Instructional Strategies to 
Prepare Students for the 
High School Assessments

 

English

Goal 1

Demonstrate the use of before, during, and after reading strategies and reinforce their value.

   

Provide opportunities for students to make annotations on text before, during, and after reading.

   

Implement the use of Reader Response Journals, especially to record personal responses to texts.

   

Model constructed responses that use expressed and implied information and support from the text.

   

Provide opportunities for students to write constructed responses that integrate textual support.

Goal 2

Model the use of the writing process, demonstrating its recursive rather than linear nature.

   

Allow plenty of time for all phases of the writing process.

   

Direct students to identify their purpose(s) and their intended audience prior to writing.

   

Use a scoring rubric for each composing assignment, discussing both the assignment and the rubric equally.

   

Provide opportunities for students to develop a scoring rubric appropriate to an assignment.

   

Provide models of organizational structures to analyze, emulate, and use appropriately.

   

Offer writing suggestions and direction, not criticisms.

Goal 3

Build upon what students know about language.

   

Help students to see a word's meaning, position, form, and function in its context.

   

Minimize grammatical terminology and maximize the use of examples.

   

Provide students with direction and opportunities for constructing syntactically mature sentences through sentence combining.

   

Encourage students to model the structures of their sentences after those of professional writers.

   

Establish Writers' Workshops.

   

Teach mini-lessons, perhaps during Writers' Workshops, to address errors that frequently occur.

Goal 4

Examine and discuss the complexities of language

   

Examine writers' choices in syntax, level of formality, semantics, and diction.

   

Devise activities in which students alter syntax or diction for different audiences or to improve clarity, emphasis or effectiveness.

   

Guide students in the evaluation of texts of literary merit and then in the evaluation of their own composed text.

And, in all instruction...

Offer many reading, writing, and thinking opportunities.

   

Refer to the laminated blue sheets prepared by MSDE for clarification of terminology, concepts, and strategies of the Core Learning Goals.

   

Conduct ongoing assessment of your students' and your own growth.

   

Read the latest research relevant to your profession.

   

Share your love for learning.

   

Close instructional gaps and eliminate random instruction.

The above information is excerpted from Supporting the English Core Learning Goals in the Classroom: What's a Teacher To Do? Gretchen Schultz and the English Content Team, MSDE

More Tips...

 Back to Instructional Strategies Page

Back to High School Assessment Initiative Page

This site was developed by the Department of Staff Development, in collaboration with the Division of Instruction. Questions, comments, and other inquiries may be addressed to Allene Chriest (achriest@pgcps.org) or Jeff Maher  (jmaher@pgcps.org).