Today, I listened to the Oklahoma Education Standards for Legislators. I heard many comments I disagreed with like historical documents should be included in the standards even though it was in the common core standards, exemplars should be included which were not used for PASS, and that the level of rigor is not across the grade bands. These plans are not common core compliant; these plans are college and career ready and focus on the interests of the students. Here is my curriculum for some of the standards, built into units, with rigor across grade bands.
9th-12th Grade Career Pathways Research Papers
Speaking & Listening Standards:
Students will engage in collaborative discussions about appropriate topics and texts, expressing their own ideas by contributing to, building on, and questioning the ideas in pairs, diverse groups, and whole class settings.
Students will give formal and informal presentations in a group or individually, providing textual and visual evidence to support a main idea.
Reading and Writing Process Standards:
Students will summarize, paraphrase, and synthesize ideas, while maintaining meaning and logical sequence of events, within and between texts.
Students will plan and rewrite a first drafts as necessary.
Students will develop drafts by choosing an organizational structure and building on ideas in multi-paragraph essays.
Students will edit and revise multiple drafts for logical organization, enhanced transitions and coherence, sentence variety, and of tone and point of view through specific rhetorical devices to establish meaningful texts.
Research Standards:
Reading: Students will comprehend, evaluate, and synthesize resources to acquire and refine knowledge.
Students will use their own viable research questions and well-developed thesis statements to find information about a specific topic.
Writing: Students will summarize and paragraphs, integrate evidence, and cite sources to create reports, projects, papers, texts, and presentations for multiple purposes.
Putting It Together:
English
I:
Modes of Writing: Expository, Persuasive, Narrative,
Argumentative, and Reflective
Length of Research Paper: 2-3 pages
Length of Essays: 1-2 pages
Number of Sources: 1-2
Description
At the 9th grade level, students should explore
possible career choices, colleges that they might want to attend, understand
what it takes to be a successful student and employee, and create an initial
path to follow through high school. The research is ongoing throughout the
school year, and the students write the different essays about ideas they
learned. The reflective essay should be required at the end of both semesters,
and the students add all of the essays into their portfolios.
For the finale, the students use one of their writing
assignments to help them plan a presentation at the end of the second semester.
The presentation should not be just a board with the information; we need to
encourage them to incorporate various types of technology. The presentation
should last between 5-10 minutes, and the audience should be students from
other classes and teachers. The teachers will be assigned the task of scoring
the presentations which will be averaged in with the teacher's grade.
English
II:
Modes of Writing: Expository, Persuasive, Narrative,
Argumentative, and Reflective
Length of Essays: 2-3 pages
Length of Research Paper: 4-5 pages
Number of Sources: 2-3
Description
At the sophomore level, students should reflect on what
they accomplished in 9th grade, explore other career choices, research colleges
and make a college visit if that is their path, interview college professors
and employers, and learn how to fill out job applications and practice
interviewing for jobs. As the students research the information, they write the
different essays. The reflective essay should be required at the end of both
semesters, and they will add all their information into their portfolios.
For the finale, the students present one of their
writing assignments in a presentation which should be given at the end of the
school year. The students should be encouraged to use various types of
technology. The presentations should last 10-12 minutes, and the audience
should be teachers, students, and administrators. Teachers will score the
presentations, and the scores will be part of the overall grade for the
presentations.
English
III:
Modes of Writing: Expository, Narrative, Persuasive,
Argumentative, and Reflective
Length of Essays: 2-3 pages
Length of Research Paper: 5-6 pages
Number of Sources: 2-3
Description
At the junior level, you have some students who attend
college, several students who choose to attend career-tech, and many students
who have jobs; therefore, the essays and research paper should reflect these
ideas. Students should write about their experiences at career-tech, college,
and a job, visit a college, reflect on what was learned, and make a plan of
study for the college level, and prepare for the senior level of high school.
For the finale, the students reflect on their strengths/weaknesses,
where they are, what they have accomplished, and where they need to go to
complete their path. A committee of teachers, administrators, and retired
teachers could be the audience. The committee could give the presentations a
score, and then that score would be averaged in to make the final grade.
English
IV:
Modes of Writing: Expository, Narrative, Persuasive,
Argumentative, and Reflective
Length of Essays: 2-3 pages
Length of Research Paper: 6-7 pages
Number of Sources: 4-5
At the senior level, students are on different paths.
They have to finish their portfolio, know the classes they have to take to
receive a college degree, apply for scholarships, work jobs, and pay bills. All
of these ideas should be the topics for their essays, but the research paper
should go a different direction. During this year, they have to go out and do
something with what they have learned, such as through a service project, a
study, or an experiment. The research paper is based on the service project, and
the students write a proposal letter, create an annotated bibliography, and use
the MLA format for the research paper requirements.
For the finale, the students present their research
paper in a 15-20 minute speech. The audience could be committee of teachers, administrators,
college professors, and community leaders who score the presentations. The
score will be averaged in with the teacher's grade.
Academic Vocabulary:
connotation, denotation, tone, word choices, thesis statement, topic sentences, supporting details, claims, counterclaims, works cited, ethos, logos, pathos, summary, print sources, web sources, paraphrase, prewriting, formal outline, composing, editing, revising, publishing, audience, purpose, editing marks, formal speech, sentence variety, and rules for colons and commas
Lifesaving Strategies:
Elevator Speeches, Commit and Toss, Four Corners, Paired Writing Discussions, Think, Pair, and Share, Think, Tweet, and Share, Socratic Circles, Scavenger Hunts, ACE Questions, Editing Islands, & Read & Tell
Artifacts:
Formative Assessments
Formal Outline
Notecards/Source Cards
Socratic Circles
ACE Questions
Editing Islands
Read & Tell
Summative Assessments:
Proposal Letter
Annotated Bibliography
Multiple Drafts of Research Paper
Speech Formal Outline
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Google Slides, I-Movie, or a Demonstration
Speech
Teaching Outside the Box:
Make the speeches a competition, like a TedTalk. The students could win prizes for their speeches and their original ideas. Make this assignment interdisciplinary so that students can see the importance of reading and writing across the curriculum. Have students make advertisements promoting their ideas. They could even make 30-second commercials.
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