**ELA Information

WCSD Magnet Middle School Approach to Language Arts

Challenge ~ Choice ~ Interest ~ Enjoyment ~ Personal Meaning

In the WCSD Magnet middle schools, we encourage our students to develop a sophisticated foundation of college-ready reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills. Our student-centered, integrated curriculum requires students to apply analytical and evaluative skills to the English language, helping them develop an ability to read, write, listen, and speak as critical thinkers do in authentic contexts.

Inspired by challenging, thematic readings from a variety of appropriate texts, students will demonstrate new discoveries about language through reading and writing tasks. By year’s end, each student will have created a collection of personal writings that demonstrates both the skills and the genres required by Common Core State Standards.

In addition to challenging reading and writing tasks, students will develop advanced listening and speaking skills. All magnet students will actively participate in reading response discussions that require critical communication and collaboration among class members.

Courses are designed to help students explore language with critical thinking skills, and teachers will appropriately accelerate and differentiate the curriculum according to each student’s level of ability and motivation.

Critics of Language: Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking for GT Students

Grades:  6-8

Prerequisite:  Acceptance to Middle School Magnet Program

Credit:  0.5 credit per semester MS Language Arts

 This increasingly sophisticated course track is designed to continually develop the language skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) necessary to the integrated approach to learning used in our magnet middle school. One emphasis will be on analyzing and evaluating written and spoken language, and students will apply these skills to real-world contexts as often as possible. Additional emphasis will be placed on ethical and moral themes found in literature, history, and current events so that students can select topics of personal interest to explore in their writing.

 Course Topics:

•  Reading for Information and Pleasure: Through texts, both assigned and self-selected, students will develop critical-thinking skills required to analyze and evaluate texts. These critical reading skills will be further practiced in their history, science, and mathematical classes’ reading requirements in order to compliment the magnet school’s integrated curriculum.

• Writing Process: Using a “community of writers” approach, students will tackle both assigned and self-selected writing topics based on the moral and ethical thinking they are developing from language study, literature, and research. At year’s end, each student will have created a collection of writings that have gone through all steps of the writing process.

• Language Skills: Through authentic speaking, reading, and writing tasks, students will explore the importance of basing their language choices on the standard conventions of English. Students will learn grammar and punctuation skills based on a differentiated approach to learning. Students will enter high school with the ability to apply highly sophisticated language rules to both speaking and writing tasks. 

ELA Resources for Families:

Take on the GoodReads Summer Reading Challenge  Click here for the Summer Reading Challenge