Even a studied perusal of the English-Language Arts Framework and accompanying content standards reveals the enormity of the task facing any classroom teacher. How do you teach to all of these standards and how do you move all of your students toward standards’ proficiency? Embracing the standards does not imply a commitment to all of them. A closer look reveals how interrelated so many of them are, and, even though they appear to address discrete skills, it is inevitable that almost any legitimate classroom activity will ensnare multiple standards.
I would recommend, though, an incremental approach. Put aside the notion that a single activity may reach out to multiple standards, and begin with a more narrowed focus. Many teachers attempting standards-based lesson planning have already narrowed the 60-plus standards at each grade level to a more manageable set of priority or essential standards. These may number as few as 10-15 standards. Identifying one or two priority standards in each of the strands generates a more manageable number. A sophisticated staff, after working for a few years on the standards, may want to look at test scores and even pre-test their incoming students to help winnow this list. However, I would recommend that anyone just beginning this process rely, instead, on his own professional judgment. Based on your past experience, pick those standards which you know the students need and begin to examine how the curriculum can be tied to them.
Here is an example from the 9th-10th grade standards. My own personal belief is that broad and deep reading is the best way to increase vocabulary and improve writing skills. For too many years now we have focused on writing. In the absence of deep and broad reading, many of us have encountered students who have nothing to say on any academic topic and little to no academic vocabulary or syntax with which to express it even if they did. Working with many of these students I have virtually dictated their papers to them. So, I recommend beginning with the reading standards and, specifically, with “Literary Response and Analysis.” For me, the bedrock standard in this strand is 3.8: “Interpret and evaluate the impact of ambiguities, subtleties, contradictions, ironies, and incongruities in a text.” If freshmen or sophomores are proficient on this standard when they arrive in your class, then I would speculate they are fairly strong across the board on all of the standards. My own experience is that this standard takes tremendous work on the part of both teacher and student, but that it has enormous pay-off as the student moves towards proficiency.
I further believe that students can only demonstrate mastery of this standard by examining new material. If they take an objective test, or write an essay, or some combination of the two, based on stories, poems or plays you have studied together, I cannot see how that demonstrates proficiency. What will they do when they encounter new material on their own? Can they give it a close reading and gain some level of independent mastery over it?
For many of these standards it is necessary first to define terms. A literary glossary in the back of the textbook will yield better definitions than dictionaries on the literary terms, such as allegory or personification. But, for this standard, the dictionary is the place to define terms such as ambiguity, subtlety [most students cannot even pronounce this word], irony and incongruity. They will need sustained assistance locating these nuances in text. I would recommend focusing on irony, since students readily understand it, but often have difficulty seeing it in literary contexts. I sell it to students as a gateway skill, implying that the ability to detect it in text is an entrance skill for college, since the university is almost exclusively structured upon academic discourse. Irony as a tool of academic thinking has a long and glorious past and is not limited to literature. My experience with freshmen is that once they see one of these authorial techniques, they begin to see them everywhere. One student, enamoured with subtleties [hints], found them in virtually every sentence. However, I find this an easier and more encouraging problem to solve than the student who cannot see anything in text unless, and until, it is pointed out to him by teacher or peer.
The linkages among the various strands in the standards becomes apparent when you compare ‘Writing Applications’ standard 2.2 and ‘Speaking and Listening’ standard 2.4.
"Writing Applications 2.2: Write responses to literature: a) demonstrate a comprehensive grasp of the significant ideas of literary works; b) support important ideas and viewpoints through accurate and detailed references to the text or to other works; c) demonstrate awareness of the author’s use of stylistic devices and an appreciation of the effects created; d) identify and assess the impact of perceived ambiguities, nuances, and complexities within the text."
"Speaking Applications 2.4: Deliver oral responses to literature: a) advance a judgment demonstrating a comprehensive grasp of the significant ideas of works or passages (i.e., make and support warranted assertions about the text); b) support important ideas and viewpoints through accurate and detailed references to the text or to other works; c) demonstrate awareness of the author’s use of stylistic devices and an appreciation of the effects created; d) identify and assess the impact of perceived ambiguities, nuances, and complexities within the text."
There are several layers added to both of these standards, but their core seems to emanate from the student’s ability to read for ambiguities, nuances and complexities within text.
A great way to move students toward proficiency on this standard is to develop rubrics that will allow them to assess their own progress. Rubrics you write will work so much better than anything generated by a publishing house. I am one who has come to believe that we should cease our complaining over the inadequacy, and sometimes plain idiocy, of publisher’s materials and do what we should have been doing all along, create materials tailor-made for our context and our students. You can begin with a generic rubric, one that would work for nearly any piece of literature, and then write more specific rubrics for stories or poems, used periodically, to assess for proficiency.
Rubrics can be constructed on any level of complexity you are comfortable with. The Advanced Placement English test has employed a 9-point rubric for years. The Subject A Exam used a 6-point scale, as did the original writing competency assessment. The current 9th grade assessment mirrors the state’s 4 point rubric, with 3 designating proficient. I decided to use a 10 point scale, with descriptors only for the even numbers. That is because I was uncomfortable in discussions where people would argue whether a paper was a 3+ or a 4-. I prefer staying with whole score points. Below is the rubric I wrote for Writing Standard 2.2 using this 10 point scale:
What it looks like: In classroom quick-writes and in more formal essays, students will demonstrate mastery of the elements of literary art. They will articulate significant ideas, cite textual support, examine stylistic devices and their over-all impact, and deal with the complexities of many of these texts, specifically their nuanced meanings or any ambiguities.
Rubric:
10 Quick-writes and formal essays will demonstrate a mastery of the elements of literary criticism. The writer will pay attention to the significant ideas, supported by references to the text, of grade-level appropriate material, as well as the nuances of the text or any ambiguities.
8 Quick-writes and formal essays will demonstrate control of the terminology of literary criticism. The writing will correctly identify at least one significant idea in a text and support it with citations, as well isolate any difficulties in the text, such as the nuances of meaning or any ambiguities.
6 Quick-writes or formal essays will demonstrate some control of the terminology of literary criticism. The writer will identify at least one significant idea in the text and may support it with citations. The writer will locate several difficulties in the text, but will be unable to resolve the majority of them.
4 Quick-write or formal essays will demonstrate consistent confusion with the language of literary criticism. The writer will locate numerous difficulties in the text, but may have difficulty resolving more than a few of them.
2 The student will be consistently confused by literary text and will demonstrate little control over its elements.
How it is assessed: Once every 5 to 10 class sessions the student will apply the above rubric to a piece of writing written in class [quick-write] or a more formal essay [prepared outside of class]. The student will self-assess before the teacher assesses. The student will have multiple opportunities to re-write.
What follows is a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay that students analyzed and then self-assessed using a specifically written rubric:
Read the poem below several times. Use your highlighter and/or pen or pencil to mark up the text features of this poem and make marginal notes. Remembering that it is often as important “how” a poem means what it means, write an interpretation with Writing Applications Content Standard 2.2 in mind:
X
She had forgotten how the August night
Was level as a lake beneath the moon,
In which she swam a little, losing sight
Of shore; and how the boy, who was at noon
Simple enough, not different from the rest,
Wore now a pleasant mystery as he went,
Which seemed to her an honest enough test
Whether she loved him, and she was content.
So loud, so loud the million crickets’ choir . . .
So sweet the night, so long-drawn-out and late . . .
And if the man were not her spirit’s mate,
Why was her body sluggish with desire?
Stark on the open field the moonlight fell,
But the oak tree’s shadow was deep and black and secret as a well.
When the students completed their in-class essays, they turned them in, picked up the rubric, specifically edited for this poem, and then self-assessed. Here is the rubric:
Rubric:
10 Students earning this score point will tell the story of the poem, how the central character comes to have feelings for a boy. The story is told through the contrast of dark and light. The boy is presented as simple by daylight, ‘not different from the rest.’ By night, as she swam by the light of the moon, he ‘wore now a pleasant mystery as he went.’ She considered this ‘an honest enough test of whether she loved him, and she was content.’ And if he were not the boy she loved, why does she feel desire for him? After that rhetorical question, she reflects on the imagery of moonlight ‘stark on the open field,’ and seems to prefer the shadow cast by the oak tree, ‘deep and black and secret as a well,’ like the boy. The girl needs the boy to be mysterious much more than he may be. These students will recognize the English sonnet form and make explicit the structure of the poem, which is divided like an Italian sonnet into octave and sestet thematically. They will cite the various uses of figurative language like alliteration, simile, repetition and imagery. They will also note the irregular length of the last line and may ascribe significance to it.
8 These students will see most of what the top students will, but less precisely and in less detail. For instance, they may see the poem as simply an English sonnet. They may correctly see the girl has feelings for the boy, but may not realize this says much more about her than him.
6 Student earning this score point will correctly categorize this poem as a sonnet, but will treat the relationship between the girl and boy as simple and straightforward, ignoring the contrasting imagery of light and dark. They will locate some figurative language in the poem.
4 These students may be confused even as to the form of this poem. They will write somewhat randomly about images in the poem, but fail to detect the story of the poem. These students will make few, if any technical observations about the poem.
2 These students will make brief responses about the poem which will bear little resemblance to what the poet was writing about. They will have no technical observations to make about the poem.
You would think that this specifically written interpretive rubric would result in contentious students arguing with the points on the rubric and saying “that is just your interpretation!” That, happily, has not been my experience. Just like computer grades silenced many students who would be inclined to challenge their grades, the printed rubric has a power I never intended. Obviously, this is just ‘my interpretation’ and could easily be challenged. It allows me to be somewhat broad in my own scoring of these essays after the student has self-assessed, and I have raised as many scores as I have lowered. Students seem to find comfort in hedging, that is writing things like “I don’t see myself as quite an ‘8’ yet, but I’m better than a ‘6’ so I give myself a ‘7.’ Over time I encourage them to be more detailed in their assessments and they have been. It is also a goal of mine to have the student begin to see his work approximately the way I do and that has occurred as well.
I am offering rubrics and self-assessment as tools to implement, incrementally, a standards-based curriculum. The more you write your own rubrics the easier they become. And when they do become easier, that is proof that you have embedded both the ideas within, and the language of, the standards. You will find that you can then talk in a discriminating way with colleagues about your use of the standards. Gradually, and incrementally, you will pull in more standards.
© Jack Farrell, Conejo Valley Unified School District, 2005