Syllabus

Reading and Language Arts 10

Barry Rich

Room G-110

Blocks 5 and E

2012-2013

 

Course description and units of study: “English 10” is a two-semester, required course that guides students to becoming better readers, writers, speakers, listeners, viewers, studiers, researchers, spellers, technology-users, and critical thinkers—in order that students may enhance their academic, personal, and occupational lives. In class, students read, discuss, and analyze a spectrum of literary genres and complete a variety of formal and informal writing assignments. A typical class day opens with a writing or critical-thinking “energizer” activity, follows with a grammar, capitalization, punctuation, spelling, or word-usage lesson, then leads to the main literature or writing assignment lesson, and ends with a follow-up assessment, writing exercise, or  WESTest preparation exercise. Other class days may solely involve drafting in-class writing assignments, peer-editing, student-presenting of mini-lessons or student-led teaching, completing frequent quizzes or occasional exams, and certainly a combination thereof. I openly admit that I prioritize the mastery of reading, writing, and grammar above other instructional goals. Therefore, students should expect to extensively increase their writing and speaking skills. English 10 emphasizes literature crafted by "world" authors, thereby focusing upon other than American and British writers. Likewise, the course inherently addresses cultural-diversity issues. Elements pertaining to character education occur by virtue of assignments and class discussion. Remediation of course material occurs by way of review and retesting.

 

Course objectives (upon course completion): By studying literature, students might increase their appreciation for the arts and humanities. Students will build their vocabularies by 20 words per week. Students will write works devoid of sentence fragments errors, run-on errors, and comma splice errors. Students will master Standard American English grammar rules of the sophomore level. Students will be very familiar with narrative, descriptive, informative, and persuasive writing forms and will demonstrate proficiency by adequately writing formal works of the following formats: journalistic account, autobiographical incident, sensory-observation composition, five-paragraph composition, informative report, literary interpretation, problem/solution composition, comparison/contrast composition, newspaper-article journalism, and persuasive pamphleture. Students will also be prepared to begin writing the junior and senior level research papers. Students will demonstrate proficiency in writing less-prosaic writing formats such as cartooning, haiku, acrostic poetry, cinquains, blues poetry, rap, limerick, Shakespearean sonnet, villanelle, playwriting, micro-fiction, and illustrated children’s stories. Students will increase their technology repertoires by constructing multimedia artifacts, and students will utilize Edmodo and Dropbox. 

 

Evaluation (grade determinants): Students’ grades are numerically and objectively based upon heavily-weighted writing assignments, quizzes, daily grammar assignments, open-note tests, and mid-semester and end-of-term exam grades (to be calculated per county policy). Students’ grades are determined by averaging many graded assignments of varying point “weights.” Formal writings are more heavily weighted more than other daily in-class work. Likewise, students should always be monitoring Edline.net for grade reports and missed assignments. Late-work policy: Formal writings submitted late receive five-point deductions (on the 100-point scale) per school day.

 

Attendance: One of my mottos is this: It seems that half the battle in life is just a matter of showing up on time; the rest usually works itself out.

Issues regarding attendance may be remedied by referring to the student planner. 

 

Homework: Out of class, students should expect to finalize writing drafts and to study for quizzes.

 

Make-up work: Make-up work is the dread of teachers and students alike. Notably however, it is a student’s responsibility to retrieve all work upon the day the student returns to school (as dictated within the student handbook/planner). Assignments and handouts usually appear on Edline.net the day they are assigned. Virtually ALL of the students who failed English 10 courses taught by me did so because those students had excessive absences and chose to not complete their make-up work. I normally eat a brown-bag lunch within my classroom so I can assist students with their work. This year I have 3rd Block planning, so there exists no excuses for not meeting with me about make up assignments during your A-Day lunch period.

 

Materials: Everyday, students need a freshly-charged computer netbook and a stiff cardboard covered, cloth-tape bound notebook—like the ones with black and white patterned covers, non-tear-out pages, sometimes called “composition” notebooks, and costing around a dollar. Students also need writing implements and loose-leaf or spiral-bound notebook paper for turning in quizzes, exams, and other assignments. Coming to class unprepared shows a lack of character and is actually a violation of student conduct. Textbooks will remain within my classroom, and novels will be individually assigned. Current textbooks used are Glencoe's Literature: The Reader's Choice, Course 5, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston's Elements of Language: Fourth Course, and several older classroom sets of textbooks I can't bear to discard.