English Language Arts 30-1

Unit 1: Exploring Ideas & Perspectives

The thinking of a mature reader-writer: drawing on a repertoire of strategies to form interpretations, and explaining how your own experiments with craft make you more effective.

• 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

Diploma-level analysis: explaining implicit purpose and whether it is achieved, analyzing form and assessing its effect on audience, and assessing how devices shape meaning.

• 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)

Independent inquiry: refining scope, judging sources for credibility and bias, and synthesizing new ideas by integrating evidence with prior knowledge.

• 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

Command over creation: choosing form for purpose, developing content you own, and assessing and refining the controlling idea to diploma standard — thoughtful, effective, 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