For students with experience in writing nonfictional prose. Advanced study of rhetorical strategies and techniques of prose style. Considerable writing and revision required. In addition to analyzing the work of class members, students read and discuss the work of distinguished essayists chosen to represent a range of prose styles, subjects, and biographical patterns.

" This course is a workshop for students with some experience in writing essays, nonfiction prose. Our focus will be negotiating and representing identities grounded in gender, race, class, nationality, sexuality, and other categories of identity, either our own or others', in prose that is expository, exploratory, investigative, persuasive, lyrical, or incantatory. We will read nonfiction prose works by a wide array of writers who have used language to negotiate and represent aspects of identity and the ways the different determinants of identity intersect, compete, and cooperate."

Task Description: This task asks students to write an informative/explanatory essay, demonstrating knowledge they have gained about the science of forensic anthropology. Student must be able to determine the central idea of a text and analyze its development through the course of multiple texts and differentiate between relevant and irrelevant information. The Forensic Anthropology task is embedded in a 4-week curricular unit on informational texts in which students read four informational texts on the subject of forensic anthropology. The students complete three assessments tasks that build in complexity and are sequenced to scaffold student learning.

Task Description: Students write an essay using key details from the text to explain why John Muir devoted his life to conservation efforts and describe the effect that his work had on preserving the beauty of nature. This task is embedded in a 2-3 week unit that uses the topic of human impact on environment as a means to teach students how to analyze and navigate informational texts. Students will write an essay at the end of the unit demonstrating their mastery of the content and their ability to make inferences within a specific text.

This packet contains pre-reading, pre-teaching vocabulary and background knowledge supports for English Language Learners for the John Muir: Conservationist on the Quarter task.

This packet provides instructional supports for students with disabilities and is for use with the John Muir: Conservationist on the Quarter task.

Task Description: This unit uses the topic of food choice as a means to teach students how to analyze and navigate informational texts. This 2-3 week unit contains a series of three tasks that build in complexity. This culminating task asks students to use textual evidence to write an essay analyzing how the author organized and developed his argument regarding the omnivoreŐs dilemma in his chapter, ŇThe OmnivoreŐs DilemmaÓ from Michael PollanŐs The OmnivoreŐs Dilemma (Young ReaderŐs Edition)

Task Description: This task asks students to write an essay in which they present and defend their beliefs about doing work Ňon behalf of othersÓ based on the texts they have explored throughout the unit. This packet contains a curriculum-embedded CCLS aligned task and instructional supports. The task is embedded in a 2-3 week unit on documentary work that focuses on creating records or accounts of events, people, and places that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Task Description: This task asks students to write an argumentative essay in which they state and defend a position on the effects of media use on young people, using evidence and reasoning from texts and other sources The Power of New Media is the culminating task in a 2-3 week unit that uses the topic of new media and its impact on youth to and on the world as a means to teach students how to analyze and investigate informational texts. Students demonstrate their mastery of the content and their ability to synthesize informational across texts by writing an essay on the effects of media use on young people.

By reading and rereading the passage closely and focusing their reading through a series of questions and discussion about the text, students will be equipped to unpack DillardŐs essay. When combined with writing about the passage, students will learn to appreciate how DillardŐs writing contains a deeper message and derive satisfaction from the struggle to master complex text. This close reading exemplar is intended to model how teachers can support their students as they undergo the kind of careful reading the Common Core State Standards require. Teachers are encouraged to take these exemplars and modify them to suit the needs of their students. Additional teacher background material: http://teachers.sduhsd.k12.ca.us/lcaston/documents/WeaselsEssayAnal.pdf

This class investigates theory and practice of digital or new media poetry with emphasis on workshop review of digital poetry created by students. Each week students examine published examples of digital poetry in a variety of forms including but not limited to soundscapes, hypertext poetry, animation, code poems, interactive games, location-based poems using handheld devices, digital video and wikis.

This course focuses on developing and refining the skills that will you need to express your voice more effectively as an academic writer. To this end, we'll think about writing as an act of self-discovery, as an act of critical thinking, and as an act of communicating with an audience. Throughout the semester, students will focus on writing as a process of drafting and revising to create essays that are lively, clear, engaging and meaningful to a wider audience.

Civilization is mostly the story of how seeds, meats, and ways to cook them travel from place to place. - Adam Gopnik, "What's Cooking" "A significant part of the pleasure of eating is in one's accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which food comes." - Wendell Berry, "The Pleasures of Eating" If you are what you eat, what are you? Food is at once the stuff of life and a potent symbol; it binds us to the earth, to our families, and to our cultures. The aroma of turkey roasting or the taste of green tea can be a portal to memories, while too many Big Macs can clog our arteries. The chef is an artist, yet those who pick oranges or process meat may be little more than slaves. In this class, we will explore many of the fascinating issues that surround food as both material fact and personal and cultural symbol. We will read essays by Chang-Rae Lee, Francine du Plessix Gray, M. F. K. Fisher, Anthony Bourdain, and others on such topics as family meals, the art and science of cooking, fair trade, eating disorders, and food's ability to awaken us to "our own powers of enjoyment" (M. F. K. Fisher). We will also read Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation and view one or more films or videos as a class. Assigned essays will grow out of memories and the texts we read, and will include personal narratives and essays that depend on research. Workshop review of writing in progress and revision of essays will be an important part of the course.

"This course covers Japanese: The Spoken Language lessons 17 through 22. It will further develop the four basic skills, speaking, listening, reading and writing, that students have acquired through Japanese I, II and III courses, with emphasis on oral communication skills in various practical situations. Students will learn approximately 100 Kanji characters in this course. Sessions in English cover grammar explanation, socio-cultural information and other important issues for using the language, while Japanese lessons focus on the actual use of the language, integrating students' prior knowledge with newly learned patterns, and communicating within the frame given in the class."

Aims at consolidation and expansion of skills in listening comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing. Uses short stories and other readings, Hispanic television programs, and interactive video to study issues of current interest in Hispanic culture. The first intermediate-level course in Spanish, with a focus on grammar review, additional vocabulary, writing of essays in Spanish and enhancement of cultural awareness. Group activities and projects, and conversation are emphasized.

Aims at consolidation and expansion of skills in listening comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing. Uses short stories and other readings, Hispanic television programs, and interactive video to study issues of current interest in Hispanic culture. The first intermediate-level course in Spanish, with a focus on grammar review, additional vocabulary, writing of essays in Spanish and enhancement of cultural awareness. Group activities and projects, and conversation are emphasized.

"In diesem Kurs erhalten Sie einen ?berblick ?ber einige wichtige literarische Texte, Tendenzen und Themen aus der deutschsprachigen Literatur- und Kulturszene. Wir werden literarische Texte, Gedichte, Theaterst?cke und Essays untersuchen, sowie andere ?sthetische Formen besprechen, wie Film und Architektur. Da alle Texte gleichzeitig in ihrem spezifischen kulturellen Kontext gelesen werden, tragen sie zu einem Verst?ndnis von verschiedenen historischen Aspekten bei. Unter anderen werden folgende Themen und Fragestellungen besprochen: Technologie und deren Einfluss auf die Gesellschaft, Fragen der Ethik bei wissenschaftlicher Arbeit, Konstruktion von nationaler Geschichte und kollektivem Ged?chtnis."