Earle B. Wood Middle School

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Philosophy

The goal of the secondary English Language Arts program is to create literate, thoughtful communicators, capable of controlling language effectively as they negotiate an increasingly complex and information-rich world. Students will refine specific skills and strategies in reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing and will use these skills and strategies widely as tools for learning and reflection. Exploring a variety of texts, students will understand and appreciate language and literature as catalysts for deep thought and emotion.

The secondary English Language Arts program is founded on the following beliefs:

Enduring Understandings
• Language is a powerful tool for expressing ideas, beliefs, and feelings.
• Knowledge of language facilitates thought.
• Readers, listeners, and viewers continually develop and apply strategies to construct meaning from increasingly complex and challenging texts.
• Writers and speakers strategically use language to communicate for a variety of purposes.
• Individuals need advanced literacy skills to participate actively and successfully in today’s demanding, information-based society.
• Literature reveals the complexities of the world and human experience.

Overview

The secondary English Language Arts program focuses on the communication processes of reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing through the study of language and literature. Courses are organized into four thematic units, each approximately one marking period in duration. Each unit addresses an over-arching theme designed to serve as a lens through which students explore the human experience across time and distance in their own writing and published exposition, narration, poetry, and drama. Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions for each unit provide a larger purpose for learning targeted content. Each unit integrates the communication processes and contents. No one process (reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing) is taught in isolation. Neither of the contents (literature and language) is taught in isolation. Rather, students learn the dynamic relationships among them as they study the significant role language plays in literature and in the craft of expressing oneself through the written and spoken word. Specifically, each unit in this course exposes students to the following aspects of the communication processes, literature, and language:

Reading and Listening—Effective readers and listeners use strategies before, during, and after reading or listening to construct and extend meaning according to the text and purpose. They access background knowledge, survey structure, predict, question, summarize, clarify, visualize, draw conclusions, validate perceptions, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate. In secondary English Language Arts courses, students develop and apply these strategies to a variety of increasingly challenging and complex texts.

Viewing—Effective viewers approach visual texts in much the same way they approach a written or spoken text. In English Language Arts, students actively view visual texts by applying and refining strategies they use when reading and listening and learn new concepts specific to understanding visual media.

Writing and Speaking—Effective communicators are aware of the essential elements of powerful writing and speaking—ideas and development, organization, diction, syntax, voice, and language conventions. They use their knowledge of the nature, organization, and structure of language to improve as writers and speakers. Effective writers employ a recursive process that includes pre-writing, drafting, and revision. In English Language Arts, students apply their understanding of language and the writing process to develop organized and coherent responses to literature, express their personal ideas, describe situations or events, and persuade their audiences.

Literature—Effective readers realize that universal human experiences often serve as sources of literary themes. Readers also understand that authors make conscious decisions to affect an audience. In English Language Arts, students read, listen to, and view traditional and contemporary works to examine how authors, speakers, and directors use language, literary elements, and genres to provide their audiences with new insights and perspectives.

Language—Effective communicators are aware of the rules that govern language, grammar, syntax, and organization, and they understand the power of word choice and semantics. In English Language Arts, students use their knowledge of language to improve as communicators and to analyze the textual decisions an author makes to influence voice, tone, and meaning in a literary work.

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last updated May 29, 2008