This is an SDC English 10 class that I taught for one year. By SDC this refers to a "Special Day Class" or a self-contained class. The pace is a little slower, and the content does not delve as deep as the regular education English class, but it goes through the standards pretty well.
The SDC classes in California are designed to work with students who are not at the level to be in a regular education class, with support (a.k.a. Resource Students), but students who are not low enough to work on basic skills. These Special Day Class (SDC) students are in the middle of this spectrum; they can master many of the academic standards, but need more time and more support. Where I have taught, the focus is on teaching the content that all the other students are learning, but to do it on a slower pace, and reduced standards; focusing more on key standards. Although I have a Special Education credential and only had to pass the CSET (California Subject Examinations for Teachers) Mulitple Subjects test. In order to be "highly qualified" to teach English or Social Sciences according to No Child Left Behind (NCLB), I had to take the CSET for English and Social Sciences. I passed the English and Social Sciences tests, (but not the science). Therefore I feel that my level of knowledge of the curriculum in those areas is adequate, and improving.
This class was a similar to my 9th grade class in that the LAUSD focus was to have the class learn 3 main units: Persuasion, Exposition and Literary Analysis. In looking at my files right now they are not organized like that (not like my 9th grade files) but I am going to try to get them as organized as possible. I think that maybe the lack of organization could be that I taught this class a year before the English 9 SDC class, so my organization skills and planning for the future skills were one year behind.
Main Focus:
The course was broken up by LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified) into three main units: Exposition, Persuasion and Literary Analysis. Since this was an SDC class the content focuses more on key standards, and also we did things a little different due to “special content” (see section further below).
Special Content:
Because this was a special day class (SDC), a self-contained class where students were several grade levels behind their grade-level peers, we tried to focus on certain non-standards-based areas. Some of these areas were “transition” (ITP related), Reading Fluency and Most Frequent Words. You can find the folders below that focus on things that we did that were not part of the 10th grade English curriculum.
CAHSEE Prep:
CAHSEE stand for California High School Exit Exam. This was a new test at this time that all students had to pass in order to graduate from a Cali high school. It was controversial in some circles due to the fact that students with special needs such as learning disabilities or students who were learning English (ELLs) were at a disadvantage. My personal belief is that we should have these standards and if you can’t reach that level, you can earn the other high school degree in California called the “Certificate of Completion”. That being said, I developed a CAHSEE Prep unit, and I took a few weeks out of the 10th grade English class leading to the test in order to help the students focus on key features.
Reading Fluency:
This was one of the years I was a master teacher, and during the weekly meetings that I had with the gentleman (Mr. Cordova) who was the aspiring teacher we came to the conclusion that one thing that would help our struggling learners would be to work on “Reading Fluency”.
Mr. Cordova developed the whole idea (unit) with my help, and he led the activities. I felt that it is the beginning of a beneficial program and I could see myself picking up with this in the future in a similar situation.
From looking back at it, it seems that there are reading passages that were related to this and they are not here. The bulk of the files are things that we used in addition to the passages. Go with God...
Most Frequent Words:
Check it out!
MISC:
I have a lot of stuff in this folder. Some of it could be construed to fit into the “Special Content” folder, while others… I don’t know. There are two essay (an autobiography and one about music), and peer editing forms and so many more goodies. And a bunch of other stuff.......you will have to SCROLL through the list before to see all:
Other Teachers Work:
I have some folders that have some general education folders and files shared by other teachers that were very helpful and friendly. There are an abundance of lesson plans, rubrics, graphic organizers and other goodies that relate to the three main units that we covered (Lit Analysis, Expo, and persuasion!).