LAC 28:CXLVI.317. ELA Content Knowledge Competencies

A. The teacher candidate is able to read and understand the language, craft, topics, themes, and ideas of complex grade-level texts in high-quality instructional materials and explain how one is able to read and understand the texts. 1. The teacher candidate reads a wide variety of complex grade-level texts in high-quality instructional materials appropriate for instruction of age or grade-level reading, writing, speaking and listening, and language standards. The variety of texts includes print and non-print or digital texts; media texts, including but not limited to, songs, videos, podcasts, film, and classic texts and contemporary texts. The texts include children’s literature that represent a range of world literatures, historical traditions, genres, forms, and the experiences of different genders, ethnicities, and social classes. 2. The teacher candidate determines how high-quality instructional materials build student’s knowledge and skills by providing opportunities for students to engage in multiple readings of complex grade-level texts to understand the meaning, purpose, and main ideas of complex texts and explains the development orally and in writing based on the interaction of an author’s craft by using word choice, syntax, use of details and illustrations, figurative language, elements and structure such as setting, characterization, development and organization, plot, pacing, and evidence, literary effects of symbolism and irony, and rhetorical devices. 3. The teacher candidate explains how vocabulary, diction, syntax, and sentence patterns contribute to the meaning, complexity, clarity, coherence, fluency, and quality of a text. 4. The teacher candidate prioritizes instruction on vocabulary from selects words in complex grade-level texts that are essential to the meaning and likely to transfer across texts, while efficiently supporting comprehension of less critical words through word families, or words that have multiple meanings. 5. The teacher candidate makes connections among texts in high-quality instructional materials, including determining and explaining how each text challenges, validates, or refines the language, topics, themes, and/or ideas of other texts and how modern texts or texts in different mediums adapt, enhance, or misrepresent a source text. 6. The teacher candidate assesses the complexity of texts to identify features that increase comprehension demands and to anticipate where students may require targeted instructional support. 7. The teacher candidate recognizes the influence of the English language and literary history on ELA content. B. The teacher candidate demonstrates proficiency with written and spoken language when writing about the topics, themes, and/or ideas of complex grade-level texts. 1. The teacher candidate internalizes a range of formal and informal, process and on-demand oral, written, and visual compositions to include analytic, argumentative, explanatory, and narrative text about the language, craft, topics, themes, and/or ideas of complex grade-level texts in high-quality instructional materials, taking into consideration the interrelationships among form, audience, context, and purpose. 2. The teacher candidate uses complex grade-level texts in high-quality instructional materials to locate exemplars of writing such as word choice, syntax, sentence variety and fluency, text structure, and style and uses the exemplars to demonstrate to students how to imitate the language, structure, and style into personal writing. 3. The teacher candidate knows and appropriately uses the conventions of English language grammar, usage, and mechanics in relation to various rhetorical situations and to various style guides for composition. 4. The teacher candidate recognizes and explains the historical context of the modern English language, including recognizing root words, determining word etymologies, and analyzing changes in syntax. 5. The teacher candidate explains the concept of dialect, recognizes the effect and impact on the meaning and development of written and spoken language, and knows how to apply the concept in context when appropriate. 6. The teacher candidate explains the importance of language structure, syntactic awareness, and discourse awareness in developing reading and writing fluency. C. The teacher candidate demonstrates understanding of the stages of language, reading, and writing development. 1. The teacher candidate explains the progression, connection, and reciprocal relationships among the major components of early literacy development, including the typical and atypical development of skills in the areas of language, phonological processing, vocabulary, morphology, orthography, semantics, syntax, and discourse; reading, print awareness, decoding, fluency, and comprehension; and spelling and writing development including pre-literate, early emergent, emergent, transitional, and conventional. 2. The teacher candidate defines, explains, produces, and classifies the basic phonetic structure and orthographic rules and patterns of the English language, including but not limited to phonemes, graphemes, digraphs, blends, r-controlled vowels, hard and soft consonants, and explains the relation to the progression of reading and writing development. 3. The teacher candidate identifies, explains, and categorizes the six basic syllable types in English spelling and explains principles of teaching word identification and spelling, giving examples illustrating each principle. 4. The teacher candidate explains the role of fluency in typical reading development including word recognition, oral reading, silent reading, and comprehension, and as a characteristic of certain reading disorders. 5. The teacher candidate identifies, defines, and explains the relationship between environmental, cultural, and social factors that contribute to literacy development and the difference between delays and characteristics of some reading disorders, as determined by academic standards. 6. The teacher candidate explains and demonstrates through oral reading the print concepts young students must develop regarding text orientation, directionality, connection of print to meaning, return sweep, page sequencing, and punctuation. 7. The teacher candidate explains the stages of the development of phonological awareness skills and gives examples illustrating each stage of rhyme, syllable, onset-rime, phoneme segmentation, blending, and substitution. 8. The teacher candidate demonstrates appropriate enunciation in oral demonstrations, especially speech sounds when conducting phonemic awareness lessons.