Mythology: The students will study the mythology of various cultures, applying what they learn to modern myth stories. Students will learn commonalities between myths and cultures. The cultures covered will be decided by the teacher and students. The students will be given a survey to determine their preferences.
Newspaper: The students will put out four issues of The Hawk Herald--one each quarter. The newspaper will feature editorials and articles that showcase the students and staff at Plainview School.
Creative Writing: It is an elective course that presents an overview of the basic aspects of creative writing techniques, emphasizing the use of the writing process. Producing individual weekly writing assignments to develop and enhance students’ writing skills is the major goal of the course. The most important aspect of the course is responsibility placed on students to improve their writing.
The course is designed to provide students the opportunity to write in a variety of genres, including poetry, short story, memoir, autobiography, letters, and scripts. Students will write for the purposes of description, narration, exposition, and persuasion.
The aim of the class is for students to produce multiple kinds of creative writing with the emphasis on revision and editing skills. This emphasis will prove beneficial in other classes, for the key to good writing is good revision and editing. This emphasis supports the school goal of improving writing across the curriculum.
Students will use computers and word processing software in class to write and save their work on their student home directories.
The text for this class is Creative Writing: From Thought to Action. The chapters covered are “Observing the Five Senses,” “Impressions,” “Dream and Fantasy,” “The Past,” “The Present,” “Autobiography,” “Poetry,” Drama,” and “The Short Story.”
The students will be responsible for putting out a literary publication—one each nine weeks. This publication will showcase the writing of Plainview students in grades k-12. In the final quarter the students will write and present a children's book at least one of the elementary grades.