Definitions of Content Clusters - p. 10
| 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.

Speaking (p.16)
Speaking requires students to generate, organize, and orally convey information for a variety of purposes and audiences. Effective speakers can relate thoughts and ideas, express an opinion, present information, and tell a story.  During this component of the assessment, fourth-grade students will prepare and deliver a two-minute speech "to explain," and eighth-grade students will prepare and deliver a three-minute speech "to explain."  Students taking the eleventh-grade assessment will prepare and deliver a four-minute speech "to persuade."

Speaking prompts will present topics that are consistent with the topics introduced in other sections of the assessment unit and will contain questions to facilitate student planning. Students will have 60 minutes to prepare for their presentation and may use that time to write notes and/or create a visual prop that they may use to support their speaking. Students will have a speaker's checklist to use as a resource while they are preparing for their presentation.  This checklist identifies the features of good speaking that are specified in the New Jersey Speaking Rubric.

Speaking prompts will invite responses that are:

.      age- and grade-level appropriate;
.      clearly focused with a clear purpose;
.      effectively elaborated with details;
.      logically organized, with a clear opening and closing;
.      varied in their vocabulary and sentence structure;
.      reflective of a strong stance;
.      sensitive to audience;
.      clear and audible.

.      topics that are age- and grade-level appropriate;
.      a clear focus;
.      a clearly identifiable theme or central idea;
.      a clearly stated purpose with an identified audience;
.      questions for reflection as an aid to elaboration.