Standards..

My content area that I will focus on this semester is language arts for 6^th grade and the SOLs standards are:

6.4             The student will read and demonstrate comprehension of a variety of fiction, narrative nonfiction, and poetry.

a)     Identify the elements of narrative structure, including setting, character, plot, conflict, and theme.

b)     Use knowledge of narrative and poetic structures to aid comprehension and predict outcomes.

c)     Describe the images created by language.

d)     Describe how word choice and imagery contribute to the meaning of a text.

e)     Describe cause-effect relationships and their impact on plot.

f)     Use information stated explicitly in the text to draw conclusions and make inferences.

g)     Explain how character and plot development are used in a selection to support a central conflict or story line.

h)    Paraphrase and summarize the main points in the text.

Language arts are one of the content areas that gives you a space to try different learning styles and create a wide rang of activities and ideas to transfer the content to the students. For the reading I will try the group work by dividing the students into groups and distributing a piece of literary work and ask them to identify the theme, characters, and setting. A Blog would be a great idea for language arts where the students have the opportunity to reflect on things being discussed in the classroom. I would use video and audio clips that would help for better understanding of the story or the poem. I would also use a PowerPoint presentation that contains mapping and analyzing of the characters or the theme and ask the students to do a concept mapping by using Microsoft word or power point of the characters