English Department

Essential Knowledge and Skills

Students in English Nine Honors study a variety of essay and poetic forms, as well as basic conventions of fiction composition. Students will explore themes, ideas and definitions of the essay and poem form. Students will write essays and poems modeling these forms. Students will complete research and essay assignments reflecting their knowledge of the texts and expressing valid and supportable arguments. They will also learn and exhibit effective public speaking and presentations skills. Students will express competency in the skills taught in the course by completing an end of the year capstone project and presentation.

Indicators of Student Learning

Upon the completion of this course, students will:

Reading Comprehension

Word Analysis and Vocabulary Development

• Determine word meaning through word parts, definitions, and context clues. • Determine word meaning through contextual inferences

Comprehension of literary and informational text

• Read fiction and non-fiction pieces • Continue to practice active reading techniques such as predicting, questioning, and inferring

Identify and analyze various modes of essays

• Recognize literary elements including introductions, thesis statements, topic sentences, evidence, concrete details, conclusions.

• Evaluate argument and evidence

• Engage in a process of analysis and syntheses using inductive reasoning.

• Understand how to read various poetic forms, including haiku, sonnet, and free verse.

• Understand a 20-minute per night reading routine.

Written Language

Strategies

• Write coherent and focused text that convey a well-designed perspective and tightly reasoned argument.

• Demonstrate an understanding of elements of discourse (i.e. purpose, speaker, audience, form) when completing narrative, expository, persuasive or descriptive writing assignments

• Revise and edit to strengthen ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency and conventions

• Intentionally choose and use specific lead and conclusion techniques such as quotations, predictions, and background statements.

Applications

• Write responses to literature, which demonstrate an understanding of the significant ideas in the work.

• Write at least three essays per quarter, combining rhetorical strategies to produce texts, which demonstrate a command of standard American English.

• Submit a quarterly letter to the editor of The Salt Lake Tribune.

• Complete at least one short speech to the class per quarter.

• Write an end of the year capstone project on a single topic of interest containing at least three essays, ten poems, and a short story.

• Teach the class about the subject of their choice in a multi-media presentation.

Inquiry, Research, and Oral Presentation

Inquiry / Research

• Formulate questions to examine multiple points of view

• Gather information from multiple sources

• Examine creditability of primary and secondary sources

• Use citations where appropriate

Oral Language

• Speak with a command of Standard English conventions

• Deliver focused and coherent presentations of their own that convey clear and distinct perspectives with solid reasoning.

• Use effective public speaking habits, such as eye contact, proper body language, and clear voice projection.

• Deliver oral response to literature.

• Recite poems with attention to performance details in order to achieve clarity and aesthetic effect, and to demonstrate understanding.

• Engage in Socratic Seminars about texts read as a class.

Technology

• Collaborate with peers to use technology to compile and produce projects and other creative works.

• Create and give multi-media presentations

Assessments

Upon the completion of this course students will:

• Demonstrate increased competency in Reading Comprehension by answering specific teacher generated questions and defining vocabulary words in context.

• Demonstrate increased competency in Written Language as evidenced by a pre and post essay for each semester.

• Demonstrate increased proficiency in research, inquiry and oral presentation by expressing ideas clearly, explaining research process, presenting ideas and information in written and oral response.

• Demonstrate competency in technology by creating projects and multimedia presentations.