COURSE DESCRIPTION: English 9 Advanced expands students’ reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills in alignment with Common Core State Standards. In addition, this course will provide extensive development of the writing process aligned with the Modern Language Association (MLA) format, critical literary response and analysis skills and cross-curricular study. Students will learn and perfect WICOR (Writing, Inquiry, Collaboration, Organization, and Reading) strategies, including Socratic Seminars, Philosophical Chairs, close reading, and other strategies that promote rigor in order to support the College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards. Advanced students will work at an accelerated pace, with complex text. They will demonstrate depth of knowledge at levels 3 and 4.

 

COURSE RATIONALE: To be ready for college, workforce training, and life in a technological society, students need the ability to gather, comprehend, evaluate, synthesize and report on information and ideas, to conduct original research in order to answer questions and solve problems, and to analyze and create a high volume and extensive range of print and non-print texts in media forms old and new. Most of the required reading in college and workforce training programs is informational in structure and challenging in content. The focus of this course is to prepare and engage students to be college and career ready through the following: 1) reading independently and closely; 2) participating in rich, structured conversations; 3) gathering information, asserting and defending claims both orally and in writing; and, 4) building a rich vocabulary and demonstrating proper use of language both orally and in writing. Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year’s grade-specific standards, retain or further develop skills and understandings mastered in preceding grades, and work steadily toward meeting the expectations of a rigorous curriculum.