L.4.a
Description:
Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grades 11–12 reading and content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies, recognizing the role culture plays in the development of language.
Use context (e.g., the overall meaning of a sentence, paragraph, or text; a word’s position or function in a sentence) as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase.
Maps to Reading Plus skills:
4A, 4B
Exemplars
4A: Interpreting Word Meaning
4A: Interpreting Word Meaning
Description:
Interpreting Word Meaning
SeeReader
✓ standard met
Selection:
L-26
L-26
Grade level: 12
Word count: 2743 words
Author: Virginia Woolf
Synopsis: What goes on in a public garden on a lovely summer day? A lot more than you may think.
Excerpt:
Like most people of their station they were frankly fascinated by any signs of eccentricity betokening a disordered brain, especially in the well to-do; but they were too far off to be certain whether the gestures were merely eccentric or genuinely mad.
Question:
Based upon the following excerpt, the word "betokening" most closely means
- indicating.
- denying.
- practicing.
- discarding.
Writing
✓ standard met
Writing prompt:
Explain how a character's actions or attitude can change the meaning of a word or phrase.
Evaluator
Organization:
Certica Solutions
4B: Interpreting Analogies
4B: Interpreting Analogies
Description:
Interpreting Analogies
SeeReader
✓ standard met
Selection:
L-21
L-21
Grade level: 12
Word count: 3146 words
Author: Stephen Crane
Synopsis: Four men, trapped in a small boat after their ship sinks, face an uncertain future.
Excerpt:
A seat in this boat was not unlike a seat upon a bucking bronco, and by the same token, a bronco is not much smaller. The craft pranced and reared, and plunged like an animal. As each wave came, and she rose for it, she seemed like a horse making at a fence outrageously high.
Question:
The narrator compares sitting in the lifeboat to
- riding a wild horse.
- running through a dark, unfamiliar woods.
- falling from a cliff.
- sitting in a speeding carriage.
Writing
✓ standard met
Writing prompt:
Describe how an author can use figurative language to create suspense and give an example from a selection.
Evaluator
Organization:
Certica Solutions