Louisiana Administrative Code
Title 28 - EDUCATION
Part CXXXI - Bulletin 746-Louisiana Standards for State Certification of School Personnel
Chapter 3 - Initial Teacher Certification
Subchapter E - English Language Arts and Literacy Teacher Competencies
Section CXXXI-323 - Content Knowledge Competencies

1. The teacher candidate reads a wide variety of complex texts appropriate for instruction of age or gradelevel reading, writing, speaking and listening, and language standards. The variety of texts includes print and non-print or digital texts; media texts, including but not limited to, songs, videos, podcasts, film, and classic texts and contemporary texts. The texts include children's literature that represent a range of world literatures, historical traditions, genres, forms, and the experiences of different genders, ethnicities, and social classes.

2. The teacher candidate determines the meaning, purpose, and main ideas of complex texts and explains the development orally and in writing based on the interaction of an author's craft by using word choice, syntax, use of details and illustrations, and figurative language, elements and structure such as setting, characterization, development and organization, plot, pacing, and evidence, literary effects of symbolism and irony, and rhetorical devices.

3. The teacher candidate explains how vocabulary, diction, syntax, and sentence patterns contribute to the meaning, complexity, clarity, coherency, fluency, and quality of a text.

4. The teacher candidate selects words in complex texts which most contribute to the meaning, are common among complex texts, are part of word families, or have multiple meanings.

5. The teacher candidate makes connections among texts, including determining and explaining how each text challenges, validates, or refines the language, topics, themes, and/or ideas of other texts and how modern texts or texts in different mediums adapt, enhance, or misrepresent a source text.

6. The teacher candidate assesses the credibility and usability of texts by analyzing texts with differing viewpoints to determine areas of conflict or possible bias, evaluating whether the reasoning is sound and the evidence is relevant and sufficient, and determining the advantages and disadvantages of different texts and mediums for presenting a particular topic or idea.

7. The teacher candidate recognizes the influence of English language and literary history on English language arts content.

1. The teacher candidate creates a range of formal and informal, process and on-demand oral, written, and visual compositions to include analytic, argumentative, explanatory, and narrative text about the language, craft, topics, themes, and/or ideas of complex texts, taking into consideration the interrelationships among form, audience, context, and purpose.

2. The teacher candidate uses complex texts to locate models of writing such as word choice, syntax, sentence variety and fluency, text structure, and style and uses the models to imitate the language, structure, and style into personal writing.

3. The teacher candidate knows and appropriately uses the conventions of English language grammar, usage, and mechanics in relation to various rhetorical situations and to various style guides for composition.

4. The teacher candidate recognizes and explains the historical context of modern English language, including recognizing root words, determining word etymologies, and analyzing changes in syntax.

5. The teacher candidate explains the concept of dialect, recognize the effect and impact on the meaning and development of written and spoken language, and knows how to apply the concept in context when appropriate.

6. The teacher candidate explains the importance of language structure, syntactic awareness, and discourse awareness in developing reading and writing fluency.

1. The teacher candidate explains the progression, connection, and reciprocal relationships among the major components of early literacy development, including the typical and atypical development of skills in the areas of language, phonological processing, vocabulary, morphology, orthography, semantics, syntax, and discourse; reading, print awareness, decoding, fluency, and comprehension; and spelling and writing development including pre-literate, early emergent, emergent, transitional, and conventional.

2. The teacher candidate defines, explains, produces, and classifies the basic phonetic structure and orthographic rules and patterns of the English language, including but not limited to phonemes, graphemes, diagraphs, blends, r-controlled vowels, hard and soft consonants, and explains the relation to the progression of reading and writing development.

3. The teacher candidate identifies, explains, and categorizes the six basic syllable types in English spelling and explains principles of teaching word identification and spelling, giving examples illustrating each principle.

4. The teacher candidate explains the role of fluency in typical reading development including word recognition, oral reading, silent reading, and comprehension, and as a characteristic of certain reading disorders.

5. The teacher candidate identifies, defines, and explains the relationship between environmental, cultural, and social factors that contribute to literacy development and the difference between delays and characteristics of some reading disorders, as determined by academic standards.

6. The teacher candidate explains and demonstrates through oral reading the print concepts young students must develop regarding text orientation, directionality, connection of print to meaning, return sweep, page sequencing, and punctuation.

7. The teacher candidate explains the stages of the development of phonological awareness skills and gives examples illustrating each stage of rhyme, syllable, onsetrime, phoneme segmentation, blending, and substitution.

8. The teacher candidate demonstrates appropriate enunciation in oral demonstrations, especially speech sounds when conducting phonemic awareness lessons.