STAR Preparatory Language Arts
Each year as part of the STAR testing program, California Writing Standards Tests are administered at the elementary and middle school levels. This course is designed to prepare students to effectively produce three specific types of writing, one of which will be addressed on the CST.
During this 12 -week course, students will learn about how to organize, plan, write, and edit narratives, summaries, and responses to literature within the 60-minute time limit of the test. In order to prepare for this particular type of test, students will be given the opportunity to analyze the released rubrics from previous years and work through the process of using those rubrics to score sample student responses, as well as to evaluate their own. In addition, students will also be taught test taking strategies as well as reading comprehension techniques. With these techniques, students will be given reading passages to practice answering multiple choice based questions.
Extensive teacher commentary, instruction on organization, practice with editing their own writing pieces, and completing reading comprehension questions will serve to support their achievement on the STAR test. The goal is for the student to feel more comfortable taking standardized tests as they will be required to take these types of tests all throughout their schooling.
Literary Analysis Grades 6-8
Middle school students study poetry, short stories, and novels. They are often asked to write analyses of such literary genre in their English classes. The Cat 6/Star test also requires that students respond to the deeper meaning of literary work on a multiple-choice exam. Student in this exciting new class will read and analyze poetry and short stories. This class is also an oral participation course, as confidence in sharing literary observations is a prized value in the classroom. This class is not an essay writing class although one or two written analyses will be assigned or done in class. Team taught by two teachers, this class has a maximum number of 12 students.
Literary Analysis Grades 9-12
This class will help students “go deeper” into the literature they are exposed to in high school by giving them usable tools and methods to do so. We will show them how to go beyond the surface of literature by teaching them to ask the right questions before they search for the “right answer”. Through a method of questioning, we will teach the students how to come up with their own workable thesis statements and support those statements. Students will learn how to be prepared to use such theses and support them with the essay skills they have already acquired. This will be a great continuation of our MCA 9th and 10th grade composition courses in that many of those students understand the structure of an essay but lack the analysis and critical thinking to produce impressive content in their essays. Students will analyze poetry and short stories during the 12-hour course. During the many parent conferences that the instructors have had throughout the years, they have both observed that the majority of the “B+” students are the ones who lack deeper insight about the literature. This class will assist students in developing that insight. There will be one official paper per session and numerous annotations on assigned literature. Class is limited to 12 students. As an aside, the instructors have been known to have great fun and humor while having serious literary conversation.
