Welcome
Welcome to the English Department
The CHS English department goal is to create autonomous critical readers, writers, and thinkers who have the skills to be able to comprehend, analyze, and respond to a text on their own, as well as to recognize themselves as authors.
Together, our department members work collaboratively to horizontally and vertically align coursework. Each grade level coursework is meticulously designed to improve rigor from one grade level to the next, while supporting and challenging students in acquiring new skills in the areas of reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
Reading:
- Students can comprehend a grade-level text: identify text type, author’s audience, purpose, claims, and main idea; identify key details; summarize the text; choice reading to help build lifelong love of reading and stamina for later analysis of required texts
- Students can analyze a text: Evaluate author’s style, use of rhetorical strategies and literary devices, and form. Evaluate strength of claims. Determine thesis and/or theme (new criticism). Understand author’s perspective and impact of social/historical context (new historicism).
- Students can engage and respond to a text: Metacognition/Distance from the text + critical reading of a text
Writing:
Students need to be able to see themselves as authors. They need to have authentic audiences in order to make authentic authorial choices with intention and purpose. This will help them better analyze and respond to the writing of others. It is important to publish their writing in some form - make it public and have a real world audience.
Speaking/Listening:
Engage effectively in academic discussions on a range of topics and texts. Deliver oral presentations with an understanding of audience and purpose.