The English Language Arts Standards: Reading, Writing, Speaking/Listening, and Language

When we start to get into the nitty gritty of teaching English, we have to look at the standards.  There are 32 standards that pretty much cover everything.

We should look at the English Language Arts Content Standards together.    The standards list everything that an English teacher must teach.

Here's how to think about this enormous document:  there are four strands in English, which I've listed in this post's title:  Reading, Writing, Speaking/Listening, and Language.  ("Language" refers to grammar, usage, punctuation -- the rules that we follow when we read, write, and speak.)

The standards are built and organized as "chunks."  First are the foundational skills for the young ones (and something you will want to know and understand when Mikey starts school); "foundational skills" covers Kindergarten through 5th grade.

The next chunk covers grades 6, 7, 8, or middle school.

The final chunk covers 9-12, and they break these down as 9-10, and 11-12; the standards are exactly the same for 9-10, and 11-12.  In my career, I only taught 11th and 12th grade, so I used the same standards for both grade levels.

Anyway what's cool about how these standards are organized is they point to the same skills throughout a child's education, from Kindergarten to Grade 12; the standard will merely increase in specificity and complexity as a child matures.  Any particular standard in kindergarten will be the the same standard in grade 12.

For example, let's just look at one standard, Reading Standard 2.  Here is the language of "the anchor standard"

R2. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.

Here's how it looks in 1st grade:

R2: Retell stories, including key details, and demonstrate understanding of their central message or lesson.

Here it is again in 4th grade:

R2: Determine the main idea of a text and explain how it is supported by key details; summarize the text.

Same standard, 8th grade:

R2:  Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot; provide an objective summary of the text.

And finally, 11-12th grade:

R2:  Determine two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to provide a complex analysis; provide an objective summary of the text.

Let's spend some time together going over the standards and talking about them together.  These 32 standards are the roadmap for teaching English Language Arts, and I believe I could develop a semester long course to go over this document, (and the ELA/ELD Framework*).   

All I mean to say here is that there is plenty, plenty, plenty to look at and talk about here.

*The framework is a document that is over 1000 pages long!  But that framework explains and demonstrates how to take a standard and operationalize it, implement it, make it real, turn it into a lesson, transform a standard into something that happens in a classroom full of unique human beings.