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CURRICULUM PROGRAM: English Language Arts
COURSE TITLE: Language Arts 10
CALENDAR YEAR: 2012-2013
GRADE LEVEL: 10
CODE: LAE401
TYPE: GL
CREDITS:
COURSE LENGTH: 36 weeks
Major Concepts/Content: The Language Arts 10 course is designed to strengthen students’ skills in listening, speaking, writing, literature, and language. The content includes, but is not limited to, outlining or mapping main ideas and details of information received aurally or through research; using vocabulary and sentence structure appropriate to the listener and the situation; understanding the importance of speech in influencing the course of events in a democratic society; using interviewing skills; using parliamentary procedure skills; using formal debating skills; refining test-taking skills to meet secondary and post-secondary demands; writing a paraphrase, summary, or precise; writing compositions for newspaper publication; writing a short paper using research techniques; selecting appropriate sources of information for the topic; understanding and explaining the type of conflict in a given literary selection (psychological, social, environmental); experiencing a wide range of literary forms (e.g., short stories, novels, non-fiction, poetry, drama); using the media center research facilities; and reading 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 expository, descriptive, and persuasive essays; writing autobiographical narratives; writing newspaper articles; writing a brief research report; writing and mailing business letters; learning to respond to each other’s writing with helpful suggestions for revision; taking several pieces of 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 purposes and 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, interviews, parliamentary meetings, formal debates, 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 several self-selected books and responding to them in journal entries, letters, group discussions, or oral or written book reports; 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 active class participation; completion of reading assignments and book reporting requirements; comprehension of literature as measured by objective, essay, and/or oral examinations; improvement in written composition and oral presentations with major emphasis on unity and coherence, use of evidence and argument, organization, specificity and relevance of detail, and with secondary emphasis on skill growth in spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammar and usage.
Course Objectives: Upon completion of the Language Arts 10 course, students should be able to: