DESCRIPTION:

Reading for Standards (grade 11) and High School Reading (grade 12) include intense reading strategies and skills designed for 11-12th grade students, with an emphasis on increased reading comprehension and vocabulary acquisition. This course involves the study of critical reading, comprehension and metacognition, namely what are our brains doing while our eyes are looking at the text. Vocabulary acquisition is stressed daily through a specific vocabulary curriculum, as well as word study within the context of the nonfiction text. These courses are designed to enhance the student's success in reading more complex passages with an increased level of comprehension and confidence, preparing them to do well on the ACT Reading and/or the Accuplacer exam as they graduate and pursue their college experiences. 

COURSE OBJECTIVES:

Students will:

• Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.
• Determine two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to provide a complex analysis; provide an objective summary of the text.
• Analyze a complex set of ideas or sequence of events and explain how specific individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop over the course of the text.
• Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze how an author uses and refines the meaning of a key term or terms over the course of a text.
• Analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the structure an author uses in his or her exposition or argument, including whether the structure makes points clear, convincing, and engaging.
• Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness, or beauty of the text.
• Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies.