English A - Grade 6

PEIMS Course Title/Number:
English Language Arts 6/02800000

Prerequisite Requirements:
Grade-level placement by K12 placement exam.

Course of Instruction/Lesson Description:
K12's Intermediate English A program provides a solid foundation in reading and writing. The course is divided into two main strands: Literature and Language Skills. Literature includes the study of a diverse range of classic and contemporary stories, poems, plays, nonfiction works, and novels. The Language Skills strand includes composition; grammar, usage, and mechanics; and vocabulary.

The instructional plan includes readings and activities on a range of topics and skills:

Composition

• A typical unit consists of 5-8 lessons.
• The first lesson is almost entirely online. Students begin by reading a model essay. First, they respond as readers by answering questions to check their understanding. Then they analyze the writer's craft, noting the techniques the writer uses. Finally, they respond as writers, considering such elements as the effect of style, tone, and voice.
• The next lessons deal with prewriting strategies: finding a topic, gathering ideas and information, and organizing. These lessons may also deal with concepts such as logical thinking, show vs. tell, fact vs. opinion, research techniques, and so on. These prewriting lessons combine online and offline activities.
• The next lesson is drafting. Students are generally given a few reminders, and then they work offline to write their essays.
• A revising lesson, which focuses on ways to improve the essay, follows. This lesson usually begins online and then goes offline so that students can revise their own essays, using a checklist as an aid.
• In the final lesson, students proofread their essays, again using a checklist, and determine a method of publication.
• Many composition units end with a quick review of writing prompts that correspond to the form of writing students have been doing in the unit.

Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics (GUM)

• A typical unit consists of 5-7 lessons.
• Each lesson begins with a brief online Introduction to the skill.
• Students receive their assignment in Practice Your Skills. Then they work offline, studying the skill and doing exercises.
• They go back online to take a short Lesson Assessment, which ends the required part of the lesson.
• Optional activities—Extra Practice and online Challenge questions—follow many of the lessons.
• Each unit ends with a Unit Review lesson and then an online Unit Assessment.

Literature

• A typical unit consists of 8-12 lessons in which several related works (e.g., myths, poems, biographies) are presented.
• A typical lesson begins with a brief online introduction and a Before Reading activity that serves as a warm-up to help students access prior knowledge and make connections between what they know and what they are going to read. It may also provide background information about the author, the setting, or the culture.
• Students print the Student Guide and go offline to read.
• When they have finished, they go back online to answer questions in Check Your Reading.
• Upon completing Check Your Reading, students do more online activities to enhance their comprehension and analysis skills.
• The lesson generally finishes with a final offline activity.
• The unit ends with a Unit Review and Unit Assessment. The Assessment is a combination of online objective questions and a short essay.
• The Literature strand also has novels for students to read. Required novels units have 13 lessons, and optional novels units have 10 lessons.

Vocabulary

• A typical unit has 8 lessons.
• In Lessons 1 and 4, students are introduced to new words and hear the pronunciations online. They go offline to study the words and do exercises.
• In Lessons 2-3 and 5-6, students again have the option of hearing the words pronounced, and they complete their activities offline.
• Lesson 7 is a Unit Review and Lesson 8 is an online Assessment.

Main course expectations include the following.

Composition
Students will:

• Choose and use writing processes to create paragraphs, essays, reports, and stories.
• Generate ideas through brainstorming, lists, notes, and graphic organizers; organize material for drafting; revise drafts by adding, deleting, or moving material; proofread for errors in grammar, usage, mechanics, and spelling; and publish selected pieces of work.
• Recognize the purpose and audience for each piece of writing.
• Write to express (e.g., personal narrative), influence (e.g., persuasive essay, advertisement), inform (e.g., compare-and-contrast essay, how-to essay), and entertain.
• Use a voice and style appropriate for the audience.
• Use transitions and precise wording to promote coherence.
• Analyze and appreciate the writer's craft and use the work of others as models for writing.
• Evaluate their own writing through the use of checklists.
• Use offline and online methods of research to increase knowledge and follow an appropriate format for documenting sources.
• Understand and interpret the meaning in visual images (e.g., graphs, charts, tables).
• Produce their own visuals to enhance meaning in an oral presentation.

Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics (GUM)
Students will:

• Understand and apply the conventions of grammar, usage, and mechanics in written work.
• Use capitalization and punctuation (end marks, commas, quotation marks, apostrophes, semicolons, colons, and hyphens) to clarify meaning.
• Understand and use various kinds of complete sentences and appropriate conjunctions to connect ideas.
• Use adjectives, adverbs, and prepositional phrases to expand upon ideas and make writing precise.
• Recognize and use verb tenses correctly and avoid unnecessary shifts in tense.
• Use standard English, including correct subject-verb agreement, proper pronoun-antecedent agreement, and appropriate pronoun case.

Literature
Students will:

• Read a diverse variety of literature, both classic and contemporary, for different purposes (e.g., information, entertainment, research).
• Use various comprehension strategies (e.g., accessing prior knowledge, identifying main ideas and supporting details, making inferences, paraphrasing, summarizing, comparing and contrasting) to aid in understanding the text.
• Respond to a variety of texts by sharing observations, speculations, and interpretations.
• Use a reading notebook to record ideas.
• Make connections within texts and between texts, when appropriate, of themes and major issues.
• Analyze the elements of various genres (e.g., poetry, short stories, biographies, informational texts).
• Understand, identify, and use literary terms and literary devices.
• Analyze characters, settings, and plots.
• Understand how tone, style, mood, and point of view affect the text.
• Use reading assignments as a springboard for research.
• Use text features (e.g., headings, graphics, images, table of contents, index) to locate information efficiently.
• Read to increase knowledge of their own culture and the cultures of others.
• Listen actively and purposefully to professional presentations of reading selections.
• Listen in order to analyze and appreciate spoken language.
• Use oral presentations for dramatic readings and to provide information to an audience.

Vocabulary
Students will:

• Use systematic word study to increase vocabulary.
• Determine the meaning of words through the application of knowledge of Latin and Greek roots and the study of prefixes and suffixes.
• Use prior knowledge and past experiences to understand words in context, analogies, and multiple-meaning words.
• Refer to dictionaries, thesauruses, and related software to clarify the meanings of words and to identify synonyms and antonyms.

Lesson Numbers/Duration:
There are 180 lessons, which combine components of the following:

Language Skills:

• Composition: 58 lessons
• Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics: 95 lessons
• Vocabulary: 64 lessons

Literature:

• 150 lessons on various genres
• 30 lessons on "choice" novels: students choose three novels from among 25 novels units, each unit containing 10 lessons

Online Importance:
K12's English A program provides step-by-step guidance in each lesson. Some activities are presented online, while others are presented offline.

Many important activities are only available online, such as comprehension questions, literature and language exploration, skill checks, and computer animations that demonstrate instructional objectives. For example, students may click on a part of a paragraph to find a topic sentence or to identify the traits of a character. Animated sequences may demonstrate cause-and-effect relationships or the organizational structure of a compare-and-contrast essay. Online contextual feedback plays a valuable role in helping students learn not only if an answer choice is correct or incorrect, but also why it is right or wrong. Students also have the opportunity to play online review games to review instructional objectives.

Most of the program is delivered with the help of a Teacher Guide, which provides an outline of the lesson as well as information about assessment and supplemental material that can help support each student. The Teacher Guide is available in print as well as online.

Some lessons have a Student Guide that leads students through the lesson or that provides support for a particular activity. The Student Guide is available in print as well as online. Students also have additional worksheets and keep notebooks for written activities.

Monitoring Student Progress:
Most units end with an assessment. The assessment helps the teacher gauge whether the student has met the unit objectives. Assessment results are entered online, to be tracked by the Online School application.

Students and parents can access student-specific screens to determine (1) progress in the number of lessons completed, (2) the lesson assessment (percentage mastered), (3) the semester assessment (percentage mastered), and (4) the number of times the student has taken the assessment instruments. Families who enroll their children in the eCP program have the benefit of help and guidance from an experienced teacher. The teacher will contact students daily through email and phone conferences. Consistent progress monitoring by the teacher will be utilized throughout the project period.

Schedule for Monitoring Student Progress:
Each teacher will establish a daily contact schedule for their assigned students at a time of day that is reasonably convenient for both parties. Contacts may be asynchronous/synchronous or one-on-one/groups. The avenues of teacher initiated contact will be adjusted as determined by the progress a student makes through their learning plan. Parent- and student-initiated contact with teachers can happen at any time. The Acting Director, or their designee, will monitor the communication logs to ensure that parents are being routinely supported and informed regarding the student's ongoing progress and participation.

In addition, teachers will monitor progress in mastery of objectives and lesson completion on a weekly basis. Continuous progress monitoring by the assigned teacher ensures that parents are informed on a regular basis regarding progress and participation.

Required Instructional Materials:
Materials K12 provides:

• Classics for Young Readers, Vol. 6A and 6B — anthologies from K12
• Classics for Young Readers, Vol. 6: An Audio Companion (CD)
• Online lessons and assessments
• Myths of Ancient Greece and Rome (an anthology from K12)
• The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Standardized Assessment Instruments:
End-of-Course Exams developed by Texas Tech, University of Texas, or K12 Inc.

Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) Compliancy:
Side-by-side comparisons of TEKS and the content of each course have been developed and reviewed to ensure that the online curriculum meets or exceeds the TEKS.

Grading/Credit Award Criteria:
The Texas Virtual Academy at Southwest Schools issues formal report cards every nine weeks. Students who complete a significant amount of coursework after the conclusion of the final term will receive a supplemental report card in July. The final grade in each content subject, English/Language Arts, mathematics, Social Studies, and Science, is determined by a combination of the grades from each reporting period and the proctored course completion (CCE) exam. The average of the grades for each reporting period is comprised of 90% of the final grade. The scores of the CCE comprise 10% of the final grade.

The final grade for electives is based on cumulative progress recorded in the Online School (OLS). A grade of Completed, or C, is reported for 80% or more of the lessons marked as completed. A grade of Incomplete/Unacceptable, or I, is reported when less that 80% of the lessons are marked as completed. No Grade, or NG, is assigned if the student has administrative approval to waive the course requirements in a particular elective course.

To be promoted to the next grade, the student must meet the Student Success Initiative requirements for that grade. Additionally, the student must have a final score of 70 or above on at least three content courses and the average of the four content courses must be at least 70. For each reporting period, the grade in a content area subject is the average of at least six distinct grades. Those grades include, but are not limited to, the progress in the OLS converted to a numerical grade, response to the daily questions, online quizzes following the weekly grade-level study halls, work samples, and benchmark assessments.

Contact Information:
Students will be assigned a teacher upon acceptance into TXVA@SW. The teacher will provide the student and family telephone and email contact information. The student and/or family may contact a help desk at 1-886-YOUR K12 for additional technical, material, or logistical support. Students will be provided with online assistance 24/7 through the TXVA web site.