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CURRICULUM PROGRAM: Special Education
COURSE TITLE: Language Arts 8
CALENDAR YEAR: 2012-2013
GRADE LEVEL: 8
CODE: LAE231
TYPE: SE
CREDITS:
COURSE LENGTH: 36 weeks
About the Program:
This course is designed to facilitate student mastery of the DoDEA standards and essential objectives of the parallel general education course. Accommodations and modifications in content, instructional activities, evaluative techniques and essential objectives are implemented as appropriate for students with disabilities in support of their Individualized Education Programs (IEP).
Major Concepts/Content: The Language Arts 8 course is designed to strengthen students’ skills in listening, speaking, writing, literature, and language. The content includes, but is not limited to, writing notes from information received aurally; developing an aware-ness of sexism, racism, and age bias in material heard, viewed, or read; differentiating between emotional and intellectual arguments in a spoken or written discussion; discriminating among fact, fiction, opinion, assumption, and inference in spoken and written language; writing paragraphs composed of an appropriate topic sentence and adequate supportive material; writing coherent answers on essay tests; writing in various modes for self-discovery, self-expression, and enjoyment; presenting narrative and descriptive writing; identifying basic literary terms as they are used in discussing literature, e.g., characterization, plot, setting, and mood; using parts of speech correctly in final written drafts and in speech in the classroom setting; and reading and reviewing self-selected books to help students learn to view reading as a useful and pleasurable activity.
Major Instructional Activities: Instructional activities will be provided in a general classroom setting, in the media center, and in the school and community environment. Student activities will include, but will not be limited to, writing journals or learning logs; writing persuasive and compare/contrast paragraphs; writing personal narratives, short stories, and poetry; writing and mailing personal and business letters; learning to respond to each other’s writing with helpful suggestions for revision; taking several pieces of group and individual writing through a process that includes prewriting activities, drafting, peer response, revision, proofreading for spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammar, and usage, and publishing; practicing writing from different points of view for different audiences; developing speaking and listening skills by responding to literature and to each other’s writing and by participating in small and large group discussions and in oral presentations, individual recitations, and dramatizations; studying appropriate major works of literature intensively in class; reading, viewing, and listening independently to examples of the various genres of literature, and responding to that literature; presenting interpretations of literature orally; reading self-selected books and responding to them in journal entries, letters, group discussions, or oral or written book reports; practicing locating information in the media center using the card catalog and the Reader’s Guide; and increasing vocabulary through the study of words encountered in reading and through work with the dictionary and the thesaurus.
Major Evaluative Techniques: Students will be evaluated for class participation; completion of reading assignments and book reporting requirements; comprehension of literature as measured by objective, essay, and/or oral examinations; and improvement in written compositions and oral presentations, with major emphasis on critical thinking, content, organization, specificity and relevance of detail and evidence of reasoning, and with secondary emphasis on skill growth in spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammar, and usage.
Course Objectives: Upon completion of the Language Arts 8 course, student should be able to: