Benchmark Revision Document

Remember this from June?  I sent this to BHS, and to Charlene Bowden -- it is my understanding that she forwarded this to the people who write the benchmark exam and they are supposed to make sure that these are the convention skills tested quarter by quarter.  Here's what the document said:

Dear Colleagues:

A small, exhausted and beleaguered committee of teachers met in my room today [June 2010], and tried to articulate how the benchmark should roll out.

When we looked at the “Power Standards” in Reading and Writing, we were satisfied with how those standards have been tested.  Those really are recursive, and we teach the same standards all of the time as we read and write with kids.   The only thing we wanted to try and roll out differently was the grammar. 

Now, this can surely be refined, but this is what we came up with this morning:

Qtr	Grades 9-10	Grades 11-12
1	parts of speech verb tenses subject/verb agreement	subject/verb agreement pronoun antecedents wordiness transitions
2	subject/verb agreement pronouns antecedents phrases and clauses	phrases and clauses sentence types subordination transitions
3	sentence types parallelism subordination punctuation/capitalization/abbreviation	active/passive voice tone & diction parallelism sentence combining
4	sentence types run on/fragment/comma splice phrases and clauses	sentence types punctuation/capitalization/abbreviation usage tone & diction

Comments?  Revision?  Please make suggestions.

Anyway, thanks for your time and attention.  I will assume that if I don’t hear back from you that this draft document meets with your approval.

--AF