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Reading Comprehension Grades 5-6 This class was designed around the concerns parents expressed to me in August 2003 about the CAT6 results in Reading Comprehension. We use professional material from Houghton Mifflin Publishing Co, which only sells to schools. The Reading Comprehension classes will focus on test taking strategies. Each student will take a Pre Test and conclude the course with a Post Test. Included in the class are the following: identifying the main idea, scanning for details, decoding vocabulary, interpreting graphics, reading actively, and understanding fiction and nonfiction selections, taking notes, making rough outlines, and using graphing organizers and charts. Students will purchase several of the workbooks and Mill Creek Academy, LLC will supply the others. Reading Comprehension Grades 7-9 Reading comprehension is an essential tool in all academic subject areas. In this class, students will improve their reading comprehension proficiency by learning reading strategies for both informational and literary texts. Students will learn how to make inferences, how to recognize context clues, how to compare information between sources, how to connect main ideas and how to answer essential questions. There will be a pre and post reading test. Literary Analysis Grades 6-8 Middle school students study poetry, short stories, and novels. They are often asked to write analyses of such literary genre in their English classes. The Cat 6/Star test also requires that students respond to the deeper meaning of literary work on a multiple- choice exam. Student in this exciting new class will read and analyze poetry and short stories. This class is also an oral participation course, as confidence in sharing literary observations is a prized value in the classroom. This class is not an essay writing class although one or two written analyses will be assigned or done in class. Team taught by two teachers, this class has a maximum number of 12 students. Literary Analysis Grades 9-12 This class will help students "go deeper" into the literature they are exposed to in high school by giving them usable tools and methods to do so. We will show them how to go beyond the surface of literature by teaching them to ask the right questions before they search for the "right answer". Through a method of questioning, we will teach the students how to come up with their own workable thesis statements and support those statements. Students will learn how to be prepared to use such theses and support them with the essay skills they have already acquired. This will be a great continuation of our MCA 9th and 10th grade composition courses in that many of those students understand the structure of an essay but lack the analysis and critical thinking to produce impressive content in their essays. Students will analyze poetry and short stories during the 12-hour course. During the many parent conferences that the instructors have had throughout the years, they have both observed that the majority of the "B+" students are the ones who lack deeper insight about the literature. This class will assist students in developing that insight. There will be one official paper per session and numerous annotations on assigned literature. Class is limited to 12 students, as there are two teachers. As an aside, the instructors have been known to have great fun and humor while having serious literary conversation. |
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