Early Elementary
Language Arts Benchmarks

Michigan Teacher Network

 

 

Meaning and Communication

All students will read and comprehend general and technical material.

All students will demonstrate the ability to write clear and grammatically correct sentences, paragraphs, and compositions.

All students will focus on meaning and communication as they listen, speak, view, read, and write in personal, social, occupational, and civic contexts.

 

 

Standard 1: All students will read and comprehend general and technical material.

  1. Use reading for multiple purposes, such as enjoyment, gathering information, and learning new procedures.

  2. Read with developing fluency a variety of texts, such as stories, poems, messages, menus, and directions.

  3. Employ multiple strategies to construct meaning, including word recognition skills, context clues, retelling, predicting, and generating questions.

  4. Employ multiple strategies to decode words as they construct meaning, including the use of phonemic awareness, letter-sound associations, picture cues, context clues, and other word recognition aids.

  5. Respond to the ideas and feelings generated by oral, visual, written, and electronic texts, and share with peers.

 

Standard 2: All students will demonstrate the ability to write clear and grammatically correct sentences, paragraphs, and compositions.

  1. Write with developing fluency for multiple purposes to produce a variety of texts, such as stories, journals, learning logs, directions, and letters.

  2. Recognize that authors make choices as they write to convey meaning and influence an audience. Examples include word selection, sentence variety, and genre.

  3. Begin to plan and draft texts, and revise and edit in response to the feelings and ideas expressed by others.

  4. Begin to edit text and discuss language conventions using appropriate terms. Examples include action words, naming words, capital letters, and periods.

 

Standard 3: All students will focus on meaning and communication as they listen, speak, view, read, and write in personal, social, occupational, and civic contexts.

  1. Integrate listening, speaking, viewing, reading, and writing skills for multiple purposes and in varied contexts. Examples include using more than one of the language arts to create a story, write a poem or letter, or to prepare and present a unit project on their community.

  2. Explore the relationships among various components of the communication process such as sender, message, and receiver. An example is understanding how the source of the message affects the receiver's response.

  3. Read and write with developing fluency, speak confidently, listen and interact appropriately, view strategically, and represent creatively. Examples include sharing texts in groups and using an author's/reader's chair.

  4. Describe and use effective listening and speaking behaviors that enhance verbal communication and facilitate the construction of meaning. Examples include use of gestures and appropriate group behavior.

  5. Employ strategies to construct meaning while reading, listening to, viewing, or creating texts. Examples include retelling, predicting, generating questions, examining picture cues, discussing with peers, using context clues, and creating mental pictures.

  6. Determine the meaning of unfamiliar words and concepts in oral, visual, and written texts by using a variety of resources, such as prior knowledge, context, other people, dictionaries, pictures, and electronic sources.

  7. Recognize that creators of texts make choices when constructing text to convey meaning, express feelings, and influence an audience. Examples include word selection, sentence length, and use of illustrations.

  8. Respond to the ideas or feelings generated by texts and listen to the responses of others.

   

Language

Standard 4:  All students will use the English language effectively.

  1. Demonstrate awareness of differences in language patterns used in their spoken, written, and visual communication contexts, such as the home, playground, classroom, and storybooks.

  2. Explore and discuss how languages and language patterns vary from place to place and how these languages and dialects are used to convey ideas and feelings. An example is comparing a television toy ad to a print toy ad.

  3. Demonstrate awareness of words that have entered the English language from many cultures.

  4. Become aware of and begin to experiment with different ways to express the same idea.

  5. Explore and begin to use language appropriate for different contexts and purposes. Examples include community building, story discussions, casual conversations, writing workshops, science lessons, playground games, thank-you letters, and daily conversation.

 

 

Literature

Standard 5:  All students will read and analyze a wide variety of classic and contemporary literature and other texts to seek information, ideas, enjoyment, and understanding of their individuality, our common heritage and common humanity, and the rich diversity of our society.

  1. Select, read, listen to, view, and respond thoughtfully to both classic and contemporary texts recognized for quality and literary merit.

  2. Describe and discuss the similarities of plot and character in literature and other texts from around the world.

  3. Describe how characters in literature and other texts can represent members of several different communities.

  4. Recognize the representation of various cultures as well as our common heritage in literature and other texts.

  5. Explain how characters in literature and other texts express attitudes about one another.

 

 

Voice

Standard 6:  All students will learn to communicate information accurately and effectively and demonstrate their expressive abilities by creating oral, written, and visual texts that enlighten and engage an audience.

  1. Identify elements of effective communication that influence the quality of their interactions with others. Examples include use of facial expression, word choice, and articulation.

  2. Experiment with the various voices they use when they speak and write for different purposes and audiences.

  3. Explore works of different authors, speakers, and illustrators to determine how they present ideas and feelings to evoke different responses.

  4. Develop a sense of personal voice by explaining their selection of materials for different purposes and audiences. Examples include portfolios, displays, and literacy interviews.

 

 

Skills and Processes

Standard 7:  All students will demonstrate, analyze, and reflect upon the skills and processes used to communicate through listening, speaking, viewing, reading, and writing.

  1. Use a combination of strategies when encountering unfamiliar texts while constructing meaning. Examples include retelling, predicting, generating questions, examining picture cues, analyzing phonetically, discussing with peers, and using text cues.

  2. Monitor their progress while beginning to use a variety of strategies to overcome difficulties when constructing and conveying meaning.

  3. Reflect on their emerging literacy, set goals, and make appropriate choices throughout the learning process as they develop the ability to regulate their learning.

  4. Begin to develop and use strategies for planning, drafting, revising, and editing a variety of text forms. Examples include identifying characteristics of their audience, mapping, and proofreading.

 

 

Genre and Craft of Language

Standard 8:  All students will explore and use the characteristics of different types of texts, aesthetic elements, and mechanics--including text structure, figurative and descriptive language, spelling, punctuation, and grammar--to construct and convey meaning.

  1. Identify and use mechanics that enhance and clarify understanding. Examples include using conventional punctuation, capitalization, and spelling, as well as approximations of conventional spelling, and restating key ideas in oral messages.

  2. Explore how the characteristics of various narrative genre and story elements can be used to convey ideas and perspectives. Examples include character, setting, and problem in poetry, drama, and folktales.

  3. Explore how the characteristics of various informational genre (e.g., show-and-tell, trade books, textbooks, and dictionaries) and elements of expository text structure (e.g., organizational patterns, major ideas, and details) can be used to convey ideas.

  4. Identify and use aspects of the craft of the speaker, writer, and illustrator to formulate and express their ideas artistically. Examples include dialogue, characterization, conflict, organization, diction, color, and shape.

  5. Explore how the characteristics of various oral, visual, and written texts (e.g., videos, CD-ROM stories, books on tape, and trade books) and the textual aids they employ (e.g., illustrations, tables of contents, and headings/titles) are used to convey meaning.

 

 

Depth of Understanding

Standard 9:  All students will demonstrate understanding of the complexity of enduring issues and recurring problems by making connections and generating themes within and across texts.

  1. Explore and reflect on universal themes and substantive issues from oral, visual, and written texts. Examples include new friendships and life in the neighborhood.

  2. Identify and categorize key ideas, concepts, and perspectives found in texts.

  3. Draw conclusions based on their understanding of differing views presented in text.

 

 

Ideas in Action

Standard 10:  All students will apply knowledge, ideas, and issues drawn from texts to their lives and the lives of others.

  1. Make connections between key ideas in literature and other texts and their own lives.

  2. Demonstrate their developing literacy by using text to enhance their daily lives. Examples include reading with a parent, discussing a favorite text, writing to a friend or relative about an experience, and creating a visual representation of an important idea.

  3. Use oral, written, and visual texts to identify and explore school and community issues and problems, and discuss how one individual or group can make a difference. Examples include responding orally, artistically, or in writing about an issue or problem they have studied and/or experienced.

 

 

Inquiry and Research

Standard 11:  All students will define and investigate important issues and problems using a variety of resources, including technology, to explore and create texts.

  1. Generate questions about important issues that affect them or topics about which they are curious, and use discussion to narrow questions for further exploration.

  2. Identify and use resources that are most appropriate and readily available for investigating a particular question or topic. Examples include knowledgeable people, field trips, library classification systems, encyclopedias, atlases, word processing programs, and electronic media.

  3. Organize and interpret information to draw conclusions based on the investigation of an issue or problem.

  4. Develop and present conclusions based on the investigation of an issue or problem. Examples include skits, plays, songs, and personal or creative stories.

 

 

Critical Standards

Standard 12:  All students will develop and apply personal, shared, and academic criteria for the employment, appreciation, and evaluation of their own and others' oral, written, and visual texts.

  1. Identify the qualities of their own oral, visual, and written texts that help them communicate effectively for different purposes. Examples include content, styles, and organizational devices, such as the use of a chronological sequence in the telling of a story.

  2. Discuss individual and shared standards used for different purposes.

  3. Discuss choices in reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing, and representing that reflect aesthetic qualities, such as rhyme, rhythm of the language, or repetition.

  4. Create a collection of personal work selected according to both individual and shared criteria, reflecting on the merit of each selection.

  5. Recognize that the style and substance of a message reflect the values of a communicator.

   

Other Resources: Michigan Teacher Network.

Compiled by Imad Fadlallah, Stout Middle School, February 2002