I went through the Collection 2 test and the Collection 2 resources to identify the standards that are being taught and tested. Attached you will find the information I gathered. As I go through the Collections to update the tests and curriculum, I will create something similar for each Collection. You will notice that the document has some blank boxes. I can't fill in those boxes until I do all of the Collections and determine what standards are being tested for each strand of the curriculum.

It looks like there is a lot of author purpose in Collection 2, but the questions are not worded the same as those in the Collection test. The students might have done poorly on the O.Henry piece because they were looking for author purpose in a fiction piece, while the Collection anchor texts focus on nonfiction. One way to address this might be to teach the fiction piece "The Censors" which focuses on Author Purpose. …show more content…
The O.Henry piece is actually on level. A 9th grade lexile is between 960-1120 with a "stretch band" of 1050-1335. We want kids reading a variety of texts that fall on grade level, but also stretch to the next level. The lexile for the nonfiction pieces are above the stretch band. I believe this is because of the technical terms that are being used. Lexiles are determined by the length of the words used and the length of the sentences. Both nonfiction pieces use longer sentence and terms that apply to the era of the piece. As I said on Tuesday if you feel there are words that kids will really struggle with, feel free to define them in the