In May 2010, the Connecticut State Board of Education adapted new national academic standards in English Language Arts for students in grades K-12. The purpose of these new standards is to establish what Connecticut public school students know and be able to do throughout their primary and secondary school experience. The hope the Connecticut State Board of Education has for these new standards is to increase student proficiency levels and regulate consistency in school instruction among the states. The English Language Arts Core State Standards that apply to my unit are:
· Engage and orient the reader by setting out a problem, situation, or observation, establishing one of multiple points of view, and introducing a narrator of characters; create a smooth progression of experience or events.
· Use a variety of techniques to sequence events that they build on one another to create a coherent whole.
· Produce clear and coherent writing in which development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
· Write routinely over an extended period of time frames and shorter time frames for a range of tasks, purposes, and audience.
