Skill Descriptor: Construct and communicate an awareness of self, others, and the world.

Global Competencies: SASM, CL, CM, SGC, ICE

Achievement Indicators:

• Present a personal viewpoint to a group of listeners
• Take ideas, knowledges, and ways of being into account when explaining positions
• Present with intention, using content, language and delivery to convey meaning

Skill Descriptor: Persuade and support ideas and opinions with evidence.

Global Competencies: SASM, CL, CM, CTPS, ICE

Achievement Indicators:

• Justify perspectives with evidence
• Consider social context when choosing and communicating evidence
• Refine arguments by selecting facts, anecdotal evidence, and experiences that consider difference of opinion
• Communicate persuasively, citing evidence free from generalizations and bias

Skill Descriptor: Curate and present content to communicate facts, ideas, and opinions.

Global Competencies: CL, CM, ICE

Achievement Indicators:

• Make informed selections of content to communicate
• Present content in manner appropriate for audience and purpose

Skill Descriptor: Use language of harmony and respect self-monitoring and adjusting as appropriate.

Global Competencies: SASM, CL, CM, CTPS, SGC

Achievement Indicators:

• Analyze the inclusivity of language
• Use and advocate for helpful, respectful, and equitable language

Skill Descriptor: Seek and provide clarification to extend understanding of ideas and concepts, problems, and solutions.

Global Competencies: SASM, CL, CM, CTPS, ICE

Achievement Indicators:

• Ask and respond to clarifying questions to seek further information and extend understanding and/or determine next steps
• Seek relevant resources to support ideas, concepts, or claims

Skill Descriptor: Give precise instructions and follow directions accurately.

Global Competencies: SASM, CL, CM

Achievement Indicators:

• Give multi-step and complex instructions
• Follow multi-step and complex instructions
• Clarify processes, routines, and order of sequence or operation as needed

Skill Descriptor: Understand communication conventions for a diverse set of audiences.

Global Competencies: SASM, CL, CM

Achievement Indicators:

• Communicate with sensitivity and respect
• Select and adjust conventions to reflect an understanding of the audience perspective, context, and purpose

Skill Descriptor: Respond personally and critically to a variety of text.

Global Competencies: SASM, CL, CM, CTPS

Achievement Indicators:

• Respond to oral presentations and stories, and multi-modal text citing reactions, interpretations, and understandings
• Respond to oral presentations and stories and multi-modal text, providing thoughts and opinions

Skill Descriptor: Adjust interactions to reflect situation, audience, and purpose.

Global Competencies: SASM, CL, CM, CTPS

Achievement Indicators:

• Use conversational conventions that honour the needs, rights, and feelings of others
• Engage in active listening

Skill Descriptor: Critically reflect on the contributions of others to formulate and refine understanding.

Global Competencies: SASM, CL, CM, CTPS, SGC

Achievement Indicators:

• Consider multiple ways of knowing when determining the value and relevance of information
• Identify and respond to the perspective implicit within a speaker’s contribution
• Understand the power of language to influence and manipulate
• Examine the use of language to identify ideas, values and worldviews

Skill Descriptor: Efficiently use word structure knowledge to independently solve unfamiliar and technical words.

Global Competencies: CM

Achievement Indicators:

• Solve unknown words using a variety of cues (morphology, dividing into syllables, root words and origins, background knowledge, context clues), references, and assistive technology
• Explain the choice of strategy when solving new vocabulary in texts (meta-cognition)

Skill Descriptor: Read unfamiliar texts with accuracy and expression, both silently and aloud.

Global Competencies: CM

Achievement Indicators:

• Read a variety of increasingly complex text forms smoothly and with confidence, rehearsing chunks of texts as needed
• Flexibly use dimensions of fluency (intonation, stress, pausing, phrasing, tone & volume) to convey meaning of a variety of increasingly complex texts
• Self-assess silent reading
• Rehearse and self-correct chunks of texts as needed

Skill Descriptor: Use a range of strategies to determine the meaning of new vocabulary in all texts.

Global Competencies: CM, CTPS

Achievement Indicators:

• Flexibly and independently use different strategies for internalizing new vocabulary words in increasingly complex texts (context, morphology, dictionary, text features, etc.)
• Explain the choice of strategy when interpreting new vocabulary in texts (meta- cognition)

Skill Descriptor: Construct meaning from a variety of text considering the source, intended audience, and purpose.

Global Competencies: CM, CTPS

Achievement Indicators:

• Construct literal and inferred meaning of complex texts with connections to the theme
• Explore the effectiveness of a variety of text features to convey the intended meaning of the writer
• Identify connections between texts across genres by purpose, audience, and/or theme
• Concisely summarize key information from a variety of sources
• Distinguish between main ideas and supporting details

Skill Descriptor: Self-monitor and incorporate effective comprehension strategies to clarify understanding of a range of text.

Global Competencies: CL, CM, CTPS, SGC

Achievement Indicators:

• Adjust comprehension strategies as needed
• Explain meta-cognitive processes when reading
• Summarize key information by annotating, questioning, using graphic organizers, etc.
• Use relevant questioning during reading to clarify understanding of text
• Construct meaning from a variety of text forms, including print and non-print texts
• Respond accurately to many literal questions when reading longer, denser texts
• Review and locate information using text

Skill Descriptor: Examine and respond personally to a range of texts across genres, interests, and complexities, citing evidence.

Global Competencies: CM, CTPS, SGC

Achievement Indicators:

• Express and support how a text has impacted changes in personal viewpoint/ideas
• Interpret relationships among texts, personal experiences and prior knowledge to make connections between current social and moral issues
• Select insightful textual details that support responses and demonstrate an understanding of structure, form, and genre

Skill Descriptor: Independently select, read, construct meaning from, and evaluate a variety of texts of increasing complexity representing all voices.

Global Competencies: CM, CTPS

Achievement Indicators:

• Explain preferences and choice of reading material
• Communicate purpose of text selection related to learning needs and interests
• Interpret information using text features
• Explain how events/main ideas are related to theme
• Assess the truth of a claim by distinguishing between sound and false reasoning
• Explain how the different elements of author’s style/technique create meaning and impact
• Evaluate author’s effectiveness, using textual support
• Evaluate purpose, structure, and characteristics of a variety of text forms and how they contribute to understanding the text
• Examine texts for bias
• Reflect on ways in which various cultures, genders, socioeconomic groups are portrayed in texts

Skill Descriptor: Critically analyze and evaluate the characteristics, language, form, features, and genre of a range of texts.

Global Competencies: CM, CTPS

Achievement Indicators:

• Refer to relevant textual details/features when inferring
• Interpret relationships between ideas to draw conclusions or make comparisons
• Support responses with relevant details
• Explore relationships between language, topic, genre, purpose, context, and audience
• Challenge bias in a variety of text

Skill Descriptor: Implement effective writing/representing strategies to enhance clarity and control in multi-modal works.

Global Competencies: CL, CM, CTPS, ICE

Achievement Indicators:

• Examine a variety of mentor texts to guide creation
• Demonstrate an awareness of which writing/representing processes work best in relation to audience and purpose
• Create organization frameworks to manage content, collect ideas and generate new knowledge and perspectives
• Draft a cohesive text, making critical choices about what to include or exclude
• Clarify, strengthen and refine by adding, deleting, substituting and rearranging text
• Request, obtain and make decisions about constructive criticism
• Finish and present using a variety of formats
• Attend to fluency, often by reading aloud; adjust sentences, words and phrases
• Use appropriate tools to edit conventions and strengthen word/visual/audio choices

Skill Descriptor: Create with purpose and understand the influence of the writer/creator.

Global Competencies: SASM, CM

Achievement Indicators:

• Define a specific topic with a main idea/thesis that supports an identifiable purpose and a specific audience
• Maintain a clear, narrow focus to support the topic with minimal distractions
• Elaborate on a main idea, add thoughtful details, supportive reasoning, and maintain focus

Skill Descriptor: Define a specific topic with and main idea/thesis/claim that supports an identifiable purpose and specific audience.

Global Competencies: CL, CM, CTPS

Achievement Indicators:

• Create smooth transitions between elements (ideas, sentences, paragraphs) to clarify complex ideas and relationships
• Craft a purposeful structure to present details that support the main idea (e.g., temporal sequence, cause and effect, compare and contrast)
• Experiment with varied organizational structures to enhance interest
• Include a definite conclusion that provides closure and supports the main idea

Skill Descriptor: Include interesting and/or domain specific words and phrases to convey and enhance meaning.

Global Competencies: CL, CM, CTPS

Achievement Indicators:

• Enhance message with figurative language (e.g., metaphor, analogy, symbolism)
• Use vocabulary that is varied and creates parallel structure

Skill Descriptor: Provide evidence of author’s style, personality, and experience.

Global Competencies: CL, CM, CTPS

Achievement Indicators:

• Skillfully connect the audience to the topic
• Show care and commitment to the topic
• Generate strong feeling, energy, and individuality
• Choose appropriate voice for the writing task (formal or informal)
• Reveal writer’s perspective as appropriate to the purpose, audience and context (formal and informal)

Skill Descriptor: Include well-crafted sentences to support meaning and readability.

Global Competencies: CL, CM, CTPS

Achievement Indicators:

• Arrange sentences into coherent paragraphs and sustain readability with transitions
• Vary sentence lengths and beginnings to create effective flow

Skill Descriptor: Demonstrate correct spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and usage.

Global Competencies: CL, CM, CTPS

Achievement Indicators:

• Include internal punctuation and paragraphing of dialogue
• Apply correct grammatical structures that make the text readable
• Use capitals correctly to identify proper nouns, titles, words used as names and abbreviations
• Correctly spell almost all words; use spelling support; correctly use homophones
• Experiment with skillful use of conventions to enhance meaning, voice and readability
• Reference all source content, using appropriate formatting and available technology