English Language Arts 20-1

Unit 1: Exploring Ideas & Perspectives

Deepening the thinking behind reading and writing: forming interpretations you actively test, shaping effects with intention, and choosing strategies to widen your perspective.

• Forming tentative understandings
• Experimenting with language, image and structure

• Considering new perspectives
• Expressing preferences and expanding interests
• Setting personal goals for language growth

Unit 2: Comprehending Literature & Other Texts

Analytical reading: describing a creator's purpose and audience, explaining how devices create clarity and emphasis, and evaluating texts against criteria you can defend.

• Discerning and analyzing context
• Understanding and interpreting content
• Engaging prior knowledge
• Using reference strategies

• Relating form to purpose and content
• Devices, techniques and their effects

• Connecting self, text, culture and milieu
• Evaluating texts with criteria
• Appreciating effectiveness and artistry

Unit 3: Managing Ideas & Information (Inquiry & Research)

Sharper inquiry: selecting and monitoring strategies to scope research, judging sources for bias and quality, and distinguishing supported from unsupported conclusions.

• Focusing purpose and form
• Planning and identifying sources

• Selecting, recording and organizing information
• Evaluating sources and detecting bias
• Forming generalizations and conclusions
• Reviewing the inquiry process and findings

Unit 4: Creating Oral, Print & Multimedia Texts

Purposeful creation: matching form to purpose, developing content you own, and assessing and refining the controlling idea so the work is thoughtful, effective and correct.

• Assessing the text-creation context
• Choosing form, structure and medium
• Developing content
• Producing and presenting the text

• Enhancing thought, support and detail
• Enhancing organization
• Addressing matters of stylistic choice
• Editing for correctness