Students learn to clarify meaning and respond critically and creatively to texts, situations, and events. Responding and making connections involves comprehending, formulating personal reactions, predicting, summarizing, supporting, justifying, assessing other points of view, and evaluating. Readers make connections by reflecting upon and reacting to selections, situations, and events. They respond and reflect from a personal perspective as they connect background knowledge and experiences. Effective Communication Effective oral and written communication requires keen awareness of the purpose, message, audience, and contexts for communication.
Students learn to use language clearly, strategically, critically, and creatively.
This goal teaches students to use writing, speaking, and viewing as thinking processes and as tools for learning. While writing, speaking, and viewing students select from and combine these variables as appropriate to the task. While writing to learn, students discover connections, describe processes, express emerging understandings, raise questions, and find answers. Thinking, speaking, and writing are recursive processes. Grammar and Language Conventions Grammar and language conventions focus on students' increasing proficiency in the understanding of and control of their language.