NCTE/IRA Standards for Teaching English Language Arts

Here is a link to the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and International Reading Association's Standards (IRA) for K-12 teaching in the English language arts. I have recently e-mailed you the PDF as an attachment, but if you did not get the e-mail, you can download the standards for FREE at this address:
http://www.ncte.org/store/books/bestsellers/105977.htm

The Standards are an absolute NECESSITY for you. If you can justify your instruction (via lesson planning) in terms of NATIONAL standards such as these, you are well on your way to preparing your students for the complexities of the entire world around them. The standards start on page 19, and each has a justification/rationale/explanation attached to it.

This should be REQUIRED reading before you leave the university or step foot in a classroom. I suggest you familiarize yourself with them as best you can.

For those of you considering doing a thematic unit for your final project, I suggest you focus on these standards in making your lesson plans. You may have noticed that these are the standards that ReadWriteThink.org uses in its lesson plans as well.