1. C OMPOSTION Essential Question: What is the purpose of this course, and how will it impact my academic career?

2. D EFINE C OMPOSITION S TUDIES “Composition studies is the professional field of writing research and instruction, focusing especially on writing at the college level in the United States. In many American colleges and universities, undergraduate students must take freshman — sometimes even higher — composition courses. For example, in California, all public colleges and universities have freshman and sophomore composition courses as requirements.”

3. W HAT I S THE G OAL OF C OMPOSITION ? According to the University of Tennessee, “the primary goal of First-Year Composition is not to create a body of knowledge, but to develop and refine a process of thinking with language. Because we engage in communication daily, studying our language not only helps students succeed in college and in their careers, but also it can help students become better informed, more active members of our society and our world.”

4. W HAT IS THE GOAL OF COMPOSITION ? Ithaca College states that the “goal [of freshman composition] is to help students develop or refine the writing and reading abilities that they will need for their work in majors across campus and for successful lives as professionals and citizens.

5. W HAT I S A C OMPOSITION C OURSE ? According to the online Merriam- Webster dictionary, Freshman Composition is “an elementary composition course usually required in most colleges.” Why do colleges require a composition course? Why is it taught to freshman and sophomores? How could the course help high school students? DefinitionWhy?

6. H OW D ID THE C OMPOSITION C OURSE C OME TO PHS? Whose idea was this composition course? What are the goals of the course? Why was I selected to teach it? Will students like the course?

7. C OURSE O BJECTIVES Increase student vocabulary Rationale: students need specific vocabulary for reading the literature in both honors and AP classes, the SAT exam, college entrance exams, and the workforce. Improve student understanding of parts of speech Rationale: students with a clear understanding of word usage will be able to utilize vocabulary correctly and have a clearer understanding of both sentence construction and punctuation. Develop student arsenal of sentence styles Rationale: students who can both recognize and create a variety of structure will be more effective in their own writing and have a greater ability to analyze style in both rhetoric and literature. Increase student writing speed Rationale: the ability to write quickly reflects a students ability to think quickly, which will aid students in homework completion speed, on-demand writing, and timed testing: final exams, SAT test, college exams, AP exams, and Smarter Balance test. Refine student writing process Rationale: understanding each step of the writing process is essential to effective writing. Students who utilize the writing process well will be able to produce better final product in a shorter timeline.

8. W HAT D O S TUDENTS N EED TO D O TO P ASS W RITING R EQUIREMENTS ? According to the U. S. Department of Education,“Sixty-eight percent of [students assessed] reported writing up to three pages for their ELA homework in a typical week.” Also, “Students who write four to five pages a week for English/language arts homework score higher than those who write fewer pages.” How Much Are Most Students Writing? How Much Writing Helps Students Pass?

9. W HAT I S S MARTER B ALANCE ? Smarter Balanced assessments will go beyond multiple-choice questions to include extended response and technology enhanced items, as well as performance tasks that allow students to demonstrate critical- thinking and problem- solving skills. Performance tasks challenge students to apply their knowledge and skills to respond to complex real-world problems. They can best be described as collections of questions and activities that are coherently connected to a single theme or scenario. These activities are meant to measure capacities such as depth of understanding, writing and research skills, and complex analysis, which cannot be adequately assessed with traditional assessment questions. How Is This Test Different? What Are Performance Tasks?

10. W HAT I S R EQUIRED TO P ASS P ROFICIENCY IN W RITING ? Students writing at the Proficient level should address the tasks effectively and fully accomplish their communicative purposes. Their texts should be coherent and well structured with respect to these purposes, and they should include well-crafted and effective connections and transitions. Their ideas should be developed in a logical, clear, and effective manner. Relevant details and examples should support and extend the main ideas of the texts and contribute to their overall communicative effectiveness. Voice should be relevant to the tasks and contribute to overall communicative effectiveness.Texts should include a variety of simple, compound, and complex sentence types that contribute to overall communicative effectiveness. Words and phrases should be chosen purposefully and used skillfully to enhance the effectiveness of the texts. A solid knowledge of spelling, grammar, usage, capitalization, and punctuation should be evident throughout the texts. There may be some errors in the texts, but they should not impede meaning.