English

The English department’s primary responsibility is to educate its students to communicate in society and prepare all students for college and career readiness.  To fulfill that responsibility, the department’s instruction and curriculum helps students to develop skills to communicate and present ideas clearly and persuasively.  Incorporating the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks for English Language Arts and Literacy, students will become college and career ready by learning to demonstrate independence, building strong content knowledge, responding to the varying demands of audience, task, purpose, and discipline, comprehending as well as critiquing, valuing evidence, using technology and digital media strategically and capably, and learning to understand other perspectives and cultures.  

The curriculum and instruction will help students to develop increased abilities to make connections and to recognize patterns in order to construct meaning.  In English classes, students will devise appropriately challenging projects, establish specific goals and work independently to complete and present their projects.

Students will be taught to detect bias, recognize patterns, weigh evidence, evaluate arguments, make connections, recognize and be able to think through cause and effect relationships to make sensible independent judgments and draw conclusions.  Learning experiences will enable students to become proficient in effective group skills including the ability to collaborate, negotiate, and behave in a respectful and tolerant manner.

Students will interpret the meaning of literary works, both fiction and non-fiction, films and media through appropriate analytical techniques.  Literature and authors reflect racial, ethnic and cultural diversity.  The works studied will present real dilemmas faced by human beings. Students are encouraged to extend their appreciation of literature into other course work as well as recreational reading.

Literature also constitutes the basis for writing either as a study model or thinking response. Writing is both a means of developing fluency and a tool for learning.  Students learn to write Standard English in a grammatically acceptable, coherent and well-organized manner for a variety of purposes and audiences.

Teacher, peer and self-evaluation assessment practices include, but are not limited to, quizzes, tests, exhibitions, portfolios and performance-based tasks that require both skill and content knowledge.  These assessments will be evaluated using common rubrics.  In all English courses, students will receive multiple opportunities to work towards proficiency in the following D-Y Learning Expectations: communicating appropriately and effectively through reading, writing, and oral presentation.