Decisions--Action or Apathy

We must constantly make decisions in daily life. Some decisions are simple choices (e.g., Coke or Pepsi) while others affect people's entire lives. Furthermore, every decision has consequences and often there is not a clear alternative. Decisions involve weighing alternatives and considering the consequences. This unit presents opportunities for students to examine values, beliefs, and pressures that surround decision making.

When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.

                                                                                 -William James

Possible sub-issues include:

• Life Pressures
• Values
• Consequences
• Career Decisions.

Sample Guiding Questions

In this unit, students explore some of the issues that surround decision making in the course of living. Choosing appropriate guiding questions can help students grow in their language and thinking skills and in their appreciation for the issues being examined.

Life Pressures

Guiding Question: What are the important decisions that we will have to make in our life time?

Sample Related Questions:

• What are the commonplace decisions we have to make every day? What role do peers, parents, and teachers play in our decisions? What role does experience play in our decisions? How do you make up your mind?
• What are the common pressures we face in today's society? What are the greatest pressures for us?
• What are the best ways to learn the important lessons of life?
• What things worry or annoy us? How do people respond to stress in life?
• How can we control our fate? How can we "seize the moment" when opportunities present themselves?

Values

Guiding Question: How do we uphold our values?

Sample Related Questions:

• What role do our values play in decision making? What other factors influence our decisions?
• What do we value most? How do our actions reflect this?
• How do our values differ from others? How do we determine our values?
• What makes us listen or not listen to our conscience?
• What considerations must we take into account if our decisions directly affect the lives of other human beings? What actions can a group take in order to prevent an individual from doing what he/she believes is right?
• What is worth fighting for? What compromises are we willing to make?

Consequences

Guiding Question: How do we live with the consequences of our decision making?

Sample Related Questions:

• What are the consequences of an important decision that you have made recently?
• What are informed decisions? What are uninformed decisions?
• What role does foresight play in our decision making? What are the advantages and disadvantages of hindsight?
• What is the effect of making a decision when we are uncertain of the consequences? What are the consequences of making decisions which go against what other people think? What price do we pay for each decision we make?
• What role does emotion and feeling play in our decision making?

Career Decisions

Guiding Question: What are the important career decisions we must make in a life time?

Sample Related Questions:

• How do we attain our personal and career goals? What alternative choices do we have?
• What specific personal, academic, and socio-economic choices will we be willing to make in order to achieve our career goals?
• What is the most important choice you have had to make in your life thus far?
• Who controls our future? What do we do if our plans work out differently than what we had intended?

Apathy versus Action

Guiding Question: How and why must we act upon our knowledge, values, and abilities for the well-being of others?

Sample Related Questions:

• How can we justify a position or action?
• What moves us to action? What forces encourage apathy?
• How can we act to make our views and decisions felt?
• How can society be improved?
• Does conforming to the beliefs and actions of the majority make a person a "good citizen"?

Environment and Technology--Reality and Responsibility

People too often see the world as a place of unlimited resources, rarely considering that their actions have a direct effect on everything around them. The environment influences life and shapes human feelings and opinions. This unit presents opportunities for students to explore human relationships with and responsibilities to the world of which they are a part.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

                                                          - William Wordsworth

Possible sub-issues include:

• Survival
• Disasters
• Animal Rights
• Urban and Rural Issues
• Ecology and Technology.

Sample Guiding Questions

In this unit, students explore the natural and technological worlds of which they are a part. Choosing appropriate guiding questions can help students grow in their language and thinking skills and in their appreciation for the issues being examined.

Survival

Guiding Question: What challenges to survival does the environment present?

Sample Related Questions:

• What hardships and challenges do humans experience with respect to the environment? What hardships and challenges do animals experiences with respect to the environment?
• What must humans do to survive with respect to the environment? Who and what will survive? Is population survival more important than individual survival? Why or why not?
• What are the major threats to our environment?
• What are the most important survival qualities in our society? What images do we associate with the idea of wilderness survival?

Disasters

Guiding Question: How might natural disasters be considered an important aspect of the environment's delicate balance?

Sample Related Questions:

• What is a natural disaster?
• How might birth and death in the natural cycle be considered disasters?
• How do we best cope with natural disasters?

Animal Rights

Guiding Question: What rights do animals have?

Sample Related Questions:

• What attitudes do people have toward animals?
• What influence do habitat, habits, and behaviour have on animals?
• What are the implications of using animals for research? Should animals be used for research?
• What are the long-term consequences of bio-engineering?
• Why are some species allowed to go extinct? What animals need protection? What actions can be taken?

Urban and Rural Issues

Guiding Question: What effect do cities and dwellings have on the natural environment?

Sample Related Questions:

• What is the present ecological state of the environment?
• What are the significant changes taking place in rural and urban environments?
• How do urban and rural environments contribute to the quality of our lives?
• What has been lost and gained by growth and development and/or the lack of growth and development?
• How can careful planning counteract the impact of changes humans make on the environment?

Ecology and Technology

Guiding Question: What is humanity's relationship to the environment and technology?

Sample Related Questions:

• What is the relationship between people and nature?
• What role does technology play in our lives and in nature?
• What are our most significant technological achievements?
• How can humans work in harmony with nature and technology?
• What considerations have to be given to the environment? To our technology?
• What happens if nature's ecological balance is upset?
• What values have we been taught about taking care of the land? How do these beliefs affect our actions?
• What are our environmental issues and concerns? How do these protect the environment? What can we do, as individuals, toward environmental protection?
• What are the advantages and risks related to technology? What are our technology issues and concerns?

Unit Objectives

In the second 50-hour unit, it is assumed that the following objectives will be addressed.

Students will:

Speaking

New Objectives for Unit II

• give prepared talks on familiar topics
• conduct an informal interview
• retell a narrative
• recognize and use oral presentation elements effectively
• other:

Possible Objectives from Unit I for Review and Reinforcement

• practise the behaviours of effective speakers
• organize information, thoughts, and opinions in an appropriate form
• participate in small and large group discussions, observing the courtesies of group discussion
• express own response to a story, poem, play, event, or experience
• other:

Listening

New Objectives for Unit II

• recognize speaker's overall plan of organization including transitional expressions
• analyze the overall effectiveness of group discussions, oral readings, interviews, and talks
• other:

Possible Objectives from Unit I for Review and Reinforcement

• recognize listening as an active process which requires listeners to:
  • anticipate a message and set a purpose for listening
  • attend
  • seek and check understanding by making connections, and by making and confirming predictions and inferences
• summarize and make notes from a presentation
• distinguish between fact and opinion
• listen in order to assess positions on individual, community, national, or world issues
• other:

Writing

New Objectives for Unit II

• write and document a concise factual report
• write an effective descriptive passage
• experiment with a variety of forms of writing such as poem, play, anecdote, and short story
• other:

Possible Objectives from Unit I for Review and Reinforcement

• practise the behaviours of effective writers
• use what is known as the writing process
• use appropriate pre-writing and planning strategies
• develop ideas previously explored into draft form
• revise and polish compositions
• compose effective paragraphs in narrative, expository, descriptive, and persuasive prose
• organize ideas in multi-paragraph compositions
• write a paraphrase and summary of a speech heard or a passage read
• other:

Reading

New Objectives for Unit II

• make and defend an informed critical response
• recognize common allusions and discuss their significance in context
• recognize stylistic devices and techniques such as characterization, flashback, foreshadowing, simile, metaphor, and hyperbole
• respond personally, critically, and creatively
• record responses in a reader's journal, log, or notebook
• read a wide range of material for personal enjoyment and extension of experience
• other:

Possible Objectives from Unit I for Review and Reinforcement

• recognize reading as an active, constructive process:
  • make connections
  • find meaning
  • make and confirm predictions
  • make and confirm inferences
  • reflect and evaluate
• practise the behaviours of effective, strategic readers
• explore human experiences and values reflected in texts
• test ideas and values against ideas in text
• summarize information read
• develop and articulate defensible points of view on individual, community, national, and world issues reflected in texts
• other:

Representing and Viewing

New Objectives for Unit II

• identify the purposes, intended audiences, messages, and points of view in advertisements, posters, films, and television or video presentations
• present information using print and non-print aids to engage and inform a familiar audience
• present thoughts, ideas, and feelings using an appropriate combination of charts, diagrams, pictures, audiotapes, slides, models, drama, and print
• other:

Possible Objectives from Unit I for Review and Reinforcement

• create appropriate nonverbal aids and visual images to enhance communication
• communicate thoughts, ideas, and feelings for specified purposes and audiences through storyboards
• recognize nonverbal aids and visual representations as tools for communicating and learning
• recognize viewing as an active process which requires viewers to:
  • anticipate a message and set a purpose for viewing
  • attend
  • seek and check understanding by making connections, and by making and confirming predictions and inferences
  • interpret and summarize
  • analyze and evaluate
• practise the behaviours of effective viewers
• respond personally, critically, and creatively to posters and to television and video presentations
• recognize language techniques and media conventions in television and video presentations
• evaluate critically information obtained from viewing advertisements, posters, films, and video and television presentations
• other:

Language Concepts

Sample Unit

Life is a journey that starts at birth. As we travel on the road of life, we make many discoveries that change the way we see our world and we meet many people who influence us. Childhood years can be challenging but can also be, in retrospect, a time of wonder and discovery.

Youth is a time of innocence and experience, laughter and tears, security and uncertainty. As we look back at the children we were and the people we knew, we get a sense of our roots and have an opportunity to understand who we have become, as well as who we would like to be.

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky;
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

                                            -William Wordsworth

Sub-themes: Innocence and Experience, Wonder and Imagination, Family and Peer Relationships, School and Education, Triumphs and Defeats.

Unit Overview

This sample unit introduces students to the theme of recollection using prose (short stories, essays, and novels) and poetry selections that reflect memories of family, school, and childhood. It encourages students to look back at their own experiences as they read, listen, view, speak, and write about them. In addition to a number of guided reading, listening, and viewing activities, students will have opportunities to participate in discussion groups, panel presentations, and oral readings, and to write short pieces about childhood memories and insights as well as a reflective essay. The unit concludes with a novel study and a play study, which encourage students to extend their experiences and insights as they anticipate the journey of life that lies ahead of them. An outline of the unit follows.

Introduction

• Expectations and Routines
• Classroom and Assignment Routines
• Assessment and Evaluation Procedures

Recollections of Childhood

• Before We Begin (from When We Were Young) (McLean)
• Reading Poetry: Home Street (Hyland) and (I Remember) Back Home (Joseph)
• Paired Response to Nonfiction: Beyond My Father's Shadow (Chambers) or Remember, Mum, When I Mocked You? (Manji)
• Listening to and Reading Nonfiction: Back to Wolf Willow (Stegner), Voices of the Grandmothers (Welsh)
• Fast Write and Discussion

Recollections of Home and Family

• Listening to Fiction: Penny in the Dust (Buckler) or A Visit to Grandmother (Kelley)
• Reading Fiction: Grace (Sears) or To Everything There is a Season (MacLeod)
• Reading Nonfiction: How to Do Battle With Grown-ups (Collier)
• Listening to and Reading Poetry: The Piano (Davey) or Warren Pryor (Nowlan)
• Responding to Literature: Snowballing Strategy
• Reading Nonfiction: Two Kinds (Tan)
• Writing: A Childhood Memory

Wonder and Imagination in Childhood

• Reading Poetry: The Centaur (Swenson) or Fern Hill (Thomas)
• Reading Nonfiction: For Reading Out Loud! (Kimmel and Segal)
• Reading Nonfiction: Who's Afraid of the Wicked Witch? (Gibson), Nursery Crimes (Evans), or Softening the Stories for Children (Leacock)
• Analysis of a Fairy Tale
• Speaking: Dramatic Reading of Prose or Poetry
• Optional Project: A Children's Story
• Speaking about the Mass Media: A Panel Discussion
• The Role of the Listener

Recollections of School

• Reading Fiction: School, the First Day (Sapergia), The First Day of School (Mitchell), or Charles (Jackson)
• Reading Nonfiction: The Credo (Fulghum)
• Writing: The Persuasive Paragraph

Innocence and Experience

• Reading Nonfiction: Childhood Through the Ages (McCoy), The Need for Re-evaluation in Native Education (English-Currie), or An Unending Cycle: Introduction (Thom)
• Reading Fiction: Skipper (Nowlan), The Good Girls (Arrick)
• Listening to Poetry: Luka (Vega) and The Child Who Walks Backwards (Crozier), or The Man Who Finds His Son Has Become a Thief (Souster) and The Stranger (Clark)

Putting Our Memories and Experiences into Perspective

• Reading Fiction: The Metaphor (Wilson) or Charlie (Maracle)
• Analyzing a Short Story
• Reading Poetry: Students (Wayman)
• Analyzing a Poem
• Comparing Prose and Poetry
• Writing: A Reflective Essay

Looking Back and Looking Forward

• Reading the Novel: Joy Luck Club (Tan), To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee), Keeper 'n Me (Wagamese), Hey, Monias (Dickson), Shizuko's Daughter (Mori), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain), Cold Sassy Tree (Burns)
• Writing and Speaking About Novels
• Anticipating the Future
• Reading the Play: The Glass Menagerie (Williams)
• Analyzing the Play
• Writing a Critique
• Reading Nonfiction: Catastrophe of Success (Williams)

The suggested time frame for this unit is ten weeks (50 hours). This is a suggested time only. Teachers may have to adjust it based on their students' needs, interests, and learning paces.

Unit Objectives

The Common Essential Learning of Communication is a basis for most activities in an English language arts course. Emphasis on particular C.E.L.s in this sample unit does not preclude the development of other Common Essential Learnings.

The following objectives were selected for this sample unit. Foundational objectives are identified by the symbol FO. Related specific learning objectives are listed below each foundational objective.

Speaking

Students will:

• Recognize that talk is an important tool for communicating, thinking, and learning (FO)
  • speak to clarify and extend thinking
  • speak to express understanding
• Practise the behaviours of effective speakers (FO)
• Speak fluently and confidently in a variety of situations for a variety of purposes and audiences (FO)
  • speak to inform and persuade
  • practise the various roles of group members
  • prepare a dramatic reading of a prose or poetry selection
  • participate in a panel discussion.

Listening

Students will:

• Recognize listening as an active, constructive process (FO)
  • anticipate a message and set a purpose for listening
  • attend
  • seek and check understanding by making connections, and by making and confirming predictions and inferences
  • analyze and evaluate
• Practise the behaviours of effective listeners (FO)
  • recognize factors that interfere with effective listening, including personal biases
  • recognize a speaker's attitude, tone, and bias
  • recognize nonverbal indicators of a speaker's intent
  • recognize organization of an argument
  • identify persuasive techniques used by a speaker
  • respond personally, critically, creatively, and empathetically
• Listen effectively in a variety of situations for a variety of purposes (FO)
  • listen for personal pleasure and aesthetic satisfaction
  • assess their own ability to listen effectively.

Writing

Students will:

• Recognize writing as a constructive and recursive process (FO)
  • use what is known as the writing process
  • use appropriate pre-writing and planning strategies
  • develop ideas previously explored into draft form
  • revise and polish compositions
  • share or present compositions
• Practise the behaviours of effective writers (FO)
  • write introductions which engage interest and focus readers' attention
  • achieve unity of thought and purpose
  • write effective conclusions appropriate to the overall intent
• Write fluently and confidently for a variety of purposes and audiences (FO)
  • write to reflect, clarify, and explore ideas
  • write to describe, narrate, inform, and persuade
  • present point of view in a personal or reflective essay
  • outline a multi-paragraph composition
  • write a paraphrase and précis of a passage read
  • write an analysis of a literary text
  • experiment with a variety of forms of writing.

Reading

Students will:

• Recognize reading as an active, constructive process (FO)
  • make connections
  • find meaning
  • make and confirm predictions
  • make and confirm inferences
  • reflect and evaluate
• Practise the behaviours of effective, strategic readers (FO)
  • respond personally, critically, and creatively
  • record responses in a reader's journal, log, or notebook
• Read a variety of texts for a variety of purposes (FO)
  • explore human experiences and values reflected in texts
  • relate literary experience to personal experience
  • read an increasingly wide range of material for personal enjoyment and extension of experiences
  • assess an author's ideas and techniques
  • assess a selection's merit as a literary work
  • compare, contrast, and evaluate texts
  • paraphrase and write a précis of a prose and poetry passage.

Representing and Viewing

Students will:

• Create appropriate nonverbal aids and visual images to enhance communication (FO)
  • present information, incorporating visual, audio-visual, and dramatic aids to engage the intended audience
  • present thoughts, ideas, and feelings using an appropriate combination of visual aids and print
• Recognize nonverbal aids and visual representations as tools for communicating and learning (FO)
  • anticipate a message and set a purpose for viewing
  • attend
  • seek and check understanding by making connections, and by making and confirming predictions and inferences
  • interpret and summarize
  • analyze and evaluate.

Language Concepts

The English language arts curriculum is designed to help students widen their knowledge and appreciation of the English language. The "nature of language" is best learned contextually. Understanding should grow from students' language production rather than through isolated drills and exercises that are presented out of context (e.g., workbooks). During the course of this unit and the subsequent unit, students should be actively engaged in using language for their communication purposes. In addition, they should increase their understanding of three broad language concepts:

1. Language varies according to audience, purpose, and situation.
2. Language has structures and conventions.
3. Language develops and changes over time.

As students are engaged in the language processes, teachers are encouraged to diagnose their strengths and needs. A checklist such as the following might be used to keep a record of the students' understanding and needs.

Text

__ Effective communication places emphasis on the purpose and audience for a speech or composition.
__ Different purposes and audiences require different modes of discourse.
__ There are conventions of the paragraph and longer compositions.
__ An effective composition is unified, coherent, and emphatic.
__ Other:

Sentences

__ Effective written sentences are devoid of unnecessary words and expressions.
__ Basic English sentence patterns can be expanded, compounded, and transformed.
__ Effective written sentences use precise words.
__ Parallel ideas should be expressed in parallel form.
__ Other:

Words

__ An appropriate word suits the audience, purpose, and situation.
__ Words have emotional appeal.
__ Word use should be economical.
__ Large vocabularies help people express ideas more accurately and efficiently.
__ Language users have oral and written vocabularies.
__ Age and geography are factors in vocabulary development.
__ Other:

Sound

__ Several production factors are important in oral communication (i.e., articulation, pronunciation, tempo, tone, volume, emphasis, pitch).
__ Language has sound patterns including rhyme, rhythm, meter, alliteration, consonance, assonance, and repetition.
__ Other:

Mini-lessons

Some students may require more assistance than others with specific language concepts and processes. Take the time to model speaking, listening, writing, reading, representing, and viewing processes and, if necessary, provide mini-lessons before, during, or after students engage in these processes. A mini-lesson is a focused lesson designed to help students learn how to do something (e.g., achieve unity and coherence in their writing). A mini-lesson might also address a language concept needed for a task (e.g., achieve precision in word choice). These lessons can be taught to the whole class, to a small group, or to an individual.

A series of mini-lessons on unity and coherence might include:

• A review of the overall structure of oral and written presentations.

  The introduction captures the listener's or reader's attention and presents the main idea of the presentation. The attention grabber may be one of the following:

  • an opinion
  • an anecdote
  • a quotation
  • a question
  • a description
  • an interesting fact
  • a summary.

  The body of the presentation usually includes several paragraphs that support the thesis statement. Generally, each paragraph has a topic sentence that expresses one main idea related to the thesis and the rest of the sentences elaborate on that main idea.

  The conclusion gives the listener or viewer the sense that the presentation is complete. A conclusion might:

  • restate the thesis
  • issue a call to action
  • summarize the main ideas
  • make a generalization
  • present a resolution
  • pose a question.

• Illustrations of how each paragraph in the presentation can have unity and coherence.

  In a unified paragraph, each sentence is related to the main idea of the paragraph and each paragraph is related to the main idea of the whole presentation.

  Coherence is achieved by ensuring that each sentence in a paragraph follows logically from the one that precedes it and that each paragraph follows logically from the one before. Coherence is achieved by:

  • arranging the ideas in a logical order (e.g., general-to-specific, specific-to-general, chronological order, spatial order)
  • using transitions to connect ideas to one another both within and between paragraphs (e.g., spatial order--on the right-hand side, at the far end, under, beside, to your left)
  • using pronouns, synonyms, and repeated words to show that statements made in separate sentences refer to the same subject (e.g., night: it, dim light, half-darkness, night).

Assessment and Evaluation

Assessment and evaluation must be closely tied to the learning objectives and processes of the curriculum. A Sample Assessment and Evaluation Summary form is included on the following page to help teachers plan assessment and unit-end evaluation.

Resources

Although specific language resources and literary selections are identified for particular activities, alternative resources and activities of comparable challenge to the students can be used to achieve the unit objectives. English Language Arts 20: A Bibliography lists a range of resources that can be used to achieve the objectives of this curriculum. Some resources chosen for this sample unit include:

Nonfiction

Before We Begin (McLean)
Back to Wolf Willow (Stegner)
Voices of the Grandmothers (Welsh)
Beyond My Father's Shadow (Chambers)
Remember, Mum, When I Mocked You? (Manji)
How to Do Battle with Grown-Ups (Collier)
Childhood Through the Ages (McCoy)
Two Kinds (Tan)
For Reading Out Loud! (Kimmel and Segal)
Who's Afraid of the Wicked Witch? (Gibson)
The Credo (Fulghum)
Nursery Crimes (Evans)
The Catastrophe of Success (Williams)

Short Stories

Penny in the Dust (Buckler)
To Everything There is a Season (MacLeod)
Grace (Sears)
A Visit to Grandmother (Kelley)
School, the First Day (Sapergia)
The Metaphor (Wilson)
Skipper (Nowlan)
Charlie (Maracle)
Charles (Jackson)

Novels

Poetry

My Home Town (Springsteen)
Home Street (Hyland)
(I Remember) Back Home (Joseph)
The Piano (Davey)
Warren Pryor (Nowlan)
Credo (Fulghum)
Students (Wayman)
The Centaur (Swenson)
Fern Hill (Thomas)
Luka (Vega)
The Child Who Walks Backwards (Crozier)

Plays

The Glass Menagerie (Williams)

Other Resources

Newspaper clippings, radio and television advertisements, posters, language handbooks, dictionaries, various style guides, and thesauri are also useful in this unit.

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Sample Assessment and Evaluation Summary English Language Arts 20