Language Arts

The English Language Arts Department at César Chávez Middle School reflects an integrated model of literacy development.  The skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking are all intertwined.  

Instruction within these areas is a shared responsibility across the school site between all content areas. We accomplish these goals by utilizing AVID WICOR (writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization, and reading) strategies throughout all content areas.

To be ready for college, workforce training, and life in a technological society, students need the ability to gather, comprehend, evaluate, synthesize, and summarize information and ideas, to conduct original research to answer questions or solve problems, and to analyze and create a high volume and extensive range of print and nonprint texts in media forms old and new. The need to conduct research and to produce and consume media is embedded into every aspect of today’s curriculum.

Key Features of the Standards: 

Text complexity and the growth of comprehension 

The Reading standards place equal emphasis on the sophistication of what students read and the skill with which they read. Standard 10 defines a grade-by grade “staircase” of increasing text complexity that rises from beginning reading to the college and career readiness level. Whatever they are reading, students must also show a steadily growing ability to discern more from and make fuller use of text, including making an increasing number of connections among ideas and between texts, considering a wider range of textual evidence, and becoming more sensitive to inconsistencies, ambiguities, and poor reasoning in texts. 

Writing: Text types, responding to reading, and research 

The Standards acknowledge the fact that whereas some writing skills, such as the ability to plan, revise, edit, and publish, are applicable to many types of writing, other skills are more properly defined in terms of specific writing types: arguments, informative/explanatory texts, and narratives. Standard 9 stresses the importance of the writing-reading connection by requiring students to draw upon and write about evidence from literary and informational texts. Because of the centrality of writing to most forms of inquiry, research standards are prominently included in this strand, though skills important to research are infused throughout the document. 

Speaking and Listening

Flexible communication and collaboration Including but not limited to skills necessary for formal presentations, the Speaking and Listening standards require students to develop a range of broadly useful oral communication and interpersonal skills. Students must learn to work together, express and listen carefully to ideas, integrate information from oral, visual, quantitative, and media sources, evaluate what they hear, use media and visual displays strategically to help achieve communicative purposes, and adapt speech to context and task. 

Language: Conventions, effective use, and vocabulary 

The Language standards include the essential “rules” of standard written and spoken English. However, language is presented as a matter of craft and informed choice among alternatives. The vocabulary standards focus on understanding words Introduction | 7 and phrases, their relationships, and their nuances and on acquiring new voca

-taken from the Common Core State Standards California

6th Grade Language Arts

7th Grade Language Arts

8th Grade Language Arts