Standard 4: Vocabulary Students will expand their grade-level vocabularies to speak, read, and write effectively.

2.4.W.2 ​Students will use language in speaking and writing according to purpose and audience.

Student Actions

Teacher Actions

• Students use language according to the purpose while speaking.

• Students use language according to the purpose while writing. 

• Students use language according to the audience while speaking.

• Students use language according to the audience while writing. 

• Teachers explain that there are different purposes for speaking and writing such as telling a story, sharing information, stating an opinion, sharing ideas, etc.

• Teachers explain and model using language related to various purposes. For example…

• telling a story may include descriptive language about characters, setting, and plot.

• sharing information may include facts.

• expressing an opinion would include an  opinion and reasons for the opinion.

• Teachers provide opportunities for students to contribute appropriate language to shared writing experiences. 

• Teachers provide opportunities for students to use language for the purpose of discussion and writing independently.

• Teachers provide prompts such as sentence stems or anchor charts that have information about purposes for writing as needed. 

• Teachers monitor and provide opportunities for students to receive feedback as students use language for various purposes in speaking and writing. 

• Teachers explain that the audience is the person or people that you are talking to or writing for.

• Teachers model how to identify what the audience needs to know using questions such as…

• What is most important to them?

• What do they already know about the topic?

• What do you want them to learn?

• Teachers provide students opportunities to speak to and write for various audiences including adults, other classes, families, etc. 

• Teachers monitor and provide opportunities for students to receive feedback as students speak to and write for various audiences.

Recommendations

Key Terms & Related Objectives

When students use language that does not support the purpose, teachers can…

• remind students about the purpose.

• provide sentence frames or prompts to support the purpose such as using “first, next, then, last” or “I think that…”, “I learned…”

• model how to use language according to the purpose in speaking or writing.

• use a mentor text to demonstrate a purpose for writing or speaking. For example, read a book review and show how the author used the language for reviewing the book. 

When students struggle with speaking or writing for the intended audience, teachers can…

• create a list of different types of audiences with the student. These may include adults, peers, families, or others.

• think about what that audience needs to know about the topic. 

• role-play being the audience and discussing what language needs to be used so the audience

• Audience: a writer’s targeted reader(s).

• Author’s Purpose: the objective, goal, or intended effect a writer wishes to achieve.

• 2.1.S.4: Speaking for various purposes

• 2.3.W.1-3: Purposes for writing

• 2.6.W.2: Share relevant information for various purposes