Program of Studies MS Alternative Program

ENGLISH

English Language Arts 6-8
(Language, Reading and Literature, Composition, and Media strands)
The course curriculum for this class is in accordance with the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks and includes the language, reading and literature, composition, and media strands. Within these strands, students will identify the eight basic parts of speech: noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, adjective, conjunction, preposition, and interjection; determine pronunciations, meaning, alternate word choices, and parts of speech, using dictionaries or thesauruses; expand the student’s language skills in the English language by identifying simple, compound, and complex sentences; develop logical thinking and language through interactive learning; develop oral language and literacy through challenging oral report expectations. Students will also be given the opportunity to draw on literature from many genres, time periods, and cultures featuring works that reflect our common literary heritage. Writing will be emphasized as an essential way to develop, clarify, and communicate ideas in persuasive, expository, narrative, and expressive discourse. Students will understand and acquire new vocabulary and use it correctly, while analyzing standard English grammar and usage, and recognize how its vocabulary has developed and been influenced by other languages. Students will write with a clear focus, coherent organization, and sufficient detail. Students will use Standard English conventions to revise their work demonstrating improvement in organization, content, and paragraph development, level of detail, style, tone, and word choice. Students will work towards writing research reports focusing on the steps necessary to complete a research paper. These steps include, but are not limited to, choosing a subject, identifying the purpose, gathering information from a variety of sources, taking notes, and completing bibliographies. Students will also present their research with appropriate rhetorical, logical, and stylistic criteria for assessing final versions of their research projects. Furthermore, students will be given a variety of strategies in Reading class in order to understand text by identifying basic facts, main ideas, and use them for the basis for interpretation. Students will also make connections within their reading as they will be required to identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of different genres theme, structure and elements of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding. Finally, through the analysis of media and media production, the students will learn to identify techniques used in educational reference software and websites, evaluate techniques used in media that appeal to visual/auditory senses, create media production using a variety of techniques; and create, evaluate, and compare a written report and a media production of the same topic. The goals of this course are to enhance and supplement the student’s present abilities in the previously indicated areas. Evaluation for this course is based on weekly vocabulary quizzes, essays, reading journals, projects, oral presentations, and class participation.