Introduction to English



Course Overview
This class is designed to get you ready for English I in the Spring. It prepares you by boosting your reading skills, increasing your vocabulary, improves your language skills, betters your writing fluency, and introduces you to different types of reading and writing. Next semester, the English I course you will take is a general survey course where we study all genres of literature.  We will be focusing on analyzing writing, literary terms, vocabulary in context, reading comprehension, study skills, writing, and presenting.

One thing that will be different about our semester is that instead of being in the same room for 90 (or more) minutes, you will change rooms and be with a second teacher the rest of the period. This will allow us to have a wider variety of learning activities and will let your two teachers focus on different types of skills. Although you will have two teachers, they will work together to coordinate their lessons so that everything will work together to give you the most learning.

Course Website and Computers
mrplastersclass.com
Our class is online! We will use the website for instructional purposes such as monitoring our progress, connecting to learning resources, communicating with each other, and completing assignments. Please familiarize yourself with this website as much as possible because the more use you can make of it, the better. Our freshmen class has been blessed with our One-to-One laptop initiative, so we will have computers at our disposal on a daily basis. We will use them for drill and practice, research, and computer-based activities.

Class Rules
  1. Follow the teacher's directions.
  2. Use kind words and actions.
  3. Keep your hands, feet, and objects to yourself.
  4. Follow all school rules (Be Prompt, Be Polite, Be Prepared)
We will have very clear procedures to follow during our lessons and activities. They will be introduced and taught as needed. Other procedures will be important for our class: Always be on time because we will begin our reading lesson immediately. Avoid leaving class because every minute of class is important. I do not expect that we will encounter behavior problems in this class; this class and our class time are FAR too important to have distractions or disturbances.

Grading
We will use the schoolwide grading system to weight the grades (Tests = 50%, Homework = 10%, and Quizzes/Classwork/Other = 40%)

Materials
The following materials are needed for class. Please obtain them and bring them with you each day:
  • LOOSEleaf notebook paper
  • a binder (two inches is enough)
  • tab dividers (would be helpful)
  • pencils (required for some tests)
  • a pen
  • a set of four hi-liters (four different colors)
  • Two whiteboard markers
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