English Language Arts - Georgia Milestones Grade 4
Georgia Milestones Grade 4 English Language Arts measures the Georgia Standards of Excellence for grade 4 reading, language, and writing. It is delivered in two sections - Section 1: Reading and Vocabulary and Section 2: Writing and Language - using selected-response items (1 point), constructed-response items (2 points), and one extended writing response scored on a 7-point, two-trait rubric.
Reading: literary and informational text
Passages are grade-level stories, fables, myths, poems, and nonfiction articles, frequently in pairs. Questions ask students to:
- state a theme or main idea and choose the detail that best supports it;
- explain how a character, event, or idea develops across a text;
- describe text structure (compare/contrast, cause/effect, chronology, problem/solution);
- identify first- or third-person point of view and how it shapes events;
- compare how two texts treat the same topic or idea;
- use context clues, Greek and Latin roots, and affixes to define words, and interpret similes, metaphors, idioms, adages, and proverbs.
Language and writing
Language items test relative pronouns, progressive verb tenses, modal auxiliaries, prepositional phrases, complete sentences versus fragments and run-ons, commas and quotation marks in dialogue, and capitalization. The extended response asks for narrative, opinion, or informative writing and is scored on two traits: up to 4 points for developing and organizing ideas with details from the passage(s), and up to 3 points for language usage and conventions.
Worked example
Text: "The attic smelled of cedar and old paper. Ana lifted the trunk's lid as if she were opening a door to a room she had never seen." Question: What does the comparison in the second sentence suggest about Ana? Reasoning: "As if" signals a simile, which compares two unlike things to create a picture. The picture is entering an unfamiliar room, so the comparison suggests Ana feels curious and expects a discovery - not that a room is literally new. An answer like "Ana is bored" can be eliminated because nothing in the text supports it, even though boredom is possible in an attic.
Traps that cost marks
- Choosing an answer that is true in real life but not stated or implied in the passage.
- Giving a topic label ("it is about friendship") when the question asks for a theme written as a statement.
- Retelling the whole passage in a constructed response instead of answering the exact question with evidence.
- Ignoring the genre named in the writing prompt, or losing conventions points through run-ons and missing commas in dialogue.