English Department

The purpose of the English department at MCHS is to foster the habits of mind, critical thinking, and literacy skills—reading, writing, listening, speaking, and digital communication—that are necessary for students’ success as engaged and informed lifelong learners in various rhetorical and creative contexts.

Contact the English Staff

Department Chair:

JaRita Steward
English Department Chair
Minooka Community High School District #111
Email JaRita Steward
Phone: 815-521-4060



"The reading and study of literature can provide moments of engagement, reflection, and remembrance in the literacy journeys of children and adolescents. We...can guide our students as they read literature from various cultural experiences and worlds and also enact literacies across the communities to which they belong. More specifically, literacy selections and conversations that reflect our country's pluralism are essential for a democracy....

Schools are sites for our students' growth and change, especially through literature that can sustain students' cultural knowledge and ways of being, knowing, and understanding themselves in the presence of the familiar, their classmates, and diverse communities. In fact, our students will meet literary characters who may change them, characters for whom they may develop empathy and with whom they form a bond, as well as characters they may be indifferent or resistant to, even characters who help them 'become citizens of the world who can make ethical decisions....'

[W]e can affirm and sustain our students' coming-of-age, cultural knowledge, and identity formation across the literary and informational texts we teach."

--R. Joseph Rodríguez, Assistant Professor California State University, Fresno
Excerpted from Leila Christenbury and Ken Lindblom's Continuing the Journey: Becoming a Better Teacher of Literature and Informational Texts

English I & Honors English I

The purpose of English I at MCHS is to focus on the foundations of literacy, including reading and analyzing texts, writing, active listening, and introductory speaking skills. Preliminary research methods are introduced, as well as editing and formatting.

Of Mice and Men

English I & Honors English I

Night

Odyssey

Romeo and Juliet

Frankenstein

Great Expectations

A Tale of Two Cities

English II & Honors English II

The purpose of English II at MCHS is to continue to build upon rhetorical strategies through reading, writing, listening, and speaking while developing information literacy and research skills.

To Kill A Mockingbird

Julius Caesar

The House on Mango Street

The Lord of the Flies

Native Son

Oedipus Rex

All Quiet on the Western Front

English III

The purpose of English III at MCHS is to aid student understanding of American literature through reading and discussion of various texts, and to develop their rhetorical, argumentative, and writing skills.

The Crucible

The Catcher in the Rye

The Great Gatsby

English IV

The purpose of English IV at MCHS is to utilize the foundation built by English I-III in order to foster scholarly application of critical thinking, rhetoric, and research by way of comprehension, composition, communication, and collaboration.

Beowulf

Canterbury Tales

Brave New World

Macbeth

Rationale of Assessing and Evaluating Student Writing

What We Value in Student Writing

The MCHS English department recently went through a process of Dynamic Criteria Mapping (DCM), a model created by Illinois State University English professor, Bob Broad. According to Broad, DCM is “a workable method by which instructors and administrators...can discover, negotiate, and publicize the rhetorical values they employ when judging students’ writing.”

This process is an effort for the English department at MCHS to be transparent with students, parents, and the community by clearly communicating what we value in student writing.

The English department annotated anonymous student essays from across grades 9-12 with each teacher noting what it is that he/she values about each essay. Next, the department met together to go through each of the essays and share our values with each other while pointing to specific examples from the student essays to illustrate our points.

Consensus was not necessary at this stage of the process. The following are some examples of the brainstorming effort:

brainstorming effort

brainstorming effort

After the initial brainstorming session, the department met again to come to consensus on what exactly we value in student writing. We developed the following categories and included the following criteria in each category:

What We Value in Student Writing

As a result of this work, each unit in English I-IV and Speech Communication that asks students to complete a writing performance task for a summative assessment will explicitly state the learning targets that students need to meet with descriptions from the criteria above about what it means to proficiently meet the learning target.

For example, when English III teachers ask students to complete a rhetorical analysis of an article or speech, they will need to demonstrate proficiency with the following learning targets:

Learning Targets

  1. I can analyze how specific details develop over the course of a text and how they shape and refine a central idea/argument.

  2. I can discuss the author’s use of evidence and reasoning.

  3. I can support and develop claims with well-chosen evidence from the text

  4. I can proficiently analyze the author’s style

  5. I can demonstrate proficient knowledge of the English language.

  6. I can effectively organize my writing.

Summative Evaluation

Single text analysis of an article or speech

To be clear, each learning target is derived from the Illinois Learning Standards, written in student friendly language as an extension of the English department’s work with DCM. In order to offer feedback to students throughout the process and ultimately evaluate students’ performance, teachers will use rubrics that explicitly state the learning targets and offer an opportunity for students to receive feedback about how they can improve, how they have met the target, and how they have exceeded the target.

For example, English III will use the following rubric for the summative performance task of a single text analysis of an article or speech:

Rhetorical Analysis Unit Summative Assessment 

The learning targets define proficiency of the performance task. The cut score for proficiency is an 80%. All scores below an 80% demonstrate a basic or limited understanding of the learning target.

Our hope is that student learning and growth toward specific targets will be more visible by explicitly communicating what students need to be able to do in order to demonstrate proficiency of a learning target. As a result, the reporting of summative writing performance task grades will be clearer because students will receive purposeful feedback about areas that need work, areas that are proficient, and areas where they have exceeded the learning targets.

References

Broad, Bob. "What We Really Value: Beyond Rubrics in Teaching and Assessing Writing" (2003). All USU Press Publications. 140. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/140

Frey, Nancy. “Making Literacy Learning Visible” (2017). Visual Learning Lab Conference. Retrieved from www.gael.org/uploads/conference_presentation/1506967755-3442db5bfbc86fcbb/Nancy%20Frey%20Keynote%20GACIS1.pdf

Wilson, J. "Write Outside the Boxes: The Single Point Rubric in the Secondary ELA Classroom" (2018). The Journal of Writing Assessment,11(1). Retrieved from http://journalofwritingassessment.org/article.php?article=126