on the lesson to be taught the next day
• Setting the tone for the class lesson
• Pre-thinking
• Pre-writing
• Accessing background knowledge
• Troubleshooting
• Reflecting

This type of writing is necessary in every classroom in order for a teacher to ascertain whether or not students understand the content and/or concepts being taught. Regularly asking students to think and write at the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy (i.e., analysis, synthesis, evaluation) can help students not only think through the content but also reveal what they know in more depth. Since students are demonstrating their knowledge, the teacher is the audience. Some qualities of writing to demonstrate learning follow. This kind of writing

• is a response to a school exercise, question, prompt, or teacher assignment.
• demonstrates to the teacher that the student has completed assigned work.
• is intended to indicate how well the student has learned what has been taught; in short, it assesses learning.
• often expects all students to address the assignment in the same way, for example, by giving the correct answer or by showing understanding through standard explanations. Typically this writing does not require much "ownership."
• is usually a single-draft writing, is not completed in a "real-world" form, and is not intended for an "authentic" readership.

• Answer to Open-Response Prompt
• Test Answer
• Summary of Reading
• Explanation or Summary of an Activity
• Book, Research, or Library Report
• Lab Report
• Essay for a Quiz

Authentic writing is a classification of writing that asks students to synthesize, analyze, or evaluate what they have learned in order to communicate with a wider audience, usually outside of the classroom.
Writing which suits this category

• may be written in response to a prompt provided by the teacher but also may be defined to some extent by the individual student.
• is written with a specific, authentic purpose, with awareness of authentic readers, in real-world forms.
• is intended to help students develop skills in communication and to promote their learning and thinking. Authentic writing assesses skills in communication and may assess understanding of content in the study area along with students’ abilities to apply learning and experiences to accomplish authentic purposes.
• indicates how well students communicate ideas about their learning, experience, and inquiry.
• reveals student ownership: purposes, ideas, methods of support, use of learning and experiences, choices about readers and forms, etc.
• shows students’ thinking; is not merely a summary, transcription, or record of an activity, or answer to test question.
• usually is taken through a full writing process – prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, publishing; sometimes is written in "on-demand" conditions.

Authentic writing is the only kind of writing that is appropriate for Kentucky's Writing Portfolio. Pieces appropriate to include in the portfolio are produced for an authentic audience and purpose. Ideally, students make decisions about audience, purpose, and/or form based on their interests, experiences, and inquiry. These Portfolio-appropriate pieces are more successful when the writers pay careful attention to Kentucky's criteria for scoring writing, to the writing process for depth of thought, and to the content of the classroom for the subject matter.

Important features of Portfolio-appropriate writing:

• Specific, authentic purpose
• Authentic writing is driven by purpose – what the student wishes to accomplish through the piece. Whether the piece is written to share human experience, to make a point through fiction, or to persuade a readership to take an action, the writer has an authentic reason for writing.
• Well-developed ideas
• In order to fulfill a purpose, a student must include well-developed, focused ideas which reflect the student’s thinking, understanding of content, and when appropriate in reflective writing explain for readers the content of the class in which the piece originated.
• Relevant, specific support for ideas and purpose
• Well-founded ideas are based on a student’s learning, experience, reading, inquiry, and ability to think about the needs of readers.
• Awareness of authentic readers
  
  In creating audience awareness, writers help readers by
  • providing details.
  • conveying ideas of relevance.
  • providing background information.
  • revealing critical thinking to anticipate readers' needs.
  • employing appropriate tone.
  • organizing.
• Real-world form suited to the purpose and the audience
  This also includes the purposeful use of the characteristics of the selected form.
• Student ownership
  When students make decisions about their own piece, when they use their own ideas, purposes, approach, experience, learning, inquiry, organization, etc., then they are truly taking ownership of the writing.

Evaluate, Analyze, Interpret, Defend an idea, Solve a problem, Propose a change, Explain a procedure Draw conclusions from, Support an idea, Clear up a misconception, Provide/explain needed information, Persuade readers, Provide useful news, Present a needed plan, Inquiry

An individual, A group, Classmates, Readers of a publication, People concerned about a problem, People interested in a hobby, Citizens, Members of the community, Parents, Public officials, People who requested a report, People who can act on a proposal, People with a certain view or position on an issue, People interested in literature, Readers of literary magazines, People interested in ideas about human experience

AUTHENTICITY IN PORTFOLIO-APPROPRIATE WRITING
In general, when we think of authentic, words like original, realistic, genuine come to mind, and, applied to writing, authentic means that the work is the student’s own, done for a realistic purpose and readership and in a realistic form that logically fits the purpose and audience or situation. The writing reveals a genuine effort to communicate with others (it is not merely an academic exercise). Though a variety of kinds of writing may be done in our schools, some writing should be authentic, and this kind of writing should be included across the grade levels and study areas to help students learn, develop as writers, and prepare a variety of samples of writing, some of which are submitted in the assessment writing portfolio.

Authentic purpose for writing means that

• the purpose is one that reflects the student’s ownership, individuality, choices, decisions.
• the purpose is specific. (It’s not realistic to write generally about a topic, with no specific purpose.)
• the purpose is realistic, one students actually have or logically could have in their lives.
• the purpose is genuinely needed by readers; the purpose is a justifiable one; the purpose is to accomplish something that makes sense, is significant.
• the purpose is not merely to complete an exercise or test question for the reader and is not merely to complete a kind of writing. (The writer is genuinely trying to convey ideas to readers for a meaningful, realistic purpose.)

• the writer has in mind a realistic readership(s) for whom the writing is especially important, needed.
• the writing is developed throughout with an awareness of readers ("target" readers and critical readers).
• the writing reveals awareness of a critical reader who expects careful, thoughtful writing.
• the writer shows awareness of the interests, needs, and general expectations of readers of a particular kind of writing (e.g., poetry, technical writing, or academic articles).
• the reader is someone logically and realistically appropriate for the writer’s purposes, not merely the teacher as a tester of the student’s learning.
• the writer takes steps to interest and help readers, including providing appropriate support and explanation.

• the form chosen logically fits the writer’s purpose and audience.
• the form is realistic, like one done in the "real world"; the writing looks realistic.
• the student shows ability to apply characteristics of the selected form (e.g., poem, short story, editorial, article).
• the writing is not merely a fill-in-the-blank or other such exercise.

Prewriting

In prewriting, a writer explores subjects and experiences, determines a focused purpose for writing, begins to consider the needs of an audience, selects ideas and support for the purpose, and begins to organize these ideas. Teachers should assist students by

• creating opportunities in the classroom for students to inquire, learn, and think critically as they investigate topics.
• providing written models and instruction in analyzing writers’ forms, purposes, audience awareness, idea development, and organizational strategies.
• providing whole class instruction and practice in a variety of prewriting strategies and activities from which students can choose those that best suit their particular needs.
• guiding students as they determine their realistic purpose and audience and real-world form in order to develop their selected topics.
• allowing for some student choice and not depriving students of either ownership of their writing or opportunities to improve their writing abilities.

In drafting, a writer begins to compose the work by drafting sentences and paragraphs connecting one thought to another. Writers concentrate on creating their meaning, developing thoughts, providing relevant support, addressing their reader’s needs, and organizing their work. Teachers should assist students by

• maintaining a supportive environment that allows for different learning styles, provides rich resources, and gives ample drafting time in and out of class.
• respecting the writer’s ability to make choices about purpose, audience, form, content, and length.
• encouraging students to draw appropriately on their experience, learning, reading, and inquiry to accomplish their authentic purposes as writers.

During conferencing, writers acquire feedback concerning their writing, interacting with teachers, peers, and others. Conferencing may occur at all stages of the writing process. It is essential that (during these conferences) the student writer retain ownership of his/her writing. While responders (teachers, peers, or others) may ask questions and offer suggestions, the writer will decide what to incorporate and what to reject. Responders should assist students by:

• questioning rather than dictating.
• critiquing rather than criticizing.
• coaching rather than correcting.
• guiding rather than directing.
• suggesting rather than imposing.

In revising, the writer begins to make appropriate changes to a draft. Revision is, in a sense, rethinking or "re-visioning" ideas. During revision, the writer reshapes and reorders the text to match it as closely as possible with the new ideas in his or her head. The general guideline in revision is that the students will make decisions about what to add, delete, or change. Teachers and others may provide response but should ensure that authors have the final say in the revisions they make in their writing. Teachers may use a variety of strategies to promote revision including

• raising questions to clarify the student’s purpose, audience, meaning, content, ideas, and organization.
• modeling and discussing revision while preserving author’s ownership.
• teaching students how to review their writing with each other and to talk about possible changes.
• providing class time for revision.
• allowing peers to read each other’s writing and offer suggestions for the author to consider.
• encouraging students to read/reread examples of writing to help make decisions about their own writing.
• designing revision checklists for students to use with their own writing and when conferencing with peers.
• allowing students to talk and write about their revisions and the rationale behind them reflecting upon their work and progress as writers.
• encouraging student to inquire and learn more about their selected topic, drawing on this learning to accomplish their purposes.

In editing, the writer strives to create a correct piece of writing. The writer’s goal in editing is to produce the best possible paper according to his/her developmental level. Arranging for a specific time for editing can help students spot errors and correct them. Teachers should emphasize the role of students as owners of their work in making final decisions. Teachers can use a variety of strategies to promote editing including:

• monitoring students’ writing development to discover patterns of error and to determine students’ critical needs and developmental level in order to plan instruction designed to address specific grammar, spelling, punctuation, and usage needs.
• supporting students in self-assessing and making final editing decisions.
• providing mini-lessons and encouraging students to apply lessons to their own writing.
• encouraging students to use appropriate resources such as handbooks, dictionaries, thesauri (print and electronic), spell checkers, or computer writing programs.

• Mini-Lessons: Brief lessons on common editing problems can be of immediate benefit to students when they are taught as part of an editing workshop. After a short lesson at the beginning of an editing session, students can immediately apply the lessons to their own writing, reinforcing new information about correctness through meaningful use rather than isolated exercises. Mini-lessons can be used with smaller groups of students experiencing similar, specific problems.
• Peer Editing: Students pair off and edit one another’s drafts, pointing out the positions of any errors they see. Each student makes his/her own corrections preserving author’s ownership.
• Class Experts: Students skilled in a specific editing area check the drafts of peers for errors. Often, a student can explain a point in terms a classmate can understand.
• Transparency Editing: Make a transparency of a student draft from a previous year and ask the class to identify editing needs. As students identify and correct errors, the teacher corrects each on the transparency and then asks students to apply these same editing strategies to their own pieces of writing. If this model is followed regularly, students receive numerous short lessons focusing on mechanics and usage, and have many opportunities to apply new strategies.
• Minimal Mark: During an editing conference, the teacher places a dot or check mark in the margin of a line containing an editing error. Students must find and correct the error. Teachers should be careful not to mark all errors during a conference, but instead focus on one or two specific skills during the session.
• Modeling: Teachers should be sure that every piece of their own writing that they share with students is as accurately edited as possible. When errors do occur in teacher models, these errors should be used to facilitate a mini-lesson focusing on the specific skill.

In publishing, students make their writing public for others. For assessment purposes, 4th grade students will publish four pieces and 7th and 12th grade students will publish five pieces from their classroom folders. Students determine the point at which their writing is ready to be published. Following are some guidelines for the publishing stage:

• Many forms of publishing are acceptable (bound books, pamphlets, brochures, illustrated works, regular manuscripts), but the work should be a size that will fit the standard writing assessment portfolio.
• The writing should be neat and legible. Students may use many methods to produce published pieces (pen or pencil, printing or cursive, word processors or typewriters). Regardless of the method selected, the students must write, type, or word process by themselves unless otherwise noted on an IEP.

PERSONAL EXPRESSIVE WRITING

The personal expressive category includes several types of writing, each of which focuses on the life experiences of the writer. These types include personal narratives, memoirs, and personal essays. The characteristics of the form and the strategies for developing ideas may be different for each kind of writing included here.

• Personal Narratives are focused on a single significant incident from the writer’s life and are supported by details that emphasize the significance of the experience. While a personal narrative may relate any incident that the writer feels is significant, the success of the narrative lies in the writer’s ability to provide the reader with an understanding of the events and feelings that make the incident important and the author’s ideas and interpretation of the experience. This is accomplished through the inclusion of specific details, organization that emphasizes the importance of the event, and voice/tone that communicates the writer’s ideas and feelings about the incident.
• Memoirs are focused on the significance of a relationship and are supported by memories of specific experiences. While a memoir may focus on any individual person, place, animal, or thing, the success of the memoir lies in the writer’s ability to provide the reader with an understanding of the importance of the relationship. This is accomplished through the writer’s use of details and reflection to create a connection with the reader that shares the critical value of the relationship between the writer and the other individual person, place, animal, or thing.
• Personal Essaysare focused on a central idea about the writer or the writer’s life and are supported by a variety of incidents from the writer’s life. While a personal essay may focus on any central idea about the writer’s life (e.g., the satisfaction of working with the elderly, the role of the oldest sibling in the family, the pain of loss), the success of the essay lies in the writer’s ability to describe the central idea and build a framework of support for that idea. This is accomplished through the writer’s use of broad reflection enhanced by specific, detailed incidents that are tied to the central idea.

The literary writing category includes several types of writing, each of which evolves from the imagination and experience of the writer. The success of literary writing is accomplished through the writer’s thoughtful expression about human experience, specific and rich use of language, management of literary techniques, and effective organizational strategies to communicate ideas and feelings to the reader. Literary writing includes poems, short stories, and scripts/plays.

• Poems are compositions in verse. Poetry may take many forms.
• Short Stories are pieces of fiction that contain some, but perhaps not all, of the following elements that are characteristics of the genre: plot (conflict, crisis, resolution), setting, character development, theme, and point of view. Short stories may range in length depending on audience and purpose.
• Scripts/Plays are pieces that reflect the third area of literary writing, drama. Drama by nature contains many of the elements of fiction: characters, conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, etc. Drama also includes conventions specific to its genre (i.e., stage directions, dialogue, setting, cast lists, etc.). Plays may range in length depending on audience and purpose. Plays that contain the elements of drama belong in the literary category in the portfolio. Scripts of advertisements, news broadcasts, documentaries, or other information-giving forms belong in the transactive category of the portfolio.

Transactive writing, which is written from the perspective of an informed writer to a less informed reader, is functional writing intended to present information and ideas in order to accomplish any one or more of a variety of realistic purposes in "getting things understood and done" in the world. Transactive writing often draws a conclusion, advocates a position, and/or solves a problem. Much of the writing done in academic contexts and in the workplace is transactive writing. In fact, academic writing and technical writing are examples of transactive writing that can be Portfolio-appropriate.

In order to present authentic purposes to real-world critical readers, students may choose from a variety of forms such as: a letter for the local newspaper, an editorial published in the school newspaper, an article for a class or team magazine, or a speech or proposal for the school-based council.

Transactive writing should

• have a focused purpose – an authentic reason for being written besides completing an assignment;
• take the form of writing seen in the world beyond the classroom (e.g., article, letter, editorial, speech, proposal, brochure, manual);
• address a targeted audience besides the teacher as an assessor;
• engage the reader with an interesting beginning – one which gives some context/reason for the information which follows;
• develop ideas with specific, relevant details; and
• move the reader(s) through the piece with logical, appropriate transitional strategies.

Content area writing is writing that is produced in a class other than English/language arts classes. At the 12th grade, any class for which a student receives English credit for high school graduation is not a content area class, and conversely, any class for which a student does not receive English credit for high school graduation is a content area class. At the 4th- and 7th-grade level, classes like reading, writing, communication, spelling and speech count as English/language arts classes and are not acceptable as content area classes. The content piece may be the result of interdisciplinary instruction.

Content area writing should

• be assigned in the content area classroom.
• be developed in the content area classroom (planning, gathering information, drafting).
• be revised for content in the content area classroom (checking for content correctness).
• serve the instructional goals of the classroom.
• relate to the content area being studied.
• reflect authentic content and forms produced in this field (e.g., articles like those found in scientific journals, commentaries on social issues like those found in newspapers).

The purpose of Kentucky’s on-demand writing assessment is to determine if students can independently apply skills and knowledge of writing criteria. The goals of on-demand writing include the following:

• Document students’ abilities to apply writing strategies and skills independently on a single task in a limited time
• Promote students’ abilities to communicate a single response to a prompt when given an audience, purpose, and form
• Provide data upon which to base ongoing instruction that is responsive to students’ needs

The on-demand writing prompt specifies the audience, purpose and form for the response and deals with ideas, events, or situations familiar to all students.

Students may be asked to

• Narrate an event (for a purpose)
• Persuade
• Respond to text, a graphic, or a chart

Below are a couple of examples of On-Demand writing exercises. All on-demand writing tasks have three essential parts:

PURPOSE/AUDIENCE: The degree to which the writer maintains a focused purpose to communicate with an audience by:

• narrowing the topic to establish a focus
• analyzing and addressing the needs of the intended audience
• adhering to the characteristics (e.g., format, organization) of the form
• employing a suitable tone
• allowing a voice to emerge when appropriate

IDEA DEVELOPMENT/SUPPORT: The degree to which the writer develops and supports main ideas and deepens the audience’s understanding by using:

• logical, justified, and suitable explanation
• relevant elaboration
• related connections and reflections
• idea development strategies (e.g., bulleted lists, definitions) appropriate for the form

ORGANIZATION: The degree to which the writer creates unity and coherence to accomplish the focused purpose by:

• engaging the audience and establishing a context for reading
• placing ideas and support in a meaningful order
• guiding the reader through the piece with transitions and transitional elements
• providing effective closure

SENTENCES: The degree to which the writer creates effective sentences that are:

• varied in structure and length
• constructed effectively
• complete and correct

LANGUAGE: The degree to which the writer demonstrates:

• word choice
• strong verbs and nouns
• concrete and/or sensory details
• language appropriate to the content, purpose, and audience
• concise use of language
• correct usage/grammar

CORRECTNESS: The degree to which the writer demonstrates:

• correct spelling
• correct punctuation
• correct capitalization
• appropriate documentation of ideas and information from outside sources (e.g., citing authors or titles within the text, listing sources)

Increase Reading aloud to students Time for independent reading Children’s choice of their own reading materials Exposing children to a wide and rich range of literature Teacher modeling and discussing his/her own reading tastes Primary instructional emphasis on comprehension

Decrease Exclusive Emphasis on whole-class or reading-group activities Teachers selection of all reading materials Relying on selections in basal reader Teacher keeping his/her own reading process and habits private Primary instructional emphasis on reading sub-skills such as phonics, work analysis, and syllabication

*Teaching reading as a process:

• Use strategies that activate prior knowledge
• Help students make and test predictions
• Structure help during reading
• Provide after-reading applications