Maxi lessons rhetorical skills topic development in terms of purpose



Download 0.84 Mb.
Page1/4
Date16.01.2018
Size0.84 Mb.
#37001
  1   2   3   4

Reading Transitional Course for EXPLORE

English

Transitional Course



Curriculum Framework

Table of Contents


FRAMEWORK OVERVIEW 2

SAMPLE ACTIVITY SERIES 7

MAXI LESSONS

RHETORICAL SKILLS

TOPIC DEVELOPMENT IN TERMS OF PURPOSE & FOCUS

IDENTIFYING AND COMPOSING TOPIC SENTENCES 17


ORGANIZATION, UNITY & COHERENCE

TRANSITION WORDS/PHRASES 23

GIVE ME A BREAK: TEACHING PARAGRAPHS 27
WORD CHOICE IN TERMS OF STYLE, TONE, CLARITY & ECONOMY

VAGUE PRONOUN REFERENCE 30

WHAT’S IN A GOOD SENTENCE? 35
USAGE & MECHANICS

SENTENCE STRUCTURE & FORMATION

COMBINING SIMPLE SENTENCES WITH CONJUNCTIONS &

PRONOUNS 39

CONSISTENT VERB TENSES 48
CONVENTIONS OF USAGE

COMPARITIVE & SUPERLATIVE / IRREGULAR ADJECTIVES 57

IRREGULAR VERBS 63

CORRECT USAGE OF HOMONYMS 66


CONVENTIONS OF PUNCTUATION

COMMA TRAUMA 68

MODIFYING THE MODIFIERS 70

USING SERIAL COMMAS 72


FRAMEWORK OVERVIEW

With the passage of Senate Bill 1 in the 2009 session of the Kentucky General Assembly, the Commonwealth of Kentucky is poised at the beginning of a new era. As part of Unbridled Learning: College and Career Readiness for All, the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) and the Kentucky Board of Education (KBE), along with a myriad of other stakeholders, has identified several strategies to help schools and districts meet the Commonwealth Commitment, a pledge taken by every school district in Kentucky to prepare high school graduates to be college- and career- ready.

Two target indicators help address this overall vision in college and career readiness:


  • Increase the percentage of students who are college and career ready from 34% to 67% by 2015

  • Increase the average freshman graduation rate from 76% to 90% by 2015

One foundational strategy identified to help ensure student success in this commitment is Targeted Interventions. The transitional courses are part of this strategy. The target audience for the transitional courses is 8th and 9th grade students who scored below readiness benchmarks for English on the EXPLORE assessment.


A statewide team of secondary and postsecondary English Language Arts and reading specialist educators were tasked to assist regional school districts and middle/high schools in designing and implementing transitional reading courses. Meetings were held in 2011 to develop college readiness transition courses. These transitional courses center on a framework of content and concepts aligned with the Kentucky Academic Standards and aligned with college and career readiness standards.
This course should be adapted to meet the specific needs and conditions in each school system. It may be offered as an actual full semester course, but it could also be offered as an intervention for students before or after school, as a supplement to existing English Language Arts courses or as a course in which students have flexible entry and exit based on pre-assessment scores. The flexibility of the course is designed to provide schools with multiple options to meet student needs without compromising the other opportunities available to them. This course is not designed to replace the standard courses for 8th or 9th grade English, but it can be embedded in an 8th grade or English I course. It can also be offered as an elective course.
Schools need to develop a system for including pre- and post-testing, diagnostics, and scores for developmental and non-developmental placement; these steps are necessary and essential for tracking data related to these courses. Mechanisms need to be in place to record pertinent data, review procedures, and disseminate information to other interested school districts and state agencies. For additional information, please see the information page on College and Career Readiness in Kentucky at the end of this document.

What is in the English EXPLORE Assessment?

The English test is a 40-question, 30 minute test which covers:




  • Rhetorical Skills

    • Topic Development in Terms of Purpose and Focus (5 questions)

    • Organization, Unity, and Coherence (5 questions)

    • Word Choice in Terms of Style, Tone, Clarity, and Economy (5 questions)




  • Usage/Mechanics

    • Sentence Structure and Formation (11 questions)

    • Conventions of Usage (8 questions)

    • Conventions of Punctuation (6 questions)

The test consists of four 300-word prose passages, each accompanied by multiple-choice style test questions. Different passage types are included to provide students with a variety of text types.


Some questions refer to underlined portions of the passage and offer several alternatives to the underlined portion. Students must decide which choice is most appropriate in the context of the passage. Some questions ask about an underlined portion, a section of the passage, or the passage as a whole. Students must decide which choice best answers the question posed. Many questions include the “NO CHANGE” to the underlined portion or the passage as one of the choices.
Sample test questions for the English EXPLORE assessment can be found at this link:

http://actstudent.org/EXPLORE/tests/english.html
Additional EXPLORE resources can be found at: http://www.act.org/EXPLORE/downloads.html


Directory: educational -> int -> hscf -> Documents
educational -> Designing a space debris removal mission targeting a Cosmos 3M rocket body in leo using a chemical engine and an elechtrodynamic tether to perform the de-orbiting
educational -> Educational Technology and Related Education Conferences for January – June 2010
educational -> The State and Education Policy: The Academies Programme helen gunter eds, 2011 London, Continuum
educational -> Application Programming Interface
educational -> Program Review 2008 Applied Digital Media and Printing Applied Technology Department
educational -> Apsrc educational Acronyms 2011-2012 abc arkansas Better Chance Early Childhood Program acsip
educational -> Educational Technology and Related Education Conferences for January to June 2012
educational -> Educational Technology and Education Conferences for January to June 2017, Edition #36 Prepared by
educational -> Warning: hotels could be hazardous to your health
Documents -> 5 Unit 1: Literary Non-Fiction

Download 0.84 Mb.

Share with your friends:
  1   2   3   4




The database is protected by copyright ©ininet.org 2024
send message

    Main page