English
English 9 is a skills-based course designed to aid students to develop, improve, and refine their reading, writing, listening, speaking, and information-gathering skills. Reading skills will include summarizing, paraphrasing, and making inferences/drawing conclusions. Students will read and respond to a multicultural sampling of literature, including short stories, novels, poetry, plays, essays, and biographies. Students will write narratives and exposition with instruction addressing topic development, organization, sentence structure, word choice, and mechanics. Research skills include formulating investigative questions, locating information and evaluating information for its relevancy.
English 11 focuses on American literature and argumentative/persuasive writing. Students will read a wide sampling of literary selections in order to understand the varied interrelationships of literature, society, and the individual. Writing instruction will focus on persuasion and argumentation with emphasis on logical thought, connotation/denotation, inductive/deductive reasoning, and critical analysis. Students will continue to refine skills in sentence structure, research, reading, listening, and speaking.
English 12 focuses on technical communications and literature. In the technical communications component, students will learn and practice the forms and strategies needed to communicate technical knowledge with competence. Constructing forms, letters, memos, and reports, students will perform relevant work tasks both written and oral. Students will address language, vocabulary, usage, proper format, and visuals as they arise from assignments or related reading activities. The major activity is a formal research project. The other component of the course focuses on literature. Students will read and evaluate literary selections and films in terms of human motives, conflicts, and values, and also as a reflection of the era and locale in which they were written or produced.
Honors English 12 is a rigorous course for seniors that focuses on technical and academic writing, world literature and its meaning to twenty-first century readers and thinkers, and independent research as a tool for learning. Learning is shared via oral presentations. The course requires a work ethic that includes summer assignments prior to the onset of the course and extensive reading and writing that is done both in class as part of a learning community and outside of class as an independent learner.
PALS Literacy is a 45-minute, daily course designed in preparation for our English 9 curriculum here at Hodgson. Throughout the course, students will learn and practice various skills and concepts in alignment with the curriculum they will encounter in English 9 during the second semester. The PALS course will also provide students with preparation and remediation for the DCAS test, which will be administrered several times throughout the school year.
