English Department Standards
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GENERAL STANDARD 1: Discussion
Students will use agreed-upon rules for informal and formal discussions in small and large groups.
1.6 Drawing on one of the widely used professional evaluation forms for group
discussion, evaluate how well participants engage in discussions at a local
meeting. For example, using evaluation guidelines developed by the National Issues
Forum, students identify, analyze, and evaluate the rules used in a formal or informal government meeting or on a television news discussion program.
STANDARD 2: Questioning, Listening, and Contributing*
Students will pose questions, listen to the ideas of others, and contribute their own information or ideas in group discussions or interviews in order to acquire new knowledge.
2.5 Summarize in a coherent and organized way information and ideas
learned from a focused discussion. For example, students discuss similarities and differences in the social and political contexts for the views of Thoreau, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. on civil disobedience. Then they summarize what they learned from the discussion, noting those similarities and differences.
2.6 Analyze differences in responses to focused group discussion in an organized and systematic way. For example, students read and discuss “The Fall of the House of Usher,” by Edgar Allan Poe, as an example of observer narration; “The Prison,”
by Bernard Malamud, as an example of single character point of view; and “The Boarding House,” by James Joyce, as an example of multiple character point of view. Students summarize their conclusions about how the authors’ choices regarding literary narrator made a difference in their responses as readers, and present their ideas to the class.
GENERAL STANDARD 3: Oral Presentation*
Students will make oral presentations that demonstrate appropriate consideration
of audience, purpose, and the information to be conveyed. Planning an effective presentation requires students to make an appropriate match between their intended audience and the choice of presentation style, level of formality, and format. Frequent opportunities to plan presentations for various purposes and to speak before different groups help students learn how to gain and keep an audience’s attention, interest, and respect. Massachusetts English Language Arts Curriculum Framework June 2001 17
3.14 Give formal and informal talks to various audiences and for various purposes using appropriate level of formality and rhetorical devices.
3.15 Analyze effective speeches made for a variety of purposes and prepare and deliver a speech containing some of these features. For example, students study the rhetoric of formal speaking by reading or listening to such memorable speeches as John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, one of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “fireside chats,” or Susan B. Anthony’s “Petition to Congress for Women’s Suffrage.” After analyzing several of these models, students write and deliver a short persuasive
speech on a current topic of interest.
3.16 Create an appropriate scoring guide to prepare, improve, and assess presentations.
3.17 Deliver formal presentations for particular audiences using clear enunciation and appropriate organization, gestures, tone, and vocabulary.
3.18 Create an appropriate scoring guide to evaluate final presentations.
GENERAL STANDARD 4: Vocabulary and Concept Development
Students will understand and acquire new vocabulary and use it correctly in reading and writing. Our ability to think clearly and communicate with precision depends on our individual store of words. A rich vocabulary enables students to understand what they read, and to speak and write with flexibility and control. As students employ a variety of strategies for acquiring new vocabulary, the delight in finding and using that perfect word can heighten interest in vocabulary itself.
4.23 Identify and use correctly idioms, cognates, words with literal and figurative meanings, and patterns of word changes that indicate different meanings or functions
.
4.24 Use knowledge of Greek, Latin, and Norse mythology, the Bible, and other works often alluded to in British and American literature to understand the meanings of new words. For example, students come across the word narcissistic in a literary work and reread the myth of Narcissus and Echo to understand the meaning of
narcissistic. After they encounter the words genetic or mercury in their readings for science, they read a portion of Genesis to understand genetic, or the myth about the god Mercury to understand the meaning of mercury or mercurial.
4.25 Use general dictionaries, specialized dictionaries, thesauruses, or related references as needed to increase learning.
4.26 Identify and use correctly new words acquired through study of their different relationships to other words.
4.27 Use general dictionaries, specialized dictionaries, thesauruses, histories of language, books of quotations, and other related references as needed. For example, students each choose a word in a favorite literary passage and examine all the synonyms for it in a thesaurus. They decide if any of the synonyms might be suitable substitutes in terms of meaning and discuss the shades of meaning they perceive. They also speculate about what other considerations the author might have had for the specific choice of word.
GENERAL STANDARD 5: Structure and Origins of Modern English
Students will analyze standard English grammar and usage and recognize how its vocabulary has developed and been influenced by other languages. The English language has changed through time and through contact with other languages. An understanding of its history helps students appreciate the extraordinary richness of its vocabulary, which continues to grow. The study of its grammar and usage gives students more control over the meaning they intend in their writing and speaking.
5.23 Identify simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences.
5.24 Identify nominalized, adjectival, and adverbial clauses.
5.25 Recognize the functions of verbals: participles, gerunds, and infinitives.
5.26 Analyze the structure of a sentence (traditional diagram, transformational
model). For example, students analyze the clauses and phrases in the first two lines
of Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem, “My Shadow”: “I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.”
5.27 Identify rhetorically functional sentence structure (parallelism, properly
placed modifiers).
5.28 Identify correct mechanics (semicolons, colons, hyphens), correct usage
(tense consistency), and correct sentence structure (parallel structure).
5.29 Describe the origins and meanings of common words and foreign words or
phrases used frequently in written English, and show their relationship to historical events or developments (glasnost, coup d’état).
5.30 Identify, describe, and apply all conventions of standard English.
5.31 Describe historical changes in conventions for usage and grammar.
5.32 Explain and evaluate the influence of the English language on world literature and world cultures.
5.33 Analyze and explain how the English language has developed and been influenced by other languages.
GENERAL STANDARD 6: Formal and Informal English
Students will describe, analyze, and use appropriately formal and informal English.
Study of different forms of the English language helps students to understand that people use different levels of formality in their writing and speaking as well as a variety of regional and social dialects in their conversational language.
6.8 Identify content-specific vocabulary, terminology, or jargon unique to particular social or professional groups.
6.9 Identify differences between the voice, tone, diction, and syntax used
in media presentations (documentary films, news broadcasts, taped interviews) and these elements in informal speech.
6.10 Analyze the role and place of standard American English in speech, writing, and literature.
6.11 Analyze how dialect can be a source of negative or positive stereotypes
among social groups.
GENERAL STANDARD 7: Beginning Reading (Continued)
Students will understand the nature of written English and the relationship of letters
and spelling patterns to the sounds of speech. The majority of students will have met these standards by the end of Grade 4, although teachers may need to continue addressing earlier standards.
GENERAL STANDARD 8: Understanding a Text
Students will identify the basic facts and main ideas in a text and use them as the basis for interpretation. (For vocabulary and concept development see General Standard 4.) When we read a text closely, we work carefully to discern the author’s main ideas and the particular facts and details that support them. Good readers read thoughtfully and purposefully, constantly checking their understanding of the author’s intent and meaning so that their interpretations will be sound.
For imaginative/literary texts:
8.29 Identify and analyze patterns of imagery or symbolism.
8.30 Identify and interpret themes and give supporting evidence from a text.
For informational/expository texts:
8.31 Analyze the logic and use of evidence in an author’s argument. For example, students read two political columnists in The Boston Globe, such as David Nyhan and Jeff Jacoby, and identify the authors’ main arguments. Then they discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments and cite the authors’ best evidence as set forth in the columns.
For imaginative/literary texts:
8.32 Identify and analyze the point(s) of view in a literary work.
8.33 Analyze patterns of imagery or symbolism and connect them to themes
and/or tone and mood.
For informational/expository texts:
8.34 Analyze and evaluate the logic and use of evidence in an author’s argument.
GENERAL STANDARD 9: Making Connections (Continued)
Students will deepen their understanding of a literary or non-literary work by relating it to its contemporary context or historical background
9.6 Relate a literary work to primary source documents of its literary period or historical setting. For example, students read The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In order to deepen their understanding of the early colonial period and of Puritan beliefs, they read poems by Anne Bradstreet, transcripts of witch trials in Salem, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” by Jonathan Edwards (a sermon written during the Great Awakening), and excerpts from several colonial-era diaries (Judge Sewall, William Byrd III, Mary Rowlandson). Then students relate what they have learned to events, characters, and themes in The Scarlet Letter.
9.7 Relate a literary work to the seminal ideas of its time.
For example, students read Matthew Arnold’s poem, “Dover Beach.” In order to understand the 19th century controversy over the implications of evolutionary theory, they read letters, essays, and excerpts from the period. Then they use what they have learned to inform their understanding of the poem and write an interpretive essay.
GENERAL STANDARD 10: Genre
Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the characteristics of different genres. We become better readers by understanding both the structure and the conventions of different genres. A student who knows the formal qualities of a genre is able to anticipate how the text will evolve, appreciate the nuances that make a given text unique, and rely on this knowledge to make a deeper and subtler interpretation of the meaning of the text.
10.5 Compare and contrast the presentation of a theme or topic across genres to explain how the selection of genre shapes the message. For example, students compare and contrast three reactions to Lincoln’s death: Walt Whitman’s poem, “O Captain, My Captain,” Frederick Douglass’s eulogy, and the report in the New York Times on April 12, 1865. They make specific contrasts between the impersonal newspaper report and the personal poem and eulogy and between the two personal genres.
10.6 Identify and analyze characteristics of genres (satire, parody, allegory, pastoral) that overlap or cut across the lines of genre classifications such as poetry, prose, drama, short story, essay, and editorial. For example, as they read Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, students consider: “Satirists harbor some distaste for the establishment and are most effective only when they present their message subtly. One way to present the savage follies of human beings more subtly is to create a fictional world in which humor, irony, circular logic, and double talk are used to make the disturbing, vulgar, and the gruesome more palatable.” They write essays evaluating the novel as an effective piece of satire based on the criteria in the statement.
GENERAL STANDARD 11: Theme
Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of theme in a literary work
and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding. Understanding and articulating theme is at the heart of the act of reading literature. Identification of theme clarifies the student’s interpretation of the text. Providing evidence from the text to support an understanding of theme is, like a proof in algebra or geometry, the most essential and elegant demonstration of that understanding.
11.5 Apply knowledge of the concept that the theme or meaning of a selection
represents a view or comment on life, and provide support from the text for the identified themes. For example, students analyze and compare selections from Russell Baker’s Growing Up and Ed McClanahan’s Natural Man, or from Gabriel Garcia- Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera and Reynold Price’s Long and
Happy Life, as variations on a theme.
11.6 Apply knowledge of the concept that a text can contain more than one theme.
11.7 Analyze and compare texts that express a universal theme, and locate support in the text for the identified theme. For example, students compare Sophocles’ play Antigone and Robert Bolt’s play, Man for All Seasons, or Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, as cross-cultural examples of a similar theme and locate words or passages that support their
understanding.
GENERAL STANDARD 12: Fiction
Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the structure and elements of fiction and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
12.5 Locate and analyze such elements in fiction as point of view, foreshadowing,
and irony. For example, after reading a short story such as Saki’s “The Open
Window,” students work in small groups to analyze the story for these elements and present evidence supporting their ideas to the class.
12.6 Analyze, evaluate, and apply knowledge of how authors use techniques
and elements in fiction for rhetorical and aesthetic purposes. For example, students analyze events, point of view, and characterization in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye in light of Stanley Crouch’s criticism of her work, and conduct a class debate on the validity of his criticism.
GENERAL STANDARD 13: Nonfiction
Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the purpose, structure, and elements of nonfiction or informational materials and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding. Most students regularly read newspapers, magazines, journals, or textbooks. The identification and understanding of common expository organizational structures help students to read challenging nonfiction material. Knowledge of the textual and graphic features of nonfiction extends a student’s control in reading and writing informational texts.
13.24 Analyze the logic and use of evidence in an author’s argument
13.25 Analyze and explain the structure and elements of nonfiction works. For example, students analyze the structure and elements of Nicholas Gage’s Eleni, Helen Keller’s Story of My Life, Mary McCarthy’s Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, or Andrew X. Pham’s Catfish and Mandala and compose their own autobiographies or biographies.
13.26 Analyze and evaluate the logic and use of evidence in an author’s argument
.
13.27 Analyze, explain, and evaluate how authors use the elements of nonfiction to achieve their purposes. For example, students analyze Night Country, by Loren Eiseley, or several essays by Lewis Thomas or Stephen Jay Gould, and then explain and evaluate how these authors choose their language and organize their
writing to help the general reader understand the scientific concepts they present.
GENERAL STANDARD 14: Poetry
Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the theme, structure, and elements of poetry and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding. (See also Standard 15.) From poetry we learn the language of heart and soul, with particular attention paid to rhythm and sound, compression and precision, the power of images, and the appropriate use of figures of speech. And yet it is also the genre that is most playful in its attention to language, where rhyme, pun, and hidden meanings are constant surprises. The identification and analysis of the elements generally associated with poetry— metaphor, simile, personification, and alliteration—have an enormous impact on student reading and writing not only in poetry, but in other genres as well.
14.5 Identify, respond to, and analyze the effects of sound, form, figurative language, graphics, and dramatic structure of poems:
• sound (alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhyme scheme, consonance, assonance);
• form (ballad, sonnet, heroic couplets);
• figurative language (personification, metaphor, simile, hyperbole,
symbolism); and
• dramatic structure.
For example, students respond to, analyze, and compare a variety of poems that exemplify the range of the poet’s dramatic power—such as Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess,”Elizabeth Bishop’s “Fish,” Robert Frost’s “Out, out . . .” (along with Macbeth’s soliloquy in Act V), Amy Lowell’s “Patterns,” and Edwin Markham’s “Man with the Hoe.”
14.6 Analyze and evaluate the appropriateness of diction and imagery (controlling images, figurative language, understatement, overstatement, irony, paradox).
For example, students examine poems to explore the relationship between the literal and the figurative in Mark Strand’s “Keeping Things Whole,” Elinor Wylie’s “Sea Lullaby,” Louis MacNeice’s “Prayer Before Birth,” Margaret Walker’s “Lineage,” A.E. Housman’s “To an Athlete Dying Young,” W.H. Auden’s “Unknown Citizen,” Emily Dickinson’s “I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed,” and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias.” They report their findings to to the class, compare observations, and set guidelines for further study.
GENERAL STANDARD 15: Style and Language
Students will identify and analyze how an author’s words appeal to the senses, create imagery, suggest mood, and set tone and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
15.7 Evaluate how an author’s choice of words advances the theme or purpose
of a work. For example, while viewing a historical documentary, students analyze
how the scripted voice-over narration complements the spoken excerpts from period diaries, letters, and newspaper reports.
15.8 Identify and describe the importance of sentence variety in the overall
effectiveness of an imaginary/literary or informational/expository work.
15.9 Identify, analyze, and evaluate an author’s use of rhetorical devices in
persuasive argument.
15.10 Analyze and compare style and language across significant cross-cultural
literary works.For example, students compose essays in which they analyze and compare figurative language in a variety of selections from works such as The Epic
of Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, The Hebrew Bible, The New Testament, The
Bhagavad-Gita, The Analects of Confucius, and The Koran.
GENERAL STANDARD 16: Myth, Traditional Narrative, and Classical Literature
Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes,structure, and elements of myths, traditional narratives, and classical literature and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
16.11 Analyze the characters, structure, and themes of classical Greek drama
and epic poetry.For example, students read Sophocles’ Antigone and discuss the conflict between Creon and Antigone as a manifestation of the eternal struggle
between human and divine law.
16.12 Analyze the influence of mythic, traditional, or classical literature on
later literature and film.For example, students trace the archetypal theme of “the fall” from the Old Testament as they read Hawthorne’s “Rapaccini’s Daughter,” and excerpts from Milton’s Paradise Lost and view the film version of Bernard
Malamud’s The Natural. Or, students read The Oresteia, by Aeschylus
and compare it to a modern version such as Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning
Becomes Electra or Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Flies.
GENERAL STANDARD 17: Dramatic Literature
Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes, structure,
and elements of drama and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
17.7 Identify and analyze how dramatic conventions support, interpret, and
enhance dramatic text.For example, students analyze the function of the chorus in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, considering its dual role as advisor to characters as well as informant to the audience.
17.8 Identify and analyze types of dramatic literature.
For example, students read a comedy and discuss the elements and techniques the playwright used to create humor.
17.9 Identify and analyze dramatic conventions (monologue, soliloquy, chorus,
aside, dramatic irony).For example, students select a soliloquy from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, monologue from Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, or
the lines from a chorus in a Greek play such as Euripides’ The Bacchae,
analyze its purpose and effects in the play, deliver the speech, and discuss
their interpretation of it to the class
.GENERAL STANDARD 18: Dramatic Reading and Performance* (Continued)
Students will plan and present dramatic readings, recitations, and performances
that demonstrate appropriate consideration of audience and purpose.
18.5 Develop, communicate, and sustain consistent characters in improvisational,
formal, and informal productions and create scoring guides with categories and criteria for assessment of presentations. For example, students stage and enact a courtroom scene from literature such as Lawrence’s Inherit the Wind or Rattigan’s The Winslow Boy based on student- and/or teacher-created scoring guides, and evaluate their own and other students’ performances using the guide.
18.6 Demonstrate understanding of the functions of playwright, director, technical designer, and actor by writing, directing, designing, and/or acting in an original play.
For example, students in a humanities class researching World War II read news articles and short stories, and interview family members and friends about their memories of the time period. After brainstorming ideas for dramatic conflict, they create characters, plot, dialogue, settings, and costume, perform their play for an audience, and participate in a postperformance discussion of the choices they made in their plays.
GENERAL STANDARD 19: Writing
Students will write with a clear focus, coherent organization, and sufficient detail.
We write to tell stories, to record actual and imagined sights, sounds, and experiences, to provide information and opinion, to make connections, and to synthesize ideas. From their earliest years in school, students learn to provide a clear purpose and sequence for their ideas in order to make their writing coherent, logical, and expressive.
19.24 Write well-organized stories or scripts with an explicit or implicit theme and details that contribute to a definite mood or tone.
19.25 Write poems using a range of poetic techniques, forms (sonnet, ballad),
and figurative language.
For informational/expository writing:
19.26 Write well-organized essays (persuasive, literary, personal) that have a
clear focus, logical development, effective use of detail, and variety in sentence structure.
19.27 Write well-organized research papers that prove a thesis statement using logical organization, effective supporting evidence, and variety in sentence structure.
For imaginative/literary writing:*
19.28 Write well-organized stories or scripts with an explicit or implicit theme,
using a variety of literary techniques.
19.29 Write poems using a range of forms and techniques.
For informational/expository writing:
19.30 Write coherent compositions with a clear focus, objective presentation
of alternate views, rich detail, well-developed paragraphs, and logical argumentation. For example, students compose an essay for their English and American history classes on de Toqueville’s observations of American life in the
1830s, examining whether his characterization of American society is still applicable today.
GENERAL STANDARD 20: Consideration of Audience and Purpose
Students will write for different audiences and purposes. (See also Standards 3, 6, and 19.) When students adapt their writing for a variety of purposes, they learn that different organizational strategies, word choices, and tones are needed. They learn that this is also true when considering audience. Through this process students gain a deeper understanding of the world around them and grow in their ability to influence it.
20.5 Use different levels of formality, style, and tone when composing for different audiences. For example, students write short personal essays on a variety of topics
such as beliefs, goals, achievements, memories, heroes, or heroines. Students decide on an audience and purpose for their pamphlet, such as a résumé for a prospective employer, an introduction to their next year’s teachers, or a gift for a family member. They discuss possible variations in topics, formality of language, and presentation that might be dictated by the different audiences, and then they write and revise their personal essays in accordance with the discussions they have had and the criteria they have developed. They design and create their pamphlets and send their published work to the intended audience.
20.6 Use effective rhetorical techniques and demonstrate understanding of purpose, speaker, audience, and form when completing expressive, persuasive, or literary writing assignments.
GENERAL STANDARD 21: Revising
Students will demonstrate improvement in organization, content, paragraph development, level of detail, style, tone, and word choice (diction) in their compositions after revising them. A flawless first draft is a rarity, even for the most gifted writer. Writing well requires two processes that sometimes appear to be in opposition: creating and criticizing. As they expand their imaginative thinking on paper, students must at the same time learn the patience and discipline required to reshape and polish their final work. Revising to get thoughts and words just right can be the most difficult part of writing, and also the most satisfying.
21.8 Revise writing by attending to topic/idea development, organization, level of detail, language/style, sentence structure, grammar and usage, and mechanics.
21.9 Revise writing to improve style, word choice, sentence variety, and subtlety
of meaning after rethinking how well questions of purpose, audience, and genre have been addressed. For example, after rethinking how well they have handled matters of style, meaning, and tone from the perspective of the major rhetorical elements, graduating seniors revise a formal letter to their school committee, detailing how they have benefited from the education they have received in the
district and offering suggestions for improving the educational experience of future students.
GENERAL STANDARD 22: Standard English Conventions
Students will use knowledge of standard English conventions in their writing, revising, and editing. We write to make connections with the larger world. A writer’s ideas are more likely to be taken seriously when the words are spelled accurately and the sentences are grammatically correct. Use of standard English conventions helps readers understand and follow the writer’s meaning, while errors can be distracting and confusing. Standard English conventions are the “good manners” of writing and speaking that make communication fluid.
22.9 Use knowledge of types of clauses (main and subordinate), verbals (gerunds, infinitives, participles), mechanics (semicolons, colons, hyphens), usage (tense consistency), sentence structure (parallel structure), and standard English spelling when writing and editing.
22.10 Use all conventions of standard English when writing and editing.
GENERAL STANDARD 23: Organizing Ideas in Writing
Students will organize ideas in writing in a way that makes sense for their purpose.
When ideas are purposefully organized to advance the writer’s intentions, they have the greatest impact on the writer’s audience. Writers who understand how to arrange their ideas in ways that suit their purposes for writing will achieve greater coherence and clarity.
23.12 Integrate all elements of fiction to emphasize the theme and tone of the story.
23.13 Organize ideas for a critical essay about literature or a research report with an original thesis statement in the introduction, well constructed paragraphs that build an effective argument, transition sentences to link paragraphs into a coherent whole, and a conclusion. For example, students write an essay on the causes for the murder of Lenny in Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck. They choose the deductive approach, describing the murder and then explaining the causes, or the
inductive approach, explaining the causes and then describing the murder.
23.14 Organize ideas for emphasis in a way that suits the purpose of the writer.
For example, students select a method of giving emphasis (most important information first or last, most important idea has the fullest or briefest presentation) when supporting a thesis about characterization in Edwin Arlington Robinson’s narrative poems, “Richard Corey” and “Miniver Cheevy.” Or students use one of five methods (comparison and contrast, illustration, classification, definition, analysis) of organizing their ideas in exposition as determined by the needs of their topic.
23.15 Craft sentences in a way that supports the underlying logic of the ideas. For example, after writing a critical essay, students examine each sentence to determine whether the placement of phrases or dependent clauses supports the emphasis they desire in the sentence and in the paragraph as a whole.
GENERAL STANDARD 24: Research*
Students will gather information from a variety of sources, analyze and evaluate the quality of the information they obtain, and use it to answer their own questions.
As the amount and complexity of knowledge increases, students need to understand the features of the many resources available to them and know how to conduct an efficient and successful search for accurate information.
24.5 Formulate open-ended research questions and apply steps for obtaining and evaluating information from a variety of sources, organizing information, documenting sources in a consistent and standard format, and presenting research.
For example, after reading an article about record high prices for Van Gogh paintings in current auctions, a student decides to research whether Van Gogh’s paintings have continuously been so popular and expensive. He begins by reading 20th century art historians, then turns to primary sources such as 19th century French reviews, the artist’s diaries, letters, and account books. His final report uses supporting evidence from all these sources.
24.6 Formulate original, open-ended questions to explore a topic of interest, design and carry out research, and evaluate the quality of the research paper in terms of the adequacy of its questions, materials, approach, and documentation of sources. For example, as they study the modern history of Native American groups, students analyze the difference between open-ended research questions and “biased” or “loaded” questions. The answers to open-ended questions are not known in advance (e.g., “How do casinos on tribal land affect the economy of the Native American group owning them and the economy of the region?”). In a “biased” or “loaded” question, on the other hand, the wording of the question suggests a foregone conclusion (e.g.,“Why are casinos on tribal lands detrimental to Native Americans and to the economy of the region?”).
GENERAL STANDARD 25: Evaluating Writing and Presentations*
Students will develop and use appropriate rhetorical, logical, and stylistic criteria for assessing final versions of their compositions or research projects before presenting them to varied audiences. Achieving a high standard of excellence in writing is a goal for all schools. It is important for students to recognize the hallmarks of superior work so that they know what they need to do in order to improve and
polish their writing and speaking. Classrooms and schools that make standards of quality explicit help students learn to become thoughtful critics of their own work.
25.5 Use group-generated criteria for evaluating different forms of writing and explain why these are important before applying them. For example, students generate criteria for effective political speeches, explain the importance of the criteria, and apply them to a mock debate on bills filed before the Massachusetts legislature.
25.6 Individually develop and use criteria for assessing work across the curriculum, explaining why the criteria are appropriate before applying them. For example, students design their own criteria to evaluate research projects in English language arts or local history. Before a review panel of students, family, and community experts, students justify these criteria and explain how they have applied them.
GENERAL STANDARD 26: Analysis of Media*
Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the conventions, elements, and techniques of film, radio, video, television, multimedia productions, the Internet, and emerging technologies, and provide evidence from the works to support their understanding.
26.5 Analyze visual or aural techniques used in a media message for a particular
audience and evaluate their effectiveness.
26.6 Identify the aesthetic effects of a media presentation and identify and
evaluate the techniques used to create them. For example, on computers students go to web sites such as the National Park Service that are visual and nonlinear in nature. They evaluate the effectiveness of the visual design and the accuracy and organization of the text and visual information
GENERAL STANDARD 27: Media Production*
Students will design and create coherent media productions (audio, video, television, multimedia, Internet, emerging technologies) with a clear controlling idea,
adequate detail, and appropriate consideration of audience, purpose, and medium.
(See also Standards 18, 24, 26, and the Theatre Standards of the Arts Curriculum Framework.) Students grow up surrounded by television, movies, and the Internet. The availability in schools of recording and editing equipment and computers offers students opportunities to combine text, images, and sounds in their reports and creative works. Putting together an effective media production—whether a relatively simple radio play or a complex film documentary—entails as much discipline and satisfaction as writing a good essay. Both require clarity of purpose, selectivity in editing, and knowledge of the expressive possibilities of the medium used.
27.6 Create media presentations that effectively use graphics, images, and/or
sound to present a distinctive point of view on a topic. For example, in preparation for a local election, students in a television production class prepare for a debate among the candidates. They write an introductory script and questions for the candidates, then plan how they will use three cameras: a wide-angle view of all candidates on stage; a close-up view of each candidate for answers and reaction shots; and reaction shots of the audience.
27.7 Develop and apply criteria for assessing the effectiveness of the presentation, style, and content of films and other forms of electronic communication.
27.8 Create coherent media productions that synthesize information from several sources. For example, students create web pages that demonstrate understanding
of the social or political philosophy of several writers of a historical period, a literary movement, or public issue.