Standards Based Grading

CRITERION A: Analyzing (knowledge, understanding, and interpretation)

Analyzing involves demonstrating an understanding of the creator’s choices, the relationships between the various components of a text and between texts, and making inferences about how an audience responds to a text , as well as the creator’s purpose for producing text. Students should be able to use the text to support their personal responses and ideas.

Essential Questions: How much knowledge and understanding does the candidate demonstrate? To what extent does the candidate make use of knowledge and understanding of the work? How well are ideas supported by references to the text?To what extent does the analysis show an understanding of the texts, their type and purpose, and their possible contexts (for example, cultural, temporal, relation to audience)?


CRITERION B: Analysis and evaluation of author’s choice (author’s technique/style/craft)

Analyzing a text includes evaluating the author’s choices or the author’s craft, providing an insight into how language, structure, technique, style of text(s) create meaning.

Essential Questions: To what extent does the candidate analyse and evaluate how the choices of language, technique and style, and/or broader authorial choices shape meaning in relation to the chosen topic? To what extent does the analysis show an awareness of how stylistic features of the texts, such as language, structure, tone, technique and style, are used to construct meaning?


CRITERION C: Organization (focus, organization, integration, development, transitions, referencing)

Students should understand and be able to organize their ideas and opinions using a range of appropriate conventions for different forms and purposes of communication. Students should also recognize the importance of maintaining academic honesty by respecting intellectual property rights and referencing all sources accurately.

Essential Questions: How well organized, focused and developed is the presentation of ideas in the writing? How well are examples integrated into the writing and cited correctly?


CRITERION D: LANGUAGE (preciseness, vocabulary, varied sentence construction, register, terminology, grammar)

Students have opportunities to develop, organize and express themselves and communicate thoughts, ideas and information. They are required to use accurate and varied language that is appropriate to the context and intention. This objective applies to, and must include, written, oral and visual text, as appropriate.

Essential Questions: How clear, varied and accurate is the language? How appropriate is the choice of register and style? (“Register” refers, in this context, to the candidate’s use of elements such as vocabulary, tone, sentence structure and terminology appropriate to the analysis).