Hello visitors!

1. My contact information:
 email: shelleKL@pwcs.edu   Phone: (703)594-2161  Room: 2215

2. Office hours: Monday thru Friday from 2 to 3 pm, by appointment only.  Please email me at shelleKL@pwcs.edu to secure a time.  This is important to ensure there are no other meetings scheduled during that time.

3. Syllabus:
Please click on the link called "files and documents" to access the course syllabi

4. All course schedules and calendars can be found on my web-page:
www.english-language-arts.com

I am proud to say that I have been a Tiger since 2005. Go Tigers! In addition to teaching English at the best school in the world, I also enjoy being a teacher consultant for the Northern Virginia Writing Project.  In my spare time, I chase down opportunities to write and get published! And, when I am not pounding the keys trying to finish my first novel, I am tending to my indoor plant collection.  I am a huge lover of plants, and some might say plant obsessed!   Another favorite side-line of mine is photography.  On the weekends, you'll catch me taking pictures from my kayak or somewhere miles and miles on a trail in the mountains snapping pictures.  Autumn is the all-time best season to be out, intermingling with the vibrant colored leaves and spicy cinnamon scent, a hallmark of the season.  On these adventures, I am never short on company.  I have five excellent teammates on my managing crew (my five kids, ha ha).  If you'd like to see my photography, check out my website at www.artluxxy.com.  

STANDARDS LEARNED THIS YEAR

Below, please note that each of the strands were learned by students during various activities and assignments throughout the school year during Quarter 1, Quarter 2, and Quarter 3.  Below is a breakdown of which quarter each standard was the focus.  Students began reading literature in the Medieval Literary Movement and moved through all literary movements leading up to Modernism.  During these literary movements and units, various skills were learned, practiced, and assessed.  Students examined and analyzed literature from each time period and produced essays, projects, and engaged in various formative and summative assessments.

QUARTER 1:

12.1 The student will make planned persuasive/argumentative, multimodal, interactive presentations collaboratively and individually.

• Select and effectively use multimodal tools to design and develop presentation content.
• Credit information sources.
• Demonstrate the ability to work collaboratively with diverse teams.
• Anticipate and address alternative or opposing perspectives and counterclaims.
• Evaluate the various techniques used to construct arguments in multimodal presentations.
• Use a variety of strategies to listen actively and speak using appropriate discussion rules with awareness of verbal and nonverbal cues.
• Critique effectiveness of multimodal presentations.
• Recognize rhetoric as the art of persuasion and understand how to evaluate and critique content and delivery of presentations.
• Choose appropriate vocabulary, language, and tone for the selected topic, purpose,context, and audience use a variety of primary and secondary sources of information.
• Examine and evaluate strengths and weaknesses when participating in small-group presentations.

• Evaluate the overall effectiveness of a group’s preparation and presentation.
• Make compromises to accomplish a common goal(s) and reach consensus
• Evaluate the content of presentation(s) including introduction, organization, strengths/weaknesses in evidence and reasoning, and conclusion
• Monitor audience feedback, engagement, and understanding, to and adjust delivery accordingly.

12.2 The student will examine how values and points of view are included or excluded and how media influences beliefs and behaviors.

• Describe possible cause and effect relationships between mass media coverage and public opinion trends.
• Evaluate media sources for relationships between intent and factual content.
• Evaluate the motives (e.g., social, commercial, political) behind media presentation(s).
• Examine how values and viewpoints are included or excluded and how the media can influence beliefs, behaviors, and interpretations.
• Evaluate sources including advertisements, editorials, political cartoons, and feature stories for relationships between intent and factual content.
• Manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information.
• Demonstrate ethical use of the Internet when evaluating or producing creative or informational media messages.
• Recognize that media messages express points of view and contain values to influence the beliefs and behaviors of the intended audience.
• Understand the difference between objectivity, or fact, and subjectivity, or bias, in media messages.
• Understand the intentional use of persuasive language and word connotations to convey viewpoint and bias.
• Organize knowledge and display learning using visual images, text, graphics, and/or music to create media messages with visual, audio, and graphic effects.
• Evaluate media messages for content, intent, and impact
• Analyze and critique how media reach the targeted audience for specific purposes
• Analyze media to determine the cause/ effect relationship(s) between media coverage and public opinion trends.
• Analyze how the media’s use of symbol, imagery, metaphor, and bias affects the message.
• Avoid plagiarism by giving credit whenever using another person’s media, facts, statistics, graphics, images, music and sounds, quotations, or paraphrases of another person’s words.

12.3 The student will apply knowledge of word origins, derivations, and figurative language to extend vocabulary development in authentic texts.

• Use structural analysis of roots, affixes, synonyms, and antonyms, to understand complex words.
• Use context, structure, and connotations to determine meanings of words and phrases.
• Discriminate between connotative and denotative meanings and interpret the connotation.
• Explain the meaning of common idioms, and literary and classical allusions in text.
• Extend general and cross-curricular vocabulary through speaking, listening, reading, and writing.

• Recognize that words have nuances of meaning and that understanding the connotations and Recognize how figurative language enriches text.
• Understand that allusions are used to assist readers in providing connections to other works or historical events.

• Demonstrate an understanding of and explain the use of common idioms.
• Use prior reading knowledge and other study to identify and explain the meaning of allusions.
• Interpret figures of speech (e.g., overstatement, paradox) in context and analyze their role in the text.
• Analyze positive and negative connotations of words with similar denotations.
• Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, and connotations in word meanings.

QUARTER 1 - 3:

12.4 The student will read, comprehend, and analyze the development of British literature and literature of other cultures.

• Compare and contrast the development of British literature in its historical context.
• Analyze how authors use key literary elements to contribute to meaning and interpret
• how themes are connected across texts.
• Compare/contrast details in literary and informational nonfiction texts.
• Interpret the social and cultural function of British literature.
• Interpret how the sound and imagery of poetry support the subject, mood, and theme, and appeal to the reader’s senses.
• Compare and contrast traditional and contemporary poems from many cultures.
• Evaluate how dramatic conventions contribute to the theme and effect of plays from American, British, and other cultures.
• Use critical thinking to generate and respond logically to literal, inferential, and evaluative questions about the text(s).
• Understand characteristics and cultures of historical periods and how the literature reflects those characteristics and cultures.
• Understand diction affects the tone of literature.
• Analyze texts to identify the author’s attitudes, viewpoints, and beliefs and critique how these relate to larger historical, social, and cultural contexts.
• Recognize major themes and issues related to: religious diversity; political struggles; ethnic and cultural mores and traditions; and individual rights, gender equity, and civil rights.
• Differentiate between what is directly stated in a text from what is intended or implied because of the use of satire, sarcasm, irony, or understatement.
• Compare and contrast two or more texts on the same topic or with similar themes.
• Use evidence from the text(s) for support when drawing conclusions, making inferences.
• Demonstrate comprehension and apply writing strategies to analyze and reflect upon about what is read.

QUARTER 2:
The student will read, interpret, analyze, and evaluate a variety of nonfiction texts.

• Use critical thinking to generate and respond logically to literal, inferential, and evaluative questions about the text(s).
• Identify and synthesize resources to make decisions, complete tasks, and solve specific problems.
• Analyze multiple texts addressing the same topic to determine how authors reach similar or different conclusions.
• Recognize and analyze use of ambiguity, contradiction, paradox, irony, overstatement, and understatement in text.
• Analyze false premises claims, counterclaims, and other evidence in persuasive writing.
• Understand that background knowledge may be necessary to understand handbooks and manuals.
• Understand a variety of persuasive techniques and rhetorical devices
• Recognize the text structure of informational and technical writing
• Understand how format and style in informational text differ from those in narrative and expository texts.
• Understand that skilled readers of nonfiction texts and technical documents apply different reading strategies.
• Analyze the vocabulary (jargon, technical terminology, and content-specific) of informational texts from various academic disciplines in order to clarify understanding.
• Analyze how authors use rhetorical devices to create ethos, pathos, and logos.
• Organize and synthesize information from two texts while maintaining the intended purpose of each original text
• Analyze how authors use rhetoric to advance their point of view
• Identify different formats and purposes of informational and technical texts
• Recognize the non-linear, fragmented, and graphic elements found in informational and technical writing.
• Demonstrate comprehension and apply strategies to write about what is read.
• Identify the resources needed to address specific problems and synthesize new information to make decisions and complete tasks such as: completing employment, college, and financial applications; compiling resumes; creating portfolios etc.

12.6 The student will write in a variety of forms to include persuasive/argumentative reflective,

interpretive, and analytic with an emphasis on persuasion/argumentation.

• Apply components of a recursive writing process for multiple purposes to create a focused, organized, and coherent piece of writing to address a specific audience and purpose.
• Produce arguments in writing that develop a thesis to demonstrate knowledgeable judgments, address counterclaims, and provide effective conclusions.
• Use a variety of rhetorical strategies to clarify and defend a position organizing claims, counterclaims, and evidence in a sustained and logical sequence.
• Blend multiple forms of writing including embedding a narrative to produce effective essays.
• Adapt evidence, vocabulary, voice, and tone to audience, purpose, and situation.
• Use words, phrases, clauses, and varied syntax to connect all parts of the argument creating cohesion from the information presented.
• Revise writing for clarity of content, depth of information, and technique of presentation.
• Write and revise to a standard acceptable both in the workplace and in postsecondary education.
• Write to clearly describe personal qualifications for potential occupational or educational opportunities.
• Understand that writing requires a recursive process that includes planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing.
• Understand that effective writing should be purposefully crafted with attention to
• Deliberate word choice, precise information, and vocabulary.
• Understand the features of the domains of writing including composing, written
• Expression, and usage/mechanics are essential to quality writing.
• Understand that voice and tone must be developed with awareness of audience and purpose.
• Demonstrate the craft of writing as persuasive/argumentative, reflective, interpretive or analytical.
• Develop and apply embedded narrative techniques, such as dialogue, description, and pacing to develop experiences and enhance writing.
• Refine the thesis by considering whether the claim is logical, meaningful, and expresses the writer’s position in an argument.
• Use embedded clauses for sentence variety.
• Write persuasively/argumentatively organizing reasons logically and effectively.
• Analyze sources and determine the best information to support a position/argument.
• Utilize credible, current research and expert opinions to support a position/argument.
• Identify counterclaims and identify counter-arguments that address claims.
• Compare/contrast and select evidence from multiple texts to strengthen a position/argument
• Revise writing for clarity and quality of information to effectively match the intended audience and purpose of a workplace and/or postsecondary education.
• Anticipate and address the counterevidence, counterclaims, and counterarguments.
• Use effective rhetorical appeals, to establish credibility and persuade intended audience.
• Develop technical writings (e.g., job description, questionnaire, job application, or business communication) that address clearly identified audiences and have clearly identified purposes.
• Complete employment forms (e.g. resume, personal qualifications in a letter of application)
• Complete applications, essays, and résumés for college admission develop analytical essays that examine and evaluate processes/problems, develop claim(s) and counterclaims thoroughly, supplying the most relevant data and evidence for each while pointing out the strengths and limitations of both.
• Create cohesion, and clarify the relationships between claim(s) and reasons, between reasons and evidence, and between claim(s) and counterclaims
• Apply persuasive rhetorical devices and techniques
• Recognize and avoid common logical fallacies or false premises.
• Assess and strengthen the quality of writing through revision

  QUARTER 3:

  12.7 The student will self- and peer-edit writing for Standard English.

• Use complex sentence structure to infuse sentence variety in writing.
• Edit, proofread, and prepare writing for intended audience and purpose.
• Use a style manual, such as that of the Modern Language Association (MLA) to apply rules for punctuation and formatting of direct quotations.
• Understand grammatical conventions adjust sentence and paragraph structures for a variety of purposes and audiences.
• Use a variety of strategies to evaluate whether the draft is effectively supported and adequately developed.
• Edit both one’s own and others’ work for grammar, style and tone appropriate to audience, purpose and context
• Apply current MLA or APA style for punctuation conventions and formatting direct quotations, particularly for in-text citation in documented papers.

12.8 The student will analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and organize information from a variety of credible resources to produce a research product.

• Frame, analyze, and synthesize information to solve problems, answer questions, and generate new knowledge.
• Analyze information gathered from diverse sources by identifying misconceptions, main and supporting ideas, conflicting information, point of view, or bias.
• Critically evaluate the accuracy, quality, and validity of the information.
• Cite sources for both quoted and paraphrased ideas using a standard method of documentation, such as that of the Modern Language Association (MLA)
• Define the meaning and consequences of plagiarism and follow ethical and legal guidelines for gathering and using information.
• Demonstrate ethical use of the Internet.
• Understand that using a standard form of documentation legally protects the intellectual property of writers.
• Understand to avoid plagiarism, credit must be given when using another person’s ideas, opinions, facts, statistics, or graphics.
• Understand that there are consequences of plagiarism according to the guidelines established by local school divisions and the law.
• Understand the ethical issues and responsibility of documentation in research.
• Collect, evaluate, analyze and synthesize relevant information, using a variety of primary and secondary sources.
• Evaluate collected information sources by determining its validity, accuracy, credibility, reliability, consistency, and limitations; identifying misconceptions, conflicting information, point of view and/or bias; and formulating a reason/focus to represent findings.
• Organize information by prioritizing and synthesizing information; summarizing and/or paraphrasing information; and selecting direct quotations.
• Cite sources of information to avoid plagiarism when paraphrasing, summarizing,
• Quoting, or inserting graphics, using MLA