Re: 9th Grade Course Outline
Posted by Allison on 7/29/08
Hmm. That's about what I did this year. Our district has a
planning timeline, which I will spare you, but here's the
basic rundown:
I do grammar as a preclass activity every day M-Th from the
book "Caught'Ya: Grammar with a Giggle for High School".
Fridays we do independent reading for 20 minutes instead.
The first half of my year (through December) is short
stories, used to teach the basic elements of a story (plot,
character, setting, theme, etc.) That is when we cover the
majority of the literary terms we will need. Some poetry is
included here but mostly for the purpose of comparing themes.
You could easily do fewer short stories than I do and throw
a nonfiction unit in here - we have a couple nonfic pieces in
each chapter that relate to the fiction so that's when I do
that.
Then in Jan/Feb. we work on poetry - one or two poems a day,
teaching basic forms and vocabulary, rhyme scheme, rhythmic
patterns, and some analysis (not enough, next year I will do
more). This year I also had them do a research paper and an
oral presentation on a poet and poem of their choice. That
was mostly out of class except for a few research days. Be
prepared to teach them how to use the library, if you do
research. A lot of my students don't even know how to find
what they want in the encyclopedia.
After poetry we read Fahrenheit 451 or another novel. In
this unit we talk about how the author's life and the time he
lived in affect what he writes about.
Then around the end of March we do the Odyssey, which is my
favorite thing to teach :) That's about 4-5 weeks (we read
the condensed version, except for my honors class, and then I
show either the Hallmark version or O Brother Where Art
Thou?) Then the last thing we do is RnJ, sort of late April
through early June, although I'm thinking about moving it
earlier as we never seem to be quite done by the time the
kids are sick of school (not the same as the end of the
school year :))
I am still working on fitting vocab into all of that. We do
a little with each story in the beginning of the year but
then it kind of disappears. I am going to try teaching root
words this year instead of whole formal vocab units.
Hope some of that helps!
> I need to cover: weekly vocab, grammar, short stories,
> nonfiction, poetry (mostly terms and response), R & J, The
> Odyssey, and a novel.
>
> Thank you in advance! Here's to a more organized
> year. : )
>
Posts on this thread, including this one
- 9th Grade Course Outline, 7/28/08, by Christy.
- Re: 9th Grade Course Outline, 7/29/08, by Allison.
- Re: 9th Grade Course Outline, 7/31/08, by Raftery.
- Re: 9th Grade Course Outline, 7/31/08, by another 2nd year 9th grade teacher.
- Re: 9th Grade Course Outline, 8/02/08, by Cristy.
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