Your response must address all five tasks below, citing the exhibits. Missing any task drops you below a Score 4.

1. Connect prior knowledge: describe one strategy to help the student connect prior knowledge and real-world experience to the excerpt's content and context.
2. Identify the need: describe one area of academic need the student demonstrates, tied to a specific ELAR skill or learning objective — cited from the exhibits.
3. Instructional strategy: describe one developmentally appropriate strategy to address that need, and explain why you'd use it.
4. Assessment method: describe one developmentally appropriate method to monitor the student's progress toward the objective.
5. Use the data: explain how you'd use data from that assessment to measure progress and plan future instruction.

An English II teacher wants to help students develop the comprehension skill described in the TEKS for English Language Arts and Reading below.

TEKS ELA.10.6.G — Students are expected to analyze how an author's diction and use of figurative language contribute to the tone and mood of a literary text.

The teacher sets the daily learning objective below.

Students will be able to identify an example of figurative language in a text and explain how it contributes to the passage's mood.

The teacher assigns students to read the excerpt below from an original short story, "The Long Walk Home."

The porch light had burned out weeks ago, and no one had bothered to replace it. Maren stood at the end of the gravel drive, her sneakers soaked through, watching the dark windows of the house she used to call home. Somewhere behind that glass, her mother's voice used to fill every room like a held breath finally released — now the silence pressed against the walls instead, thick and patient, as if it had been waiting for her to leave so it could move in for good. She could still turn back. She could still knock. Instead, she counted the cracks in the driveway, memorizing them the way she used to memorize her mother's lullabies, and walked toward the road, letting the dark swallow the house whole behind her.

Students silently read the excerpt and then respond in writing to a prompt. The prompt and success criteria appear below.

Identify one example of figurative language in the excerpt and explain how it contributes to the passage's mood.

In my written response, I will:

• Identify one specific example of figurative language from the excerpt.
• Explain how that device contributes to the passage's mood.
• Support my explanation with a direct quotation from the text.

One student's response appears below.

"In the passage, the author writes that 'the silence pressed against the walls instead, thick and patient,' which is personification. This shows that the house is empty now. Maren left her house and doesn't want to go back inside. She counted the cracks in the driveway instead of knocking on the door. The mood of the passage is sad."

After responding to the assignment, the student has a one-on-one conversation with the teacher about the student's ability to explain how figurative language contributes to mood. A transcript of their conversation appears below.

Teacher: You identified personification in "the silence pressed against the walls." What human quality is the silence given here?
Student: That it's like a person... waiting?
Teacher: Right. And the passage says the silence was "patient" — like it had been waiting for her to leave. What does that suggest about how long this sadness has existed in the house?
Student: I don't know. I guess... it was already sad before she left?
Teacher: Exactly — so the personification isn't just describing an empty house. It's telling us the sadness was already there. How could you use that idea in your response?
Student: I could say the house feels sad even before she's gone?
Teacher: Good start. Now, why does that detail matter to the passage's overall mood?
Student: I'm not sure how to explain that part.

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