English at LHS
The State Board of Education requires eight credits in English Language Arts for graduation from Indiana high schools. All courses should be based on Indiana’s Academic Standards for English Language Arts. Students should not be in elective courses until they have passed the End-of-Course Assessment in grade 10.
The goal of the study of literature is to provide students with frequent and continual opportunities to:
(1) Learn and apply essential skills in reading and writing in order to read proficiently; (2) Read widely to build a better understanding of various types of texts, genres, and national and international cultures; (3) Acquire new information to enable them to meet the needs of the workplace and society as a whole; and (4) Make reading a lifelong pursuit. Literature courses must provide the skills necessary to respond to literature critically, reflectively, and imaginatively both in writing and speaking and to develop strategies for making independent critical analyses of literature.
The goal of composition is to provide students with frequent and continual opportunities to learn and apply essential writing skills, using a process that includes: (1) prewriting, (2) drafting, (3) revising, (4) editing, and (5) producing a final formal product. Strategies should include evaluating and responding to the writings of others. In addition to instruction in creating clear, coherent, and organized paragraphs and multi-paragraph essays for a variety of audiences and purposes, the courses teach strategies for collecting and transforming data for use in writing, as well as teach criteria to use in the evaluation and revision of various types of writing. Instruction in grammar, usage, and mechanics is integrated with writing instruction so that students develop a common language for editing and revising. All writing in its final publication follows accepted conventions of language, style, mechanics, and format.