Academic/Business English is designed as a practical course to develop an authentic understanding of how to use concepts of writing and discourse to communicate in the workforce. Students will have the ability to express their thoughts, feelings, and opinions in using real-life situations and learning scenarios. All new concepts will be introduced in context while incorporating various writing, speaking and listening activities.

Academic/Business English is designed as a practical course to develop an authentic understanding of how to use concepts of writing and discourse to communicate in the workforce. Students will have the ability to express their thoughts, feelings, and opinions in using real-life situations and learning scenarios. All new concepts will be introduced in context while incorporating various writing, speaking and listening activities.

 Circle of Viewpoints helps students identify the different perspectives that could be present in or affected by what has just been read, seen, or heard. This routine relies on the ability of students to identify different perspectives that are presented around a topic. It will create greater awareness of how others may be thinking and feeling, thus reinforcing that people think differently about the same things. This activity will be a prewriting activity to set them up to write a narrative essay using the novel Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli. 

In this seminar, you will learn how to use quotation marks, punctuation, and capitalization correctly to enhance story. Adding dialogue to a narrative writing piece helps you develop characters, move the plot along, and keeps the reader interested and invested in reading the story until the end which is a goal of all authors. During this seminar, you will learn how to use quotations marks and punctuation correctly by learning the grammatical rules for dialogue and analyzing the errors in examples of dialogue. You will be comparing and classifying both narratives with and without dialogue and different ways dialogue can be written within text. You will also create your own dialogues within your narrative writing.StandardsCC.1.4.4.M/ 1.4.5.MWrite narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events.

The 11th grade learning experience consists of 7 mostly month-long units aligned to the Common Core State Standards, with available course material for teachers and students easily accessible online. Over the course of the year there is a steady progression in text complexity levels, sophistication of writing tasks, speaking and listening activities, and increased opportunities for independent and collaborative work. Rubrics and student models accompany many writing assignments.Throughout the 11th grade year, in addition to the Common Read texts that the whole class reads together, students each select an Independent Reading book and engage with peers in group Book Talks. Students move from learning the class rituals and routines and genre features of argument writing in Unit 11.1 to learning about narrative and informational genres in Unit 11.2: The American Short Story. Teacher resources provide additional materials to support each unit.

In this unit, students will take a look at the historical vision of the American Dream as put together by our Founding Fathers. They will be asked: How, if at all, has this dream changed? Is this dream your dream? First students will participate in an American Dream Convention, acting as a particular historical figure arguing for his or her vision of the American Dream, and then they will write an argument laying out and defending their personal view of what the American Dream should be.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Students read and annotate closely one of the documents that they feel expresses the American Dream.
Students participate in an American Dream Convention, acting as a particular historical figure arguing his or her vision of the American Dream.
Students write a paper, taking into consideration the different points of view in the documents read, answering the question “What is the American Dream now?”
Students write their own argument describing and defending their vision of what the American Dream should be.

GUIDING QUESTIONS

These questions are a guide to stimulate thinking, discussion, and writing on the themes and ideas in the unit. For complete and thoughtful answers and for meaningful discussions, students must use evidence based on careful reading of the texts.

What has been the historical vision of the American Dream?
What should the American Dream be? (What should we as individuals and as a nation aspire to?)
How would women, former slaves, and other disenfranchised groups living during the time these documents were written respond to them?

BENCHMARK ASSESSMENT: Cold Read

During this unit, on a day of your choosing, we recommend you administer a Cold Read to assess students’ reading comprehension. For this assessment, students read a text they have never seen before and then respond to multiple-choice and constructed-response questions. The assessment is not included in this course materials.

In this lesson, you will consider what the Founders of the United States government might have described as the “American Dream.” You'll analyze the Preamble to the Constitution, deciding what the writers “dreamed” the role of government and the rights of citizens to be.

This exercise will not only teach students the art of flash fiction, but it will allow them to write, to work with their peers, and to publish!  The teacher will have as much fun as the students!

In this seminar, you will be focusing on developing a “better beginning” to a narrative writing piece. The purpose of narrative writing is to entertain, and the beginning of your piece is an important first step. You will learn how to “hook” your reader in the beginning. Some ways you can do this is by introducing developed characters, establishing an exciting or relatable setting,  and creating the mood of your piece. In this seminar, you will work on improving all of these to create a “Better Beginning” to your narrative writing.StandardsCC.1.4.4.M/ 1.4.5.MWrite narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events.

A rubric in student language written for elementary students to self-assess their narrative writing.

A rubric in student language written for elementary students to self-assess their narrative writing.

In this seminar, you will be working on developing your narrative writing. By focusing on the plot, or the series of events, in a narrative writing, you will be able to create a more engaging and interesting story. The emphasis will be on creating a story arc that includes a problem and a solution and/ or rising and falling action. You will learn about these elements by seeing examples, identifying them, and finally writing them yourself. You will also compare and classify elements of plot in multiple examples of text. This seminar is the next logical step after completing the “Better Beginnings” seminar because it focuses on the “middle and end” of narrative writing. After completing both of these seminars, you should feel ready to create a narrative writing that has a strong beginning-middle-end.StandardsCC.1.4.4.M/ 1.4.5.MWrite narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events 

This assignment is geared toward helping students improve their narrative essays but can be used with any writing assignment. 

In this project, you will explore a real-world problem, and then work through a series of steps to analyze that problem, research ways the problem could be solved, then propose a possible solution to that problem. Often, there are no specific right or wrong solutions, but sometimes one particular solution may be better than others. The key is making sure you fully understand the problem, have researched some possible solutions, and have proposed the solution that you can support with information / evidence.Begin by reading the problem statement in Step 1. Take the time to review all the information provided in the statement, including exploring the websites, videos and / or articles that are linked. Then work on steps 2 through 8 to complete this problem-based learning experience.

Students will complete a series of tasks to build skills in preparation of writing a descritpive/narrative essay.