ELM 480: Unwrapping the ELA Standards Essay

Unwrapping the ELA Standards

Successful teachers analyze grade-specific state or national academic content standards as they prepare instruction. By analyzing these standards at grade level, as well as above and below grade level, educators gain clear insight into the skills their students must master to be successful in their future. By unwrapping the standards, teachers move students toward greater understanding, help them be successful in the next grade, and ultimately lead students to enhanced independence in their learning.

ORDER CUSTOM, PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER

Complete the “Unwrapping the ELA Standards Template” for the topic assignment:

Select a K-8 grade level of your choice.
Identify the state or national ELA content standards for your chosen grade level associated with the reading, writing, and listening and speaking strands.
Find the corresponding ELA standard for the previous grade level, as well as the grade level that follows.

For each standard identified, complete the following:

Bold the nouns or noun phrases (e.g., the concepts that students need to know).
Highlight the verbs or verb phrases (e.g., the skills students need to be successful).
Describe one instructional strategy or activity, per ELA standard, aligned to the identified standards.
In a 100-150 word rationale, explain how each instructional strategy or activity encourages complex thinking and problem-solving.

Support your findings with 2-3 scholarly resources.

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.