Purpose of this post:

• Crosswalk reading and communication standards with IB assessment criterion to more specifically identify the skills assessed in each criterion.
• Help students set specific reading and communication goals under each IB assessment criterion.  This post can be paired with the “Using Assessment Portfolios for Engagement and Growth” post (and its related documents)³ so that students are setting clear and specific goals that target skills which will be measured on subsequent IB assessments.

Criterion A:  Knowledge, Understanding, and Interpretation
Standards:  Key Ideas and Details

Literature

• Provide a concise, objective summary of the text.

• Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific and thorough textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.  Determine where the text leaves matters ambiguous.

• Determine central ideas or issues raised in a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.  The analysis considers the ways in which characters, setting, plot, and specific details work to develop ideas and issues in the text or work.
  • A more sophisticated analysis might identify two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to provide a complex analysis, including the role character, setting, plot, and specific details play in developing these complex idea/issues in the text or work.

• Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.  This includes an analysis of⁴:
  • How particular elements of a story or drama interact (e.g., how the setting shapes the characters or plot).
  • How dialogue or incidents of a story or drama propel the action, reveal aspects of a character, or provoke a decision.
  • How complex characters develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme.
  • How the writer develops and relates elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed).

• Analyze how two or more texts address similar ideas, issues, or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.
  • Compare and contrast in different forms or genres (e.g., stories and poems; historical novels and fantasy stories) in terms of their approaches to similar ideas, issues, and topics.
  • Compare and contrast a fictional portrayal of a time, place, or character and a historical account of the same period as a means of understanding how authors of fiction use or alter history.⁵
  • Analyze how a modern work of fiction draws on ideas/issues, patterns of events, or character types from myths, traditional stories, or religious works including describing how the material is rendered new.
  • Analyze how an author draws on and transforms source material in a specific work (e.g., how Shakespeare treats a theme or topic from Ovid or how a later author draws on a play by Shakespeare).
  • Demonstrate knowledge of a range of literature from different places/cultures, including how a work written in English treats a global issue similarly or differently than a work originally written in another language.⁶

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Additional skills for Language & Literature (that apply to non-literary texts and works)

• Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including print and digital resources. 
  • Comparing and contrasting the experience of reading a story, drama, or poem to listening to/viewing an audio, video, or live version of a narrative or poetic work.
  • Analyze the effects of techniques unique to graphic and digital mediums (e.g., lighting, sound, color, or camera focus and angles in a film).
  • Compare the representation of a global issue in two different artistic mediums (literary and non-literary), analyzing the ways in which the global issue is presented and developed through language (and image) in the two works. 

• Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a work, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.
  • Distinguish between claims that are supported by reasons and evidence from claims that are not.
  • Evaluate specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is valid, and the evidence is relevant and sufficient to support the claims. 
  • Recognize when irrelevant evidence is introduced in an argument.
  • Identify false statements and fallacious reasoning in an argument.
  • Evaluate the reasoning in seminal texts, which may include the application of constitutional principles and use of legal reasoning and the premises, purposes, and arguments in works of public advocacy.

• Analyze how two or more texts address similar ideas, issues, or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.
  • Compare and contrast one author/artist’s presentation of ideas, issues, or events with that of another (e.g., a novelist and a journalist, or a cartoonist and an editorialist).
  • Analyze how two or more authors writing about the same issue or topic shape their presentations of key information by emphasizing different evidence or advancing different interpretations, facts, or experiences.
  • Analyze a case in which two or more texts provide conflicting information on the same topic and identify where the texts disagree on matters of fact or interpretation.

Criterion B:  Analysis and Evaluation
Standards:  Craft and Structure

Literature

• Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.
  • Analyze the impact of rhymes and other repetitions of sounds (e.g., alliteration) in poem or section of a story or drama.
  • Analyze the impact of imagery.
  • Analyze the impact of analogies or allusions to other texts.
  • Analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language evokes a sense of time and place; how it sets a formal or informal tone).
  • Analyze the impact of including words with multiple meanings or language that is particularly fresh, engaging, or beautiful.
  • Analyze how an author uses and refines the meaning of a key term or terms over the course of a text or work.

• Interpret images as they are used in a graphic text, including determining their connotative and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific images shape meaning or tone.⁷
  • Analyze the impact of images in a graphic narrative.
  • Analyze the impact of symbolic images.
  • Analyze the impact of images with multiple symbolic meanings or images that are abstract, ambiguous, or unique.
  • Analyze the cumulative impact of specific images on meaning and tone (e.g., how the images evoke a sense of time and place; how it sets a formal or informal tone).

• Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, image sequences, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole.
  • Analyze how a particular sentence, panel, image sequence, chapter, scene, or stanza fits into the overall structure of a text and contributes to the development of ideas/issues, setting, or plot.
  • Analyze how a drama’s or poem’s form or structure (e.g., soliloquy, sonnet) contributes to its meaning.
  • Analyze how a graphic author’s use of panel size, style, and sequencing contribute to the work’s meaning.
  • Compare and contrast the structure of two or more texts and analyze how the differing structure of each text contributes to its meaning and style.
  • Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure a text, order events within it (e.g., parallel plots), and manipulate time (e.g., pacing, flashbacks) create such effects as mystery, tension, or surprise.
  • Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin or end a story, the choice to provide a comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact.

• Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.
  • Explain how an author develops the point of view of the narrator or speaker in a text/work.
  • Analyze how an author develops and contrasts the points of view of different characters or narrators in a text/work.
  • Analyze how differences in the points of view of the characters and the audience/reader (e.g., created through the use of dramatic irony) create such effects as suspense or humor.
  • Analyze a particular point of view or cultural experience reflected in a work of literature.
  • Analyze a case in which grasping point of view requires distinguishing what is directly stated in a text from what is really meant (e.g., satire, sarcasm, irony, or understatement).

Additional skills for Language & Literature (that apply to non-literary texts and works)

• Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, stanza, etc.), and layout features (arrangement of text, images, and multimedia) relate to each other and the whole.
  • Analyze how a particular sentence, paragraph, chapter, section, image, video, etc. fits into the overall structure of a text and contributes to the development of the ideas.
  • Analyze the structure an author uses to organize a text, including how the major sections and/or layout choices contribute to the whole and to the development of the ideas.
  • Analyze in detail the structure of a specific paragraph in a text, including the role of particular sentences in developing and refining a key concept.
  • Analyze in detail how an author’s ideas or claims are developed and refined by particular sentences, paragraphs, smaller portions of a text (e.g., pull out quotes, statistic blocks) or larger portions of a text (e.g., a section or chapter).
  • Analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the structure an author uses in his or her exposition or argument, including whether the structure makes points clear, convincing, and engaging.

• Evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including print and digital resources⁸
  • Interpret information presented visually, orally, or quantitatively (e.g., in charts, graphs, diagrams, timelines, photographs, animations, interview clips, or interactive elements on Web pages) and explain how the information contributes to an understanding of the text in which it appears.
  • Analyze the relationship between illustrations and the text in which they appear and their effects on the reader.
  • Analyze the illustrations and image related details in a text and the ways in which these are used to develop ideas and arguments in the text/work.
  • Analyze how specific images (e.g., a diagram, map, etc.) contribute to a text with a clear understanding of their purpose (to inform, persuade, or entertain).

• Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.
  • Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text.
  • Explain how an author’s point of view or purpose is conveyed in a text.
  • Analyze how the author distinguishes his or her position, point of view, or purpose from that of others.
  • Analyze how the author acknowledges and responds to conflicting evidence or viewpoints.
  • Analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance their point of view or purpose.
  • When an author’s rhetoric is particularly effective, analyze how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness, or beauty of the text.
  • Analyze how an author’s use of images is particularly effective (photographs, icons, cartoons, infographics, etc.) and the ways in which they contribute to the purpose, perspective, power, persuasiveness, and/or aesthetic appeal of the text.

Criterion C:  Focus, Organization, and Development
Standards:  Writing and Speaking

• Write explanatory texts and deliver explanatory presentations that examine and convey complex ideas and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.⁹
  • Introduce a topic; organize complex ideas, concepts, and information (using strategies such as definition, classification, comparison/contrast, and cause/effect) so that so that each new element builds on that which precedes it to create a unified whole.   
  • Develop the topic thoroughly by selecting the most significant and relevant facts, definitions, concrete details, quotations, or other information and examples appropriate to the audience’s knowledge of the topic.  When possible, include formatting (e.g., headings), graphics (e.g., images, figures, tables), and multimedia when useful to aiding comprehension.
  • Use appropriate and varied transitions and syntax to link the major sections of the text, create cohesion, and clarify the relationships among complex ideas and concepts. 
  • Use precise language, domain-specific vocabulary, and techniques such as metaphor, simile, and analogy to manage the complexity of the topic.
  • Establish and maintain a formal style and objective tone while attending to the norms and conventions of the discipline.
  • Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from and supports the explanation presented (e.g., articulating implications or the significance of the topic).

• Communicate arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.¹⁰
  • Introduce precise, knowledgeable claim(s), establish the significance of the claim(s), distinguish the claim(s) from alternate or opposing claims, and create an organization that logically sequences claim(s), counterclaims, reasons and evidence.
  • Develop claim(s) and counterclaims fairly and thoroughly, supplying the most relevant evidence for each while pointing out the strengths and limitations of both in a manner that anticipates the audience’s knowledge level, concerns, values, and possible biases.
  • Use words, phrases, and clauses as well as varied syntax to link the major sections of the text, create cohesion, and clarify the relationships between claim(s) and reasons, between reasons and evidence, and between claim(s) and counterclaims.
  • Establish and maintain a formal style and objective tone while attending to the norms and conventions of the discipline in which they are writing.
  • Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from and supports the argument presented.

• Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects based on focused questions, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.¹¹
  • Answer a self-generated question.
  • Narrow or broaden the inquiry when appropriate.
  • Synthesize multiple sources on the subject, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.

Criterion D:  Use of Language
Standards:  Language Foundation

• Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing and presenting.

• Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing and presenting, using different types of sentence structures and phrases.

• Establish and maintain a formal style and objective tone in writing and presentations, accurately using general academic and domain-specific words and phrases.

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End Notes

[1] This refers to the IB assessment criteria used in all four of the Language A rubrics.

[2] This refers to the 6-12 Project AERO standards that align with the U.S. Common Core (pp. 62-94).  Most of these standards are taken from or have been adapted from the Project AERO standards.  Not all 6-12 standards are accounted for in the IB assessments.

[3] The post and related documents are available here on the English Collaborative website.

[4] This standard/skill overlaps with Criterion B.  There are some aspects of authorial choices that lie in the realm of understanding the work, but these same elements can also be analyzed for their effects.

[5] This standard and the 3 that follow meet the course requirements set out in the Area of Exploration:  Intertextuality.

[6] This is an explicit assessment objective of the IB Language A Literature Individual Oral.

[7] This standard has been created by the document’s author to include standards that account for graphic narratives.  Other craft and structure standards have been modified to include images and sequence of images.

[8] These are adapted from the K-5 Project AERO standards that align with the U.S. Common Core (p. 30).

[9] These writing standards are assessed in the IB Language A Individual Oral and Paper 1 assessments.

[10] These writing standards are assessed in the IB Language A Paper 2 and HL Essay assessments.  There are some aspects of the standards for argument that may apply to the Individual Oral and Paper 1 assessments; this will depend on the students’ presented interpretation of the works and the extent to which those interpretations are argued. 

[11] These standards explicitly apply to the IB Language A HL Essay.  It is also possible to approach the Individual Oral through the lens of inquiry.

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