Miles Macdonell Collegiate 40SC ELA

Mr. Martens

Welcome to 40S English Comprehensive. I am excited to have the opportunity to work with you over this next semester. The variety of learning outcomes found within this course will present challenges that will make for some rewarding and enduring experiences. While receiving this credit is important, making the most of your experience in the classroom should be your priority.

Our Learning Outcomes

Your grade for this course will be based upon your ability to successfully demonstrate each of the following 14learning outcomes throughout the year. Outcomes will be tested multiple times throughout the semester using a variety of different assignments and projects. (Outcomes may be grouped and tiered)

1.1Discover & Explore - Students will explore a range of ideas, experiences, emotions, forms of expression, and uses of language to reconsider and reaffirm their own ideas and positions.

1.2Clarify & Extend - Students will clarify and evaluate how new knowledge, ideas, experiences, and perspectives reshape and extend knowledge, ideas, and beliefs.

2.1Use Strategies & Cues - Students will use prior knowledge, comprehension strategies, cueing systems and organizational patterns to confirm meaning and develop interpretations of a variety of texts.

2.2Respond to Texts - Students will personally and critically analyze how a variety of texts, genres, interpretations, stylistic and language choices communicate intended meaning and extend understanding.

2.3Understand Forms & Techniques - Students will demonstrate an understanding of the effects of forms, genres, and techniques on content and purpose.

3.1Plan & Focus - Students will consider own and others’ expertise when working individually and in collaboration to plan and focus research.

3.2Select & Process - Students will select, process and evaluate relevant information for a specific task from prior knowledge, information sources, textual cues, organizational patterns, and cognitive and emotional appeals.

3.3Organize, Record & Evaluate - Students will organize, synthesize, and record information, ideas, and perspectives from a variety of sources to achieve desired effect and will evaluate these sources for completeness, accuracy, currency, historical context, relevance, balance of perspective, bias and effect on self and others.

4.1Generate & Focus - Students will generate and evaluate ideas, use appropriate forms, organizational structures, techniques, and transitions to focus and clarify a specific topic for audience, purpose and context.

4.2Enhance & Improve - Students will select text features, use effective language, visuals, sounds and arrangement to enhance impact, legibility, and artistry of own texts and appraise these choices in the work of others.

4.3Attend to Conventions - Students will edit, analyze, and use appropriate word choice, grammatical structures, Canadian spelling conventions, creative spellings, capitalization and punctuation conventions, and register to achieve clarity, artistry, and effectiveness.

4.4Present & Share - Students will demonstrate confidence and flexibility when presenting ideas and information by adjusting presentation plan, pace, voice, and visuals according to audience knowledge, attitudes and response. Students will also demonstrate critical listening and viewing behaviours to make inferences about presentations.

5.1Encourage, Support & Work with Others - Students will evaluate the usefulness of the group process to achieve particular goals or tasks and demonstrate commitment and flexibility when working with others by encouraging differing viewpoints, monitoring own and others’ contributions, building on others’ strengths, and recognizing how language choice can instigate or negate conflict.

5.2Develop & Celebrate Community - Students will use language and texts to strengthen a sense of community, demonstrate the value of diverse ideas and viewpoints, and identify and analyze ways in which language, culture, societal and historical factors influence texts and how texts, in turn, reflect and influence values and behaviour.

The focus of this course is comprehensive, meaning the assignments we complete and the texts that we study will be eitherTransactional (practical and functional language) orLiterary (creative and expressive language) in nature. The 14 course learning outcomes will be demonstrated through the following:

Formal Paragraph, Essayand Language Development

Personal Choice Reading and Analysis

Descriptive Writing and Personal Memoir Development

Individual & Group Presentation Development

Analysis of Othello by William Shakespeare

Individual and Group Research Projects

*Texts & Assignments are subject to change

Miles Macdonell Collegiate
English Department Assessment Protocol

The complete MMC Assessment Protocol is available on the MMC website. The information below is adapted for all English Department courses.

General Philosophy
  • teachers will provide students with clear criteria and due dates for all assignments
  • students are expected to meet criteria and due dates to be successful

Late Assignments

Teachers may respond in the following ways:

  • talk with the student about the reasons for not meeting the due date
  • set a new due date for the original assignment or alternative assignment
  • provide support for the student to meet the new due date
  • have the student complete the assignment, or an alternative, under supervision
  • deduct marks up to 5% per assignment

Final Deadlines
  • assignments not handed in by the end of a report period (term) will be coded “NHI” (not handed in) and score 0%
  • NHIs may be replaced when evidence of learning is demonstrated in a manner and timeline established between the teacher, student, parent, and English Department Head

Academic Honesty

Students are expected to complete their work honestly. Plagiarism, copying, cheating, collusion, and not citing sources are unacceptable. Teachers may respond to academic dishonesty in the following ways:

  • talk with the student to confirm dishonesty and seek an explanation
  • contact parents
  • request student to redo assignment or alternative honestly
  • where academic dishonesty involves IB assessments, student may be withdrawn from the course
  • in collaboration with the English Department Head, teachers may deduct marks to represent the percentage of the outcomes that have been compromised and grade the assignment accordingly

Academic dishonesty will be documented in the student’s cumulative file.