As education changes throughout the years, curriculum for classes needs to change too.
The language arts department is incorporating a new layout for their honors courses. They decided to do this change when seniors in AP English entered the class and were surprised by the vast change the curriculum required.
After second semester, Amy Riley, English teacher, says, “I was really impressed with the strides made in writing by the students.”
It is not as though the students are not meeting their goals, but they had to jump into AP English with little writing experience.
“I feel like there needs to be more writing (in HJLA). This will prepare students for Washburn comp and for all of the composition classes in general,” says Natalie Wolfe, English teacher.
To solve this problem, teachers want to incorporate more writing into the Honors Juniors Language Arts (HJLA) classes second semester. Mrs. Riley says they are doing this partially because the difference in the level between the years is vast and it is a bit of a shock to the students.
This should better prepare the AP students for the writing assignments.
Mrs. Wolfe thinks that all junior English teachers should have a set requirement for the writing assignments and have set essays that all juniors do to prepare them for their next year English course.
They have also contemplated cutting down the number of short readings and focus on longer readings like the AP classes do.
“Basically we want to make sure we’ve got depth over quantity,” says Mrs. Riley.
Ultimately this transition for HJLA classes will be preparing students for college level work.
The entire grade level is under review. Not only are the honors classes changing, the regular English classes are looking at updating to new curriculum as well.