Course Standards
General Course Information and Notes
Version Description
The purpose of this course is to increase reading fluency and endurance through integrated experiences in the language arts. This course incorporates reading and analysis of literary and informational selections to develop critical and close reading skills. At the end of 6th grade students are expected to read and comprehend texts in the 6-8 grade complexity band proficiently and read texts at the high end of the band with support. Students enrolled in the course should be consistently challenged with increasingly complex text.General Notes
Important Note: Reading and writing courses should not be used in place of English language arts courses; reading and writing courses are intended to be used to supplement further study in English language arts.
General Notes: The content should include, but not be limited to, the following:
- demonstrating successful reading of argument;
- demonstrating successful reading of fact and opinion;
- demonstrating successful reading of high-quality literature;
- demonstrating knowledge of a variety of organizational patterns and their relationships in the comprehension of text;
- demonstrating successful understanding of academic vocabulary and vocabulary in context;
- integrating reading and writing, including written responses to print and digital text;
- using effective listening, speaking, and viewing strategies with emphasis on the use of evidence to support or refute a claim in multimedia presentations, class discussions, and extended text discussions;
- collaborating extensively amongst peers.
Special Notes:
Instructional Practices: Teaching from well-written, grade-level instructional materials enhances students’ content area knowledge and also strengthens their ability to comprehend longer, complex reading passages on any topic for any purpose. Using the following instructional practices also helps student learning.
- Reading assignments from longer text passages, as well as shorter ones when text is extremely complex.
- Making close reading and rereading of texts central to lessons.
- Asking high-level, text-specific questions and requiring high-level, complex tasks and assignments.
- Requiring students to support answers with evidence from the text.
- Providing extensive text-based research and writing opportunities (claims and evidence).
The College and Career Readiness (CCR) anchor standards and grade-specific standards are necessary complements—the former providing broad standards, the latter providing additional specificity—that together define the skills and understandings that all students must demonstrate at each grade level. Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each succeeding year’s grade specific benchmarks, retain or further develop skills and understandings mastered in preceding grades, and work steadily toward meeting the more general expectations described by the CCR anchor standards.
General Information
- Class Size Core Required
Educator Certifications
Student Resources
Original Student Tutorials
Learn how characters' actions and responses develop the main characters and advance the plot during key events in the beginning of the novel Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli with this interactive tutorial.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Explore the poem “The Twelfth Song of Thunder” from the Navajo Mountain Chant. In this interactive tutorial, you'll examine how a refrain in the poem better develops the theme of the poem.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Learn 12 new academic vocabulary terms in this interactive tutorial! You'll practice the words' synonyms, antonyms, parts of speech, and context clues in order to add them to your vocabulary.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Explore the poem “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost and learn how the poem’s structure develops theme, setting, and plot as you complete this interactive tutorial.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Explore the poem "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost and learn about denotation and connotation. In this interactive tutorial, you will examine the impact of word choice on the meaning of a poem.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Learn 12 new academic vocabulary terms in this interactive tutorial! You'll practice the words' synonyms, antonyms, parts of speech, and context clues in order to add them to your vocabulary.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Use context clues to determine the meaning of unfamiliar words in an informative text about the Revolutionary War in this interactive tutorial.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Learn 12 new academic vocabulary terms in this interactive tutorial! You'll practice the words' synonyms, antonyms, parts of speech, and context clues in order to add them to your vocabulary.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Learn 12 new academic vocabulary terms using synonyms, antonyms, parts of speech, and context clues in this interactive tutorial.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Read a story called “A Crooked Election" and learn to describe how the plot of a story unfolds in a series of episodes. In this interactive tutorial, you will also explore how the characters change and evolve throughout the plot of a story.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Learn more about that dreaded word--plagiarism--in this interactive tutorial that's all about citing your sources and avoiding academic dishonesty!
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Explore how an author develops the point of view of a narrating character through the incredible story of Melody, a girl who cannot speak. Excerpts in this interactive tutorial are taken from the award-winning novel Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Learn to identify and understand themes in poetry in this interactive tutorial. This skill will bolster your ability to read and analyze poetry, and along the way you will read several classic poems and learn about diction and imagery.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Learn to distinguish sentence fragments from simple sentences in this African safari-themed, interactive tutorial. You will also learn the difference between adjectives and adverbs and how you can use them to make your writing more interesting.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Learn how writers and speakers create arguments by stating a claim and backing it up with reasons and evidence. In this interactive tutorial, you'll hear speeches from candidates for Student Council President and complete practice exercises.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Learn to evaluate argumentative claims based on evidence with this interactive tutorial. You'll also learn about statistics, facts, expert quotations, and anecdotes, and how each kind of evidence can strengthen an argument.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
In this interactive tutorial, you'll study written arguments and look at four kinds of evidence that can be used to support an argumentative claim: facts, statistics, anecdotes, and expert quotations.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Learn how to use evidence from an informational, nonfiction text to support your analysis of what you have read. In this interactive tutorial you make inferences, or draw conclusions, from a passage about Philani Dladla, "The Pavement Bookworm."
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Learn to find the meanings of "mysterious" words by analyzing context clues, word roots, prefixes, and suffixes in this interactive tutorial.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Learn how to identify explicit evidence and understand implicit meaning in a text.
In this interactive tutorial, you'll engage with a variety of short informational texts to determine an author's point of view and an author's purpose in writing.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Discover how authors of informational texts "hook" their readers in the introduction with techniques like interesting or unusual information, anecdotes, and quotes. Practice spotting these techniques in this interactive tutorial.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Learn how nonfiction informational texts have a structure, that signal words can serve as your clues to determine that structure, and that parts of a text contribute to the development of the whole text structure with this interactive tutorial.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Learn how to analyze what a literary text says directly and indirectly. With this interactive tutorial you will also cite evidence to support conclusions you draw from a text.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Learn how to summarize a story based on its details, determine a story's theme, and understand the differences between the two in this detective-themed, interactive tutorial.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Learn to determine the meaning of figures of speech, like similes and metaphors, that authors use in poetry. You will also be able to analyze how these word choices reveal an author’s tone, or attitude, in a poem. You will also be able to analyze how these word choices reveal an author’s tone, or attitude, in a poem.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Learn how to analyze details from a nonfiction informational text about robots to identify and write about the central idea with this interactive tutorial.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Better understand pronouns and how they are used. You'll also learn how to use two of the most commonly confused pronouns - who and whom. You will need to bring your A-game for this basketball-themed, interactive tutorial.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Tutorials
Use this interactive tutorial to explore how to select print resources for a research assignment. The tutorial demonstrates tips on how to evaluate the author, select images, and use text features to gather information prior to writing. To get started, click on the Go to Demo arrow to learn more about these tips, then select the Try It arrow to download a worksheet that will allow you to use these tips on your own project.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice with two words that are commonly misused: whose and who’s. For each practice item, you must type the appropriate word to complete the sentence. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen. If you don’t know which word to type, the “I Give Up” button will help you out.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice with two words that are commonly misused: its and it’s. For each practice item, you must choose the appropriate word to complete the sentence. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice with two words that are commonly misused: its and it’s. For each practice item, you must type the appropriate word to complete the sentence. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen. If you don’t know which word to type, the “I Give Up” button will help you out.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice with two words that are commonly misused: lose and loose. For each practice item, you must choose the appropriate word to complete the sentence. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice with two words that are commonly misused: lose and loose. For each practice item, you must type the appropriate word to complete the sentence. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen. If you don’t know which word to type, the “I Give Up” button will help you out.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice with two words that are commonly misused: loss and lost. For each practice item, you must type the appropriate word to complete the sentence. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen. If you don’t know which word to type, the “I Give Up” button will help you out.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice with two words that are commonly misused: who and whom. For each practice item, you must choose the appropriate word to complete the sentence. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice with two words that are commonly misused: who and whom. For each practice item, you must type the appropriate word to complete the sentence. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen. If you don’t know which word to type, the “I Give Up” button will help you out.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice with two words that are commonly misused: whoever and whomever. For each practice item, you must type the appropriate word to complete the sentence. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen. If you don’t know which word to type, the “I Give Up” button will help you out.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice with three words that are commonly misused: to, too, and two. For each practice item, you must choose the appropriate word to complete the sentence. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice with three words that are commonly misused: to, too, and two. For each practice item, you must type the appropriate word to complete the sentence. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice with two irregular verbs that are commonly misused: lie and lay. For each practice item, you must select the correct irregular verb and its appropriate tense to complete a sentence. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are also provided. There's also an explanation of the rules for using these irregular verbs; simply click the hyperlinked word "rules."
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice with two words that are commonly misused: whose and who’s. For each practice item, you must choose the appropriate word to complete the sentence. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice with three words that are commonly misused: their, they’re, and there. For each practice item, you must type the appropriate word to complete the sentence. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen. If you don’t know which word to type, the “I Give Up” button will help you out.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice with three words that are commonly misused: their, they’re, and there. For each practice item, you must choose the appropriate word to complete the sentence. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen.
Type: Tutorial
In this tutorial from ReadWriteThink, you will learn about the hero's journey, an ancient story pattern that can be found in texts from thousands of years ago to newly released Hollywood blockbusters. This interactive tool will provide you with the background of the hero's journey and give you a chance to explore several of the journey's key elements. Also, you can use the tool to record examples from a hero's journey you have read or viewed or to plan out a hero's journey of your own.
Type: Tutorial
Determining the correct pronoun case--subjective, objective, or possessive--in writing can be confusing because we often hear people speaking incorrectly. This tutorial will help you review the correct usage of pronouns and then provide you with two short quizzes as practice.
Type: Tutorial
This 40-question exercise will give you practice in determining the main (central) idea of a paragraph. For each practice item, you will read a short paragraph and determine the main idea based on the details provided. If you get a question wrong, the program will remind you of your answer and show you the correct answer.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice in recognizing pronoun case. For each practice item, you must select the correct pronoun case to complete a sentence. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice in recognizing pronoun case. For each practice item, you must select the correct pronoun case to complete a sentence. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice in recognizing pronoun case. For each practice item, you must select the correct pronoun case to complete a sentence. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice in recognizing pronoun case. For each practice item, you must select the correct pronoun case to complete a sentence. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice in recognizing pronoun case. For each practice item, you must select the correct pronoun case to complete a sentence. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice in recognizing pronoun reference. For each practice item, you must determine whether or not a sentence contains a pronoun reference error. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice in recognizing pronoun case. For each practice item, you must select the correct pronoun case to complete a sentence. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice in recognizing pronoun reference. For each practice item, you must identify and revise pronoun reference errors in a sentence. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen. If you don’t know which word or words to type, the “I Give Up” button will help you out.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice in recognizing pronoun reference. For each practice item, you must revise a sentence that contains a pronoun reference error. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen. If you don’t know which word or words to type, the “I Give Up” button will help you out.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice in recognizing pronoun reference. For each practice item, you must determine whether or not a sentence contains a pronoun reference error. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen.
Type: Tutorial
This fun and interactive exercise will give you practice in recognizing pronoun reference. For each practice item, you must identify and revise pronoun reference errors in a sentence. After every response, you will get immediate feedback. Explanations of each correct answer are provided at the top of the screen. If you don’t know which word or words to type, the “I Give Up” button will help you out.
Type: Tutorial