The new ELA FSA assesses the Language Arts Florida Standards (LAFS)

KEY SHIFTS The new standards address KEY SHIFTS in English Language Arts:  Regular practice with complex texts and their academic language  Reading, writing, and speaking grounded in evidence from texts, both literary and informational (50/50 balance of fiction vs. non-fiction in grades K-5)  Building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction  NOTE: The Language Arts Florida Standards are an adoption of the Common Core Standards.  For the full standards, visit: and click on Parents & Families

How can you help? Continue to support reading and writing at home! Please review the handout “How Parents Can Support the Common Core Reading Standards” for tips on questions to ask and items to discuss as you read with your child. Help your child be a reading detective uncovering meanings of unknown words with a few of these strategies in our next activity…

Be a Word Detective Our activity addresses LAFS.K12.L.3.4 Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases by using context clues, analyzing meaningful word parts, and consulting general and specialized reference materials, as appropriate. Directions: Matching Context Clue Strategies with Examples Work with a partner. Each pair will receive a bag with a set of green cards and white cards. Each green card will have a matching white card. Work with your partner to match the context clue strategy with the example.

Let’s Discuss! My shoe laces are untied. Prefixes/Affixes Letters that come before or after a word that change or add to its meaning. This is a prefix. The laces are not tied. My hair is chaotic. It is messy because I have not combed it in weeks. Examples/Sentence Clues Sentences that come before or after a word that give you a clue to its meaning. The sentence after chaotic gives you context to understand that something chaotic is messy. My shirt is tainted, but I have a clean one at home. Contrasting Statements Statements or sentences that tell you the opposite meaning of the word. In this sentence, clean is the opposite of tainted. “But” gives you a clue that there is a contrasting statement in the sentence.

I injured, or hurt, my knee at the soccer game. Appositives/Definitions The author defines the vocabulary word within the sentence. In this example, hurt defines injured in the sentence. It is important to be hygienic. Outside Resources (Dictionaries or Glossaries) If you cannot figure out a word’s meaning in context, always turn to a dictionary or glossary to determine its meaning. In this case, there are no context clues. I will look up “hygienic” in the “H” section of the dictionary. I discover that hygienic means “healthy or clean” Adapted from ReadWorks