U-46 approves new English curriculum

"Relevant" isn't usually one of the first words associated with Shakespeare's "Hamlet" or Albert Camus' "The Stranger."

It will be next year in Elgin Area School District U-46's eight middle schools and five high schools.

The school board this week approved new seventh-, eighth-, ninth- and 12th-grade English curriculums to address new state requirements and arm students with practical writing and analytical skills. Tenth- and 11th-grade English curriculums previously were approved.

Students entering high school as ninth-graders now are required by the state to take four years of language arts courses, and two years of writing intensive courses.

The seventh- and eighth-grade curriculums will focus on teaching students to read and write in a variety of genres, so that students are prepared for high school, Literacy Instruction and Learning Coordinator Susan Ali told the board.

Curriculum for the ninth grade is lined up with ACT college readiness standards, with a focus on "skills" instead of set pieces of literature, giving teachers more flexibility to use different texts at different schools.

"This is not just reading 'Romeo and Juliet,' but learning specific skills from the text," Bartlett High School English Chairwoman Jill Flanagan told the board.

Freshmen will study themes including innocence versus experience, ignorance versus enlightenment, compassion versus apathy, and free will versus fate. Classes will culminate with a "capstone" assessment, where students are expected to bring what was learned throughout the year together in one project.

Senior coursework, Bartlett High School English teacher Anthony Zoubek said, will be centered around reading and writing skills students are expected to have when they enter college. The committee writing the new curriculum, Zoubek said, heard from college professors that there should be a philosophical emphasis to students' work.

Students will explore texts and complete writing assignments centered around questions like "Who am I?", "What do I believe?", "How do I make myself heard?", and "What is my place in the world?"

Teachers finished training last week but will continue to attend curriculum workshops throughout this year, Ali said.