English Department

Essential Knowledge and Skills

Students in English Twelve will examine a variety of texts and writing patterns representing creative and nonfiction writing. Students will increase their awareness of the elements of nonfiction writing, by learning about the components of the essay and its many uses. Students will strengthen their individual voices, and improve their ability to respond to the work of others. Students will complete research and essay assignments reflecting their knowledge of the texts and expressing valid and supportable arguments. Students will produce a body of polished work as a high school exit project.

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

• Discern the meaning of analogies encountered, analyzing specific comparisons as well as relationships and inferences

• Comprehension of literary and informational text

• Analyze the organizational patterns, arguments, and positions advanced in essays, speeches, debates and platforms

• Continue to practice active reading techniques such as predicting and questioning

• Identify and analyze various themes in literature, emphasizing social and personal meaning and cultural diversity

• Recognize literary elements including irony, imagery, figurative language and symbolism.

• Critique the power, validity, and truthfulness of arguments set forth in essays and public documents; their appeal to both friendly and hostile audiences; and the extent to which the arguments anticipate and address reader concerns and counterclaims.

Written Language

Strategies

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

• Develop and write clear thesis statements

• Demonstrate an understanding of elements of discourse (e.g. 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.

• Use systematic strategies to organize and record information (e.g., anecdotal note taking, annotated bibliographies)

Applications

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

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

• Develop and write the senior exit project research paper

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, which convey clear and distinct perspectives with solid reasoning.

• Deliver oral response to speeches, public documents, essays, poetry and texts

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

Technology

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

• Create and give multi-media presentations

Visual/Media Literacy

• Students will learn to analyze and critique visual text and increase their ability to actively interact with media

Assessments

Upon the completion of this course students will:

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

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

• Demonstrate a command 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.