Menlo-Atherton High School

• 555 Middlefield Road Atherton, CA 94027
• 650.322.5311

 

Typical Writing Per Quarter:  Students should anticipate writing at least 1 narrative and 1 essay each quarter, in addition to several paragraph assignments, journals, Canvas discussions, and writing mini-lessons that focus on evidence selection, citation, and analysis.
Writing assignments are both process and on-demand.

 

Typical Weekly Reading (pages):  Students should expect to read about 30 minutes a night between class periods. This would be between 5-20 pages depending on the complexity of the text. Students should also expect to complete a graphic organizer, journal, or reflection that synthesizes ideas from the text and prepares them for discussion in class.

 

This course develops students’ critical thinking about the world and texts around them through engagement with a variety of literary texts and assessments.  Students will read memoirs, plays, novels, poems, essays, and short stories and be expected to analyze their thematic complexity and relevance through graded discussions, projects, reading assessments, and expository essays.   Students will also write fictional and autobiographical narratives. The assessments and activities are designed to challenge students who are reading above grade level and provide scaffolded writing and reading strategies for students who need structured support. Direct instruction will also be provided for language and vocabulary development.

 

● Autobiographical Narrative
● Science Fiction Short Stories
● Night
● Identity Essays and Narrative
● Human Migration and Journalism
through Enrique’s Journey
● The Odyssey and World Myths
● Drama

 

 

 

This is a students’ second period of English instruction in addition to English I:  Multicultural Literature and Voice.

 

Sample Reading List and Brief Description: 

Students in this class use their extra time to work on specific writing and more advanced reading skills. Careful attention is devoted to grammar instruction and essay-writing mechanics. We also develop more acute reading skills by focusing on vocabulary, making text-based inferences, and analyzing challenging texts.

● Extra grammar and writing instruction
● Outside Reading Projects
● District reading curriculum and reading
assessments

 

 

 

The program uses a reciprocal teaching model of learning which emphasizes base skills in questioning, summary, clarification, and prediction in order to build to more advanced levels of reading and writing.