Definitions of Content Clusters
| Overview | Writing | Speaking | Listening | Reading | Viewing | Extending Understanding |

The ESPA, GEPA, and HSPA will invite students to approach text^a (written, aural, and visual) with three different perspectives: interpreting text, analyzing and critiquing text, and extending understanding of the text.

Extending Understanding of the Text (p.13)
Extending understanding is a complex process through which students analyze, synthesize, and apply their understanding of various text types and life experiences. For this component of the assessment, students will respond to multiple-choice and open-ended questions based on informational texts.  Students taking the GEPA and HSPA will also encounter everyday text that links to the informational text. As the culminating activity in this language arts literacy component, students will complete a writing project in which they make decisions and solve problems drawing upon the texts they have read.

Reading texts will contain the following elements:

• topics that are age- and grade-level appropriate;
• a clear focus;
• a clearly identifiable theme or central idea;
• an established tone and mood;
• key details that support the theme or central idea;
• one text will be informational;

one text will be everyday (GEPA and HSPA only).