from 9th to 12th grade

English Department Meeting

November 3, 2025

Agenda for our vertical alignment discussion:

• individual conferencing (inspired by Mr. Written's work)

  • What it might look like to build upon individual conferencing throughout the years? 

  • How can we use individual conferencing to support AOI, support complexity and nuance, and help students achieve their full potential as writers and speakers?

• examining context & layered meanings in texts (inspired by Mr. Hernandez's work)

  • How do we teach students to "go below the surface" in their interpretation of a text?

  • How do we use historical, social, and biographical context to help students examine multiple layers of meaning in a text?

• finding language to express complex thoughts (inspired by Ms. Patrick's work) 

  • How do we support students in developing vocabulary and linguistic fluency that will help them express their thinking?

  • How do we help students practice navigating the tension between simplification ("only one correct answer") and multiplicity ("many perspectives and approaches")?

• open dialogue in writing & speaking and putting students in conversation with texts and one another (Ms. Ntoso's work)

  • How do we support students in developing questions for examining context, complexity and nuance in a text?

  • How do we help students "keep the dialogue going" -- keep reading, writing, speaking, and listening until they develop insights?

Dickie Written — Pre-AP English I (9th grade)

October 17, 2025

In Mr. Written's class, students started the second quarter working on writing 8-sentence literary analysis paragraphs -- "double chunk paragraphs" that include two pieces of evidence and commentary for each to support their claim.

Throughout the process of writing their paragraph, Mr. Written conferences multiple times with every single student in order to make sure their analyses were sound.

In response to a prompt, students begin by writing a topic sentence which Mr. Written reviews to make sure there are no content errors (accuracy in analysis & word choice) or no mechanical errors (spelling, grammar and punctuation). If there is an error, Mr. Written tells students if it's an error in content and/or mechanics, and students must review the text and their sentence to correct it. After correcting the error(s) students can move on to writing their next sentence. 

As students receive individualized feedback and work on correcting their errors, Ms. Written has found "their scores are increasing as they get further along in the paragraph."

It is amazing to witness Mr. Written moving from student to student, reading their work, and giving them on-the-spot feedback to help them produce a sound analysis. It is incredibly tedious to give feedback after every single sentence, but this individualized attention and consideration ensures that students understand challenging analytical concepts such as selecting appropriate evidence and writing commentary that adequately explains one's thinking and supports the claim. 

Mr. Written's individual conferencing addressed three challenging aspects of analysis writing: 

1. accuracy in the analysis (comprehension & critical thinking)

2. precision in explaining the connection between what the text says and their own interpretations/ideas (word choice, vocabulary, fully explaining your thinking and not leaving holes)

3. producing written expression that is comprehensible to readers (grammar, sentence structure, phrasing, etc.). 

His conversations with students were short but incredibly meaningful, pushing students to improve their analyses and writing. With large class sizes and a back-to-back teaching schedule, this individualized attention is unsustainable over time. How might classroom logistics (eg. grading, workflow) and eventually school logistics (eg. class sizes, daily course load, etc.) be adjusted to better support individual conferencing?

Natasha Patrick — Pre-AP English II (10th grade)

October 17, 2025

In the second quarter, Ms. Patrick is leading students in making the transition from identifying and naming rhetorical moves to describing rhetorical moves in a text. This is a more complex skill, as it requires more use of language to describe and explain observations about both content and craft in a text.

It is a challenging skill, and while some students struggle with comprehension or noticing rhetorical moves, others struggle with finding the words to explain their observations and their thinking. Helping students develop and master this skill means asking, Why is this student having difficulty describing and explaining this text? 

As Ms. Patrick points out, one issue is that writing is subjective and there are many ways of viewing and describing a text. Not only do different readers notice different elements in the text, but different readers will also use different words and phrasing to explain their observations and thinking. This is the beauty of language (and life), but it also makes it challenging for students who are used to a highly structured and fundamentalist examination of a text. The same critical thinking, creativity, questioning, and diversity that helps us understand complexity in a situation or text is often antithetical to the simplification that allows students to learn specific information and practice specific skills in isolation. Navigating the tension between simplification ("only one correct answer") and multiplicity ("many perspectives and approaches") requires advanced metacognitive skills and empirical knowledge that most students are still developing. 

Another issue with learning to describe content and craft in a text is that most students are still developing the vocabulary and linguistic flow that allows them to find the words to express their observations and thoughts. Putting our thoughts into words is a complex skill, and many of our thoughts fall into the "preverbal" category, meaning that we notice, think or feel something but cannot immediately find the words to express it. 

To help with these issues, Ms. Patrick uses several teaching strategies. One is the "think, write, speak" approach for responding to prompts and discussing a text. This allows students to reflect on the prompt, put it into words with low-pressure notes, and explain their thoughts to one another. Each step is critical; the thinking and writing gives them some time to examine and note their thoughts, while verbalizing their thoughts aloud to a classmate helps them develop linguistic fluency which helps with phrasing. Ms. Patrick often puts students in pairs or groups of three in order to maximize their time for speaking. 

If there are students who struggle to write their thoughts on paper, Ms. Patrick encourages the partner with notes to explain what they have written to the other student(s), and she finds that the dynamic of elaborating (speaker) and listening (struggler) can inspire words and ideas in the student who struggled to write their thoughts. 

For students who struggle with longer writing assignments, Ms. Patrick encourages them to talk through their thoughts with her one-on-one, and she helps them transition from speaking to writing.

Jacob Hernandez — AP English Language (11th grade) & English IV (12th grade)

October 23, 2025 -- 7th Period

[IN PROGRESS]

AP Language: argumentative essays

• reading one-sided essays and examining example student frq essays - first summative is essay analyzing an argumentative text

• second summative - write an argumentative speech

• third summative - multiple choice

English IV - poetry

• students have trouble grasping "go below the surface" analysis

• teaching strategy is like "I do, We do, You do" -- I show them my annotations and they copy it, then we practice an analysis together, then do your own analysis

• working on helping students understand the concepts of deeper meaning, many right answers, existing on multiple levels

• historical, social, biographical context

Abena Ntoso — AP Literature & English III

October 24, 2025

[IN PROGRESS]

Reading reflections, small group discussions & Socratic seminars, comparative literature/literary criticism, problem-solving

Developing questions to examine complexity and nuance -- going beyond the obvious questions -- the importance of curiosity and questions in understanding complexity and nuance, and the idea that questions don't always materialize instantaneously, sometimes they need to be developed

Teaching students to keep the dialogue going -- keep reading, writing, speaking, and listening until you develop insights 

Keep writing until you think of something new that you've never thought before -- some new realization, some new idea, some new question -- this is insight, which in turn leads to wisdom, humanity, and better decision-making

examining context, complexity & nuance

I also want to try doing more work with discussion boards and other text-based discussion

English Department Meeting

September 29, 2025

As we shared what we are working on with students during this quarter, our conversation converged on the questions: 

• What does an effective analytical essay look like at each grade level? 

• How can we build upon what students learn in the previous grades to guide them toward more complex and nuanced thinking and writing?

9th grade: Mr. Written uses sentence stems to introduce a five-sentence standard for what each body paragraph must contain in order to be considered analytical.

• Topic Sentence (claim, your answer to the question)

• Sentence #2: Concrete detail (evidence) - "For example ____"

• Commentary #1: should deal directly with the piece - "This shows that ______"

• Commentary #2: how do you connect it to human experience, our life on this planet? - "This is important because _____"

• Concluding sentence: "As a result _______"

If students master these analytical components by the end of the year, he would like to also teach them more complex skills such as weaving their evidence and commentary.

10th grade: Ms. Patrick teaches students how to create a descriptive outline and transfer their notes from the "says" and "does" columns of the descriptive outline to a "gathering ideas chart" that helps them break their evidence & commentary into three components: 

1. evidence (paraphrase)

2. commentary #1 / reasoning

   • connect the claim and evidence

   • name the rhetorical move

3. commentary #2 / reasoning

   • discuss stylistic/persuasive elements

   • strengthen the argument

She also has them write a topic sentence (claim) and a concluding statement for each paragraph.

At the essay level, she guides them in writing a thesis statement.

11th grade: Mr. Hernandez guides students in evaluating example essays using the AP English Language rubric to help students understand what it looks like to create logical transitions between their sentences and connect their paragraph level commentary to their thesis statement in order to create a line of reasoning that creates cohesion in the essay as a whole.

• Within each paragraph: How does the reasoning flow from commentary #1 to commentary #2 and to concluding statement? 

  • commentary #1: How does this rhetorical strategy show the importance of the thesis?

  • commentary #2: Why did the author use this strategy to make their point?

  • concluding statement: Connect the strategy to the main purpose of the excerpt

• Between paragraphs: How does the flow between paragraphs create a cohesive "argument" that supports the thesis statement?

12th grade: Ms. Ntoso introduces the ideas of structure, style, voice and authenticity in their writing, guiding students in weaving their evidence and commentary to express their ideas in a less formulaic way while still ensuring their analysis is thorough and cogent.

Analytical paragraphs should have two basic elements (claim and explanation) which can be further broken down:

• claim: doesn't have to be the first sentence of the paragraph

• explanation: commentary with evidence embedded

  • context (including textual, geographical, historical, social, cultural, literary, etc.)

  • connection to the claim

  • connection to the overall thesis

Dickie Written — Pre-AP English I (9th grade)

September 25, 2025

In Mr. Written's class, students practice fundamental skills for strong analytical writing. His approach is both holistic and collaborative work -- students sit in pairs or small groups and have opportunities to discuss their work with their peers.

During the first quarter he provides a template and sentence stems for writing a five-sentence analytical paragraph. The rigid structure enables students to see how an analytical explanation builds a case to support an evidence-based claim.

This year they are reading an allegorical story about the dangers of materialism, and they are learning how to analyze and explain symbolism in the story. 

Students draw a card from a set of ten analytical writing prompts connected to the story, and they use the template to write an analytical paragraph responding to the prompt. Each prompt is a deep, multipart question that requires an analytical explanation in order to fully answer it.

Mr. Written encourages students to talk through their ideas together. 

During the unit, they are also using Quill.com to learning grammar and sentence structure -- how to combine sentences with conjunctions to make compound and complex sentences, what punctuation to use, where to put the comma (inside or outside), and parallel structure. 

After writing their analytical paragraphs individually, students peer edit their essays, giving critical feedback.  

Students practice with sentence stems and precision until the analytical approach becomes habit, and it also allows students to think more about what to put, not how to put it. By midterm, Mr. Written expects to be teaching students to write "double chunk" paragraphs, and by the end of the year he hopes to teach students how to weave evidence and commentary together.

Natasha Patrick — Pre-AP English II (10th grade)

September 25, 2025

In Ms. Patrick's class, students are learning to write five-paragraph rhetorical analysis essays using descriptive outlines to help them understand the concept of rhetorical analysis.

She teaches a structured approach to writing a rhetorical analysis because students first need to understand what they are doing (the concept of rhetorical analysis) before they can begin to focus on voice.

Students start out with reading and annotating a text, then they create a descriptive outline to breakdown the reading into explanations of what the writer "says" (paraphrasing) and "does" (deeper meaning & rhetorical move). In preparation for writing their rhetorical analysis essay, students transfer their "says" and "does" notes to a "gathering ideas chart" with three columns that help them organize their thinking into evidence (paraphrase) and reasoning (with the rhetorical move).

Each paragraph must contain:

• Topic sentence

• Concrete detail: evidence to prove the topic sentence

• Two pieces of commentary 

  • explanation of evidence 

  • explanation of how the rhetorical move influences meaning in the text

• Concluding statement: effect of the rhetorical move on the reader

Ms. Patrick also makes it a point to use different terms to refer to the same thing so students can learn to recognize and understand the concept even when it is referred to using different labels.

This week students will begin writing their thesis statements and introduction paragraphs for their essays.

Jacob Hernandez — AP Language (11th grade) & English IV (12th grade)

September 22, 2025

In AP English Language and English IV, Mr. Hernandez is taking students beyond analysis by guiding them in creating their own literary and rhetorical works.

In addition to reading and analyzing Dante's Inferno, English IV students will write their own cantos reflecting modern day obsessions and transgressions. AP Language students will not only learn to write rhetorical analysis, synthesis, and argumentative essays, but they will also practice writing and delivering speeches that incorporate rhetorical strategies, synthesis, and argumentation.  This creative approach allows students to study content and craft as both readers and writers, and it also creates opportunities for agency, ownership and identity since they get to choose the topic they will write about for each assignment. 

By creating the kinds of texts they would normally encounter on an AP exam, students develop a more nuanced understanding of rhetorical strategies, thinking not just from an analytical standpoint, but also from a craft standpoint. The speech assignment requires them to think about how and why they are using particular rhetorical strategies in their writing, and they are learning to construct an effective rhetorical work, rather than only learning how to deconstruct a finished product. 

Mr. Hernandez's rubric has three categories on which speeches are rated:

• Content and Purpose

• Rhetorical Appeals & Devices

• Presentation & Delivery

While each student delivers their speech in class, classmates take notes on a listening guide that prompts them to identify and name rhetorical strategies they notice in their classmate's speech. After the first class session, Mr. Hernandez noticed that many listeners hadn't finished filling out their listening guide, but because there are so many speeches to get through, it's not practical to spend a significant amount of time completing the guide in its entirety at the time of the speeches. In order to ensure that all of the speeches are delivered over the course of the week while still providing students with an opportunity to practice noticing and explaining rhetorical strategies in the speeches, Mr. Hernandez asks students to just jot down notes on their listening guides, and he will later compile all of their speeches into a single PDF which students can access in order to complete their listening guides.

As each speaker volunteered to present their speech, students gave a warm welcome, clapping and cheering for one another, and showing genuine interest and support for their classmates' work. It was exciting to witness students' courage and brilliance on display as they give their speeches. Their speeches were well-written, and most were excited to share their knowledge and passion in front of the entire class.

Mr. Hernandez came up with a new system for helping students develop their skills in preparation for the AP Language exam. Each quarter will focus on one of the three essay types that students are required to produce—rhetorical analysis, argumentative, and synthesis—and the unit will cycle through three summative assessments related to that essay type:

1. First students learn to deconstruct the essay, evaluating and discussing six student examples to learn what should go in the essay. For the summative, students write an analytical essay in response to an AP-style passage and prompt. 

2. For the second summative assignment, students write a speech based on the type of essay they are studying in that unit (rhetorical, argumentative or synthesis).

3. For the last summative, students complete AP-style multiple choice questions, several of which connect to the essay-type they have been studying in the unit.

Having students cycle through this sequence each quarter provides multiple opportunities for students to practice writing and delivering speeches. For students who struggled with the "presentation and delivery" aspect of their speeches, it will be interesting to see if their performance improves throughout the school year as they gain more experience and confidence with delivering speeches.

In writing and delivering speeches on topics of their choosing, students are also developing their unique voice and learning how to effectively advocate for themselves and others.

Abena Ntoso — AP Literature (12th grade) & English III (11th grade)

September 15, 2025

I love poetry, and every day I try to read and annotate at least one poem. When I think about the habits of mind I want my students to develop (conveniently catalogued by Art Costa and Bena Kallick), working one's way through a complex poem involves several of them—persisting, understanding and empathy, thinking flexibly, striving for accuracy, questioning, applying past knowledge to new situations, thinking and communicating with clarity and precision, imagining, and responding with wonderment and awe. As MIT literature professor Joshua Bennet observes in "Why So Many MIT Students Are Writing Poetry," studying poetry also involves patience, "not only with the difficulties of language but with ourselves as its vessels or makers, working to bring a new vision into the world."

Recently, I spent a week carefully annotating Pablo Neruda's "Aquella Luz" (That Light); it's challenging and complex, and I wanted to understand it in depth. 

During the same week, I also had a student choose to study an excerpt from Night by Ennio Moltedo (translated by Marguerite Feitlowitz), which is a rather challenging work. The student sat next to me for a few days for help with writing about the poem, and our ongoing conversation included inquiry into word choice and interpretation, motifs, juxtaposition, and surrealism, just to name a few topics.

I had another student present to the class his process for annotating a poem, and I documented his poetry annotation tips on the whiteboard while he demonstrated on the document camera. It was not far off from the poetry annotation guidelines I teach, but his emphasis on questions inspired a lot of students to write questions in their annotations, and it also prompted me to write questions more often as I annotated the Neruda poem. 

After reviewing students' annotations and my own annotations on Neruda's poem, I revised my poetry annotation guidelines and rubric to add questions as part of the annotation requirements.

Grappling with the Neruda poem got me thinking—perhaps we can have a short unit—two to three weeks—in which students choose one complex poem to grapple with, trying to understand it deeply and respond to it. This would definitely allow us to deepen our exploration to include more complex and nuanced ideas. 

I am revising the way I teach poetry; here is the overall lesson sequence I have come up with so far for a 2-3 week poetry unit:

1. Introduce one or more companion texts of any genre—these pieces frame the context for studying the poem. Together we read and discuss the companion text(s) and students take notes that must include quotes from the text(s) and cite the title and author.

2. Establish expectations for annotation, and/or teach a craft lesson that introduces a particular concept or technique.

3. Students annotate—this requires multiple readings of the poem. I also suggest using a highlighter and different color pens/pencils, if available.  Annotations should include synonyms/short definitions for unknown words, identifying and labeling literary techniques and craft noticings, questions, short paraphrases, and a preliminary theme statement.

4. Students gather in small groups to compile a list of their craft noticings and discuss content, meaning, ideas and craft.

5. Students write an interpretation or descriptive outline of the poem—the type of analytical writing students are expected to do on the AP English Literature exam.

6. Students write a reading reflection that includes connections to a companion text and ideas for their own creative writing. It could also be a blog post inspired by their experience with a poem. Here is my example and here is the rubric.

7. Students write their own original piece inspired by content, craft or connections to the poem.

The experience of grappling with a poem helps us develop a poetic state of mind, which includes the skills of paying close attention, asking questions, discerning, and not giving up. It also changes the nature of our conversations and inquiry; our conversations—with ourselves, with others, and with texts—become more nuanced and more meaningful.

My next avenue of inquiry: How might grappling with a complex poem inspire creativity, precision, and nuance in our own writing?