• Developing and sustaining foundational language skills: listening, speaking, discussion, and thinking--oral language (1)
    • Listen actively to interpret a message and ask clarifying questions that build on others' ideas.

    • Follow and give complex oral instructions to perform specific tasks, answer questions, or solve problems.

    • Present a critique of a literary work, film, or dramatic production, employing eye contact, speaking rate, volume, enunciation, a variety of natural gestures, and conventions of language to communicate ideas effectively.

    • Engage in meaningful discourse and provide and accept constructive feedback from others.

  • Developing and sustaining foundational language skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking--vocabulary (2)
    • Use print or digital resources to determine the meaning, syllabication, pronunciation, word origin, and part of speech.

    • Use context such as contrast or cause and effect to clarify the meaning of words.

    • Determine the meaning and usage of grade-level academic English words derived from Greek and Latin roots such as omni, log/logue, gen, vid/vis, phil, luc, and sens/sent.

  • Developing and sustaining foundational language skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking--fluency (3)
    • Adjust fluency when reading grade-level text based on the reading purpose.

  • Developing and sustaining foundational language skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking--self-sustained reading (4)
    • Self-select text and read independently for a sustained period of time.

  • Comprehension skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts (5)
    • Establish purpose for reading assigned and self-selected texts; August 2019 Update Page 7 §110.B. Middle School.

    • Generate questions about text before, during, and after reading to deepen understanding and gain information.

    • Make and correct or confirm predictions using text features, characteristics of genre, and structures.

    • Create mental images to deepen understanding.

    • Make connections to personal experiences, ideas in other texts, and society.

    • Make inferences and use evidence to support understanding.

    • Evaluate details read to determine key ideas.

    • Synthesize information to create new understanding.

    • Monitor comprehension and make adjustments such as re-reading, using background knowledge, asking questions, and annotating when understanding breaks down.

  • Response skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts (6)
    • Describe personal connections to a variety of sources, including self-selected texts.

    • Write responses that demonstrate understanding of texts, including comparing sources within and across genres.

    • Use text evidence to support an appropriate response.

    • Paraphrase and summarize texts in ways that maintain meaning and logical order.

    • Interact with sources in meaningful ways such as notetaking, annotating, freewriting, or illustrating.

    • Respond using newly acquired vocabulary as appropriate.

    • Discuss and write about the explicit or implicit meanings of text.

    • Respond orally or in writing with appropriate register, vocabulary, tone, and voice.

    • Reflect on and adjust responses as new evidence is presented.

  • Multiple genres: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts--literary elements (7)
    • Infer multiple themes within and across texts using text evidence.

    • Analyze how characters' qualities influence events and resolution of the conflict.

    • Analyze plot elements, including the use of foreshadowing and suspense, to advance the plot.

    • Analyze how the setting influences character and plot development.

  • Multiple genres: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts--genres (8)
    • Demonstrate knowledge of literary genres such as realistic fiction, adventure stories, historical fiction, mysteries, humor, myths, fantasy, and science fiction.

    • Analyze the effect of rhyme scheme, meter, and graphical elements such as punctuation and capitalization in poems across a variety of poetic forms; Page 8 August 2019 Update.

    • Analyze how playwrights develop characters through dialogue and staging.

    • Analyze characteristics and structural elements of informational text, including:: (i) The controlling idea or thesis with supporting evidence. (ii) Features such as references or acknowledgements. (iii) Organizational patterns that support multiple topics, categories, and subcategories.

    • Analyze characteristics and structures of argumentative text by:: (i) Identifying the claim. (ii) Explaining how the author uses various types of evidence and consideration of alternatives to support the argument. (iii) Identifying the intended audience or reader.

    • Analyze characteristics of multimodal and digital texts..

  • Author's purpose and craft: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts (9)
    • Explain the author's purpose and message within a text.

    • Analyze how the use of text structure contributes to the author's purpose.

    • Analyze the author's use of print and graphic features to achieve specific purposes.

    • Describe how the author's use of figurative language such as metaphor and personification achieves specific purposes.

    • Identify the use of literary devices, including subjective and objective point of view.

    • Analyze how the author's use of language contributes to mood, voice, and tone.

    • Explain the purpose of rhetorical devices such as direct address and rhetorical questions and logical fallacies such as loaded language and sweeping generalizations.

  • Composition: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts--writing process (10)
    • Plan a first draft by selecting a genre appropriate for a particular topic, purpose, and audience using a range of strategies such as discussion, background reading, and personal interests.

    • Develop drafts into a focused, structured, and coherent piece of writing by:: (i) Organizing with purposeful structure, including an introduction, transitions, coherence within and across paragraphs, and a conclusion. (ii) Developing an engaging idea reflecting depth of thought with specific facts, details, and examples.

    • Revise drafts for clarity, development, organization, style, word choice, and sentence variety.

    • Edit drafts using standard English conventions, including:: (i) Complete complex sentences with subject-verb agreement and avoidance of splices, run-ons, and fragments; August 2019 Update Page 9 §110.B. Middle School. (ii) Consistent, appropriate use of verb tenses. (iii) Conjunctive adverbs. (iv) Prepositions and prepositional phrases and their influence on subject-verb agreement. (v) Pronoun-antecedent agreement. (vi) Subordinating conjunctions to form complex sentences and correlative conjunctions such as either/or and neither/nor. (vii) Correct capitalization. (viii) Punctuation, including commas to set off words, phrases, and clauses, and semicolons. (ix) Correct spelling, including commonly confused terms such as its/it's, affect/effect, there/their/they're, and to/two/too.

    • Publish written work for appropriate audiences.

  • Composition: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts--genres (11)
    • Compose literary texts such as personal narratives, fiction, and poetry using genre characteristics and craft.

    • Compose informational texts, including multi-paragraph essays that convey information about a topic, using a clear controlling idea or thesis statement and genre characteristics and craft.

    • Compose multi-paragraph argumentative texts using genre characteristics and craft.

    • Compose correspondence that reflects an opinion, registers a complaint, or requests information in a business or friendly structure.

  • Inquiry and research: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts (12)
    • Generate student-selected and teacher-guided questions for formal and informal inquiry.

    • Develop and revise a plan.

    • Refine the major research question, if necessary, guided by the answers to a secondary set of questions.

    • Identify and gather relevant information from a variety of sources.

    • Differentiate between primary and secondary sources.

    • Synthesize information from a variety of sources.

    • Differentiate between paraphrasing and plagiarism when using source materials.

    • Examine sources for:: (i) Reliability, credibility, and bias. (ii) Faulty reasoning such as hyperbole, emotional appeals, and stereotype.

    • Display academic citations and use source materials ethically.

    • Use an appropriate mode of delivery, whether written, oral, or multimodal, to present results. Page 10 August 2019 Update.