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.

Viewing  (p.19)
Viewing, an inescapable and fundamental aspect of everyday life, contributes to and is enhanced by speaking, listening, writing, and reading experiences. Critical viewers are able to interpret, respond to, and evaluate visual and aural messages of both print and nonprint media.

For this component of the assessment, "viewing text" is defined as an audiovisual presentation. Fourth graders taking the ESPA will view an informational piece of eight to twelve minutes. Students taking the eighth-grade assessment will view an informational/persuasive piece of eight to twelve minutes. Students taking the eleventh-grade assessment will view a narrative/dramatic piece of eight to twelve minutes. For all three assessments, students will respond to open-ended and multiple-choice questions about the videos.

Viewing texts will be recorded on videotape or on CD ROM and 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 or mood;
• key details that support the theme or central idea;

conventions of viewed text (humor, irony, setting, metaphor, etc.)