Curriculum Standards for Writing

• General Standard 19: Writing
Students will write with a clear focus, coherent organization, and sufficient detail.

 • Grades 5-6
19.16 Write brief research reports with clear focus and supporting detail.

 • Grades 5-6
19.17 Write a short explanation of a process that includes a topic statement, supporting details, and a conclusion.

 • Grades 5-6
19.18 Write formal letters to correspondents such as authors, newspapers, businesses, or government officials.

 • Grades 5-6
19.14 Write stories or scripts containing the basic elements of fiction (characters, dialogue, setting, plot with a clear resolution).

 • Grades 5-6
19.15 Write poems using poetic techniques (alliteration, onomatopoeia), figurative language (simile, metaphor), and graphic elements (capital letters, line length).

 • General Standard 22: Standard English Conventions
Students will use knowledge of standard English conventions in their writing, revising, and editing.

 • Grades 5-6
22.7 Use additional knowledge of correct mechanics (apostrophes, quotation marks, comma use in compound sentences, paragraph indentations), correct sentence structure (elimination of fragments and run-ons), and correct standard English spelling (commonly used homophones) when writing, revising, and editing.

 • General Standard 23: Organizing Ideas in Writing
Students will organize ideas in writing in a way that makes sense for their purpose.

 • Grades 5-6
23.7 Group related ideas and place them in logical order when writing summaries or reports.

 • Grades 5-6
23.8 Organize information about a topic into a coherent paragraph with a topic sentence, sufficient supporting detail, and a concluding sentence
.

 • Grades 5-6
23.6 Decide on the placement of descriptive details about setting, characters, and events in stories.

 • General Standard 25: Evaluating Writing and Presentations
Students will develop and use appropriate rhetorical, logical, and stylistic criteria for assessing final versions of their compositions or research projects before presenting them to varied audiences.

 • Grades 5-6
25.3 Use prescribed criteria from a scoring rubric to evaluate compositions, recitations, or performances before presenting them to an audience.

 • General Standard 20: Consideration of Audience and Purpose
Students will write for different audiences and purposes. (See also Standards 3, 6, and 19.)

 • Grades 5-6
20.3 Make distinctions among fiction, nonfiction, dramatic literature, and poetry, and use these genres selectively when writing for different purposes.

 • General Standard 21: Revising
Students will demonstrate improvement in organization, content, paragraph development, level of detail, style, tone, and word choice (diction) in their compositions after revising them.

 • Grades 5-6
21.4 Revise writing to improve level of detail and precision of language after determining where to add images and sensory detail, combine sentences, vary sentences and rearrange text.

 • Grades 5-6
21.5 Improve word choice by using dictionaries or thesauruses.