← Connections across texts (English 3.7)
4 Achieved → Merit → Excellence
| Grade | Word | In practice |
|---|---|---|
| Achieved | Respond critically | You identify a real connection and support it with evidence from each text. |
| Merit | …convincingly | The connection is developed and sustained, with evidence integrated and genuinely comparative discussion. |
| Excellence | …perceptively | You show insight: how the texts differ as well as align, what the pattern reveals about purpose and audience, and a link to self/society, with control and precision. |
The Excellence lever for this standard specifically
- Find the text that doesn’t quite fit and use it. “Three of these texts present X as inevitable; the fourth refuses that, which throws the others into relief.”
- Talk about form, not just content. A film and a poem create the same idea by completely different means, and saying how is high-level.
- Connect to context: why might writers in different times/places converge on this idea?
- End on significance: what this says about people, not just about the texts.