English Curriculum

Mission

The mission of the English as an additional language (EAL) program at Dino High School is to provide all students with the ability to achieve the cultural, academic and linguistic competencies needed for full participation in school and community life and to prepare them for success in higher educational settings.

Rationale

The reason for developing this curriculum is to help provide students with a stronger understanding of English as a means of communicating ideas and culture. English has become a global language and it is therefore necessary for students to be able to use the language to express their own ideas and culture but also understand ideas and culture from around the world. This program is designed to prepare students to enter and fully participate in the the global community. In an effort to do this, the curriculum endeavors to develop proficiency in all English language skills, allowing the students to fully participate in society and all that entails.

In order to achieve these goals, the curriculum places a great deal of emphasis on the needs of the individual learners while promoting the role of experience. The focus will be on growing through experience by developing self awareness, self-reflection, critical thinking skills, learning strategies and other qualities important to development.

Overview of the Program:

The program is intended to provide the students with a language rich environment that will allow them to develop the self-confidence and autonomy to become proficient English language speakers. Each level of the course will focus on developing the students' abilities in critical thinking skills through scaffolding. Teachers will focus on providing an inductive learning environment where discovery is the key to learning.

The organization of the program will be based on thematic units (e.g., big ideas and essential questions). Big ideas promote understanding of core concepts and principles in the area of study and the essential questions are intended to promote critical thinking and independent learning. The themes will be chosen to promote interest and intrinsic motivation based on appropriateness for the age level. Each theme will consist of general objectives, benchmarks of achievements, resources, possible activities, projects and assessments.

There will be four units per semester (every 4 weeks or so) and eight in total during the year. The units will consist of a variety of activities with an opening and a closing activity to ensure a sense of structure and continuity within the unit. The activities will be designed to help students understand the big idea of the unit and tie the essential questions together. Each activity will be designed to help build on schema and promote/develop necessary critical thinking skills. Throughout the unit the teachers will be using a variety of assessment strategies to ensure development and understanding of the big ideas and essential questions of the unit. Students assessment will be determined based on how successfully they have achieved the benchmarks for each unit as well as their commitment to personal development. Student achievement will also be used to judge the effectiveness of the curriculum and to help in further development.

Early Stages: (Prima-Sekunda):

In the first two years of High School, the program will be focused on the development language skills and the improvement of vocabulary and grammar. This will all be done through authentic material and tasks. The idea will be to promote confidence in the students abilities to use the language and helping to lower the affective filter and fear of embarrassment in the language learning environment. We will be focusing on a genre approach to teaching and having students understand the structure of specific types of reading, writing and speaking genres. Students should be able to understand the structure of a lot of different genres and be able to effectively use this for more developed reading and writing at later stages in their education.

All students will be learning the same material and tasks but they will be differentiated based on being appropriate for the levels. It is therefore essential that the teachers are well informed about the students abilities in English.

Reading:

In Prima and Sekunda the students will be focused on developing reading strategies (decoding, context clues, building schema, etc.) to help them tackle the difficult task of reading in a foreign language. The students will also focus on reading in different genres and developing different skills (reading for gist/specific information). The students will learn how to transfer these skills to many different genres (encyclopedic entries, news articles, short stories, etc.). In these grades the students will also slowly be introduced to literature and will understand the basic elements of literature and literary devices.

Writing:

In writing the class will be focused on developing the writing process and understanding genres. Students will learn how to effectively use processes (outlining, brainstorming, revising, etc.) to effectively write in a variety of genres . The students will also develop understanding of how different genres of writing require different structures (i.e., the difference between writing an opinion essay and problem/solution essay) depending on the audience. The class will also help students develop writing skills to help with structure (paragraphing, sentence structure) and create more effective writing. All final writing products should be completed with minimal spelling and grammatical errors and therefore drafting and revising will be an important skill for students to learn and develop.

Speaking/Listening

In these early years the focus of speaking will be on fluency and expression. During this section of the course the students will become more comfortable and confident in using their level of English. The students will also be encouraged to develop strategies for speaking (i.e., explaining when you can't find the meaning). A large focus should be on group/pair work and having the students feel comfortable using English as a medium for communication. Students will also use a variety of role play and drama strategies to help them as English speakers and focus their phonological development. As students develop their abilities they will be required to do presentations and extended speaking practice.

Throughout these years, listening will be an integral skill to be developed. Students will listen to a variety of native English speakers (especially from the teacher) as well as others, such as classmates, audiobooks and graded listening activities that teachers will find useful to help students develop important listening skills.

Later Stages (Tercie/Kvarta):

At this stage in the student’s development, the classes will begin to be more heavily focused on finding deeper meaning from big ideas. Tercie will still have a strong focus on language development, but will also move towards the students' independent development in language learning. In Tercie and Kvarta the students will be pushed towards developing independent learning and critical thinking skills. These classes will reinforce the genre approach that was introduced in the first two years and will help students develop their learning strategies across all four skills areas.

Reading:

These classes will focus on reading literature from a variety of sources (i.e., poetry, plays, novels, short stories) and analyzing it in depth. The students will also look at a lot of other types of texts and analyze them critically ( i.e., reliability, author’s intent, etc.) We will reinforce the literacy strategies that students developed in the first two years and help students understand deeper meaning from a variety of different texts.

Writing:

The writing process will continuously be reinforced and developed in these years to promote stronger understanding of organization and revision. The students will also continue to strengthen their abilities to write in a variety of genres and begin developing a focus for writing for academic purposes. At this point we will also strengthen the students understanding of writing for different purposes (i.e., entertain, persuade, inform, describe). The students will also be encouraged to feel comfortable and confident in self-assessment and peer review.

Speaking/Listening:

Students will strengthen their speaking skills and confidence at this stage. We will have a focus on both fluency and accuracy during speaking activities. The types of speaking students will do will vary greatly (group/class conversations, presentations, debates, etc.) and the students should feel comfortable and confident using English as a major form of communication when presenting information.

Listening will again often be combined with all the speaking activities but at this stage students will be introduced to more authentic listening tasks (i.e., speeches, movies, news). Therefore, it will be important for students to work on developing strong listening strategies (i.e., listening for gist, specific information, author's opinion).