I've asked this question before on other sites, but as I gear up for the start of school in September, I'd like to bring this to the fine people on hubski.
I teach English, grades 7 to 12. I have had the incredible opportunity to design a vertical program of studies to follow the same students over the course of six years. I finished my first 6-year cycle last year, and am now thinking about what I'm going to do with my current crop of grade 7 students to get them... someplace... by the time they're in grade 12.
So, some questions:
-what is the purpose of studying "English" / "Language Arts" / "Literature" in junior and senior high? -what are the most important skills that a grade 12 student in 2021 will need to possess? (Think vertical: something that can be implemented in grade 7 and refined until the end of grade 12) -should reading be divorced from writing? The focus of formal writing assignments in upper senior high are literary essays: one text, thesis statement, focused paragraphs that explicate the text in the thesis' direction, a conclusion that wraps up the argument and gives the "so what?" of the entire paper. Is it necessary in our world today to have such a complex and highbrow assignment, or should reading and writing be taught and assessed using discrete methods?
I'm the only English teacher at my school, and while I benefit from discussing the above with other English teachers, it's important to me that I reach out to others who are 1) smarter than me and 2) are not in my field, as their ideas and opinions often don't run parallel to my own. I'm not going to influence this discussion, but if anybody's interested, I'd be happy to share some stuff I've done in my classroom in a future thread. (To whet your appetite, as far as I know, I invented "hoopertext" literature...)