Mr. Solt
Laupahoehoe High School
The British Tradition
Aloha students and parents! I am very pleased to be teaching here in my own community, and promise to bring the very best English education I can deliver to the students of Laupahoehoe.
I believe that as we encounter and engage with the great minds of the past and present, we will cultivate and develop the great minds of the future. Attaining greatness always is the result of focus and good old-fashioned hard work�just ask any athlete. The same is true of anything we attempt to become great at, including reading, writing, and speaking in public. Every student at Laupahoehoe High school can achieve proficiency in the State standards for language arts with the right program and dedication. My goal is to prove the greatness of Laupahoehoe to the state of Hawaii on our next state assessment test. Being able to demonstrate proficiency in the basic skills of life is important for our student�s, community�s, and school�s FUTURE.
So, students and parents, we will have to focus and work together to achieve greatness. It can�t happen in a vacuum.
Instructional support can be found on the web at my classroom website:
http//:www.geocities.com/hawaiiansolt/english.html
To access a particular grade level�s assignments, click on �Class Page Login� and then type in your class name, password, and �student� or �parent�. The class name and password are the same. The password for this class is:_______________________.
Instruction will be divided into �phases� which will cover various genres or themes in literature. Each phase of instruction will incorporate these important skills:
Reading Strategies that Aid Comprehension
Literary Analysis
Vocabulary Enrichment (with a goal of adding 400 words per year)
Grammar Study
Writing Composition
Listening and Speaking Tasks
Test Taking
Using Technology
Phase One: From Legend to History (Old English and Medieval Periods)
Trend-setting literature including Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, and Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight.
Phase Two: Sonnets and Drama
Spencer and Shakespeare wax eloquent, then comes The Tragedy of Macbeth.
Phase Three: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
A lot of Johns: John Donne, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, and others.
Phase Four: The Romantic Period
Odes, Social Commentary, Wordsworth, Keats, Austen, Burns, Blake and Poe.
Phase Five: The Victorian Period
Tennyson, Browning, Dickens, Bronte, Tolstoy and Kipling.
Phase Six: The Modern and Postmodern Periods
Yeats, Eliot, Orwell, Conrad, Woolf, Lawrence, Greene, James Joyce, etc.
Students are expected to come to class prepared with all materials needed to advance their education. This includes material preparedness (such as paper, pen, homework, etc.), physical preparedness (such as hygiene, health, and eating breakfast and lunch), and mental preparedness (coming to class ready to engage, discuss, contribute, and learn). Without all three types of preparedness, the student�s education will be impaired.
Students are obviously expected to treat all in the classroom with respect and honor.
Homework will be expected the next class meeting day. All work, classwork and homework, must be completed and turned in. Late work will not receive the same credit as on time work. In the real world tasks must be completed on time.
If a student is not satisfied with a score they have earned, they may re-do the work and turn it in the very next class meeting day to be graded again. The new work must be stapled to the original work. The student will receive half credit for each wrong answer that has been corrected on the new submission.
Rewards will be based on timely completion of classwork and homework, regardless of grades earned. However, bonuses will be based on letter grades earned at the mid-quarter and end-quarter.
Level assessments will be made at the start, middle, and end of the school year to track a student�s progress.
Grades are based on points earned (like a basketball game) compared with possible points that could have been earned. The points are converted into a percentage and the letter grades assigned as follows: A=90%+, B=80-89%, C=70-79%, D=60-69%, and F=50% or less.
Please sign and date this to acknowledge receipt of this syllabus and return it to school!
Thank You!
Victor R. Solt