Parent Portal
Hello proud freshmen parents!
The purpose of this site is to allow you and your student a place to learn and explore in an interactive, fun and engaging way. I know as a parent myself that I often have questions about my child's progress that I would love an immediate answer to, but have no way to get them answered. This site is meant to do just that. On this Parent Portal you will find links to my Unit Review Guides as well as a snapshot of our weekly assignments so you can always know what your child's homework assignment is for each particular evening. Of course you can always email me at [email protected] if you have any questions that can not be answered here.
I hope you all find this useful, and thank you for your commitment to your child's education!
-Christopher Wyckoff
The name of this new course is Coming of Age in a Literate Community, and the focus of the course will be how young adults come to terms with the hardships and complexities of the world around them. The novels and most of the short stories that we will be reading throughout the year will focus on this theme from several cultural perspectives.
The first unit will focus on the basic sentence parts, the subject and the predicate as well as continuing our work on 3 paragraph LCEAFs in regards to literary terms and devices.
Course Overview:
- Introduction (4/5 weeks)
Introduce Semester by rolling out overall plan. (Storyline Arch for Coming of Age) We will revisit last year’s grammar focus and introduce the Phrase focus of this year. We will begin free writing about how we see ourselves and what our goals are. We will review and introduce Literary terms as well as provide a model for the storyline through the short stories we will be reading.
Essential Questions: How can literature help us understand other cultures and ultimately ourselves?
Literary Terms: Theme, conflict, purpose, tone
Reading Strategies: 4-square, active reading (visualize, predict, clarify, connect, question, evaluate)
Skills: Informational text, elements of plot, author’s main point, LCEAF, vocabulary
Grammar: subject, predicate, fragments
Assessment: Test that includes a cold reading to prove reading strategies and terms
Texts: Short stories include Pam Munoz-Ryan's – First Crossing, D.H. Lawrence's The Rocking Horse Winner as well as several poems.
- Conflict (4/5 weeks)
We will introduce the Personal Narrative and begin free writing about a hardship. We will also begin our first novel.
Essential Questions: What is your obstacle? How does conflict affect your life on a personal and societal level?
Literary Terms/Skills: Symbolism, metaphors, similes, personification, protagonist/antagonist, compare/contrast
Reading Strategies: inference; using textual evidence to form conclusions about character, plot, and theme
Informational Text: conflict, mob mentality
Grammar: prepositional phrases
Vocabulary Focus: context clues
Assessment: Test that includes cold reading to prove literary skills
Texts: The Absolutely True story of a Part-Time Indian
- Rising Action (4/5 weeks)
In this unit we will focus on skills closely related to the Personal Narrative. The unit will include freewrites about how you over came the hardship from unit (Note: Students will finish rough draft of Narrative over Thanksgiving, we will grade final draft over Christmas)
Essential Questions: How can learning about how others overcome their hardships in literature help us overcome our own personal hardships and help us increase our own self-confidence in the process?
Skills: Narrative writing skill focus, reinforce reading and vocab strategies, peer review
Grammar:
* Run-ons, comma splices, semi-colon usage
* Verb Tense (focus on the Perfect Tenses) Verb Tense agreement/consistency
* Punctuation: quotes, colon for long quotes, commas for quotes, indentations
Informational Texts: Confidence, peer pressure
Assessment: Personal Narrative (midterm), unit test
Texts: Sound of Waves
Feel free to ask your child questions about the Literary Terms, vocabulary or Grammar on this list as we will be covering them throughout the next 4 weeks. To get a better idea of our day to day schedule, please refer to the weekly schedule below.
Before Holiday Break Everyone Must Finish Their Fictional Narrative!!!!! This means 15 - 20 pages that are double spaced and in 12 pt font.
Students can use the LCEAF Guide located in the "Literature Circle" section of this site.
All grades can be improved through the drafting process - Rewrites are excepted to improve grade. We will focus on the basic sentence parts, the subject and the predicate as well as continuing our work on 3 paragraph LCEAFs in regards to literary terms and devices.
Final Exam Review is an attachment at the bottom of the page**
