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    High School English

    The scope and sequence for English Language Arts (ELA) instruction in the Ann Arbor Public Schools is aligned with the Michigan K-12 Standards for English Language Arts. 
     
    9th grader at board
     
    The skills and knowledge captured in the ELA Standards are designed to prepare students for life beyond the classroom. They include critical-thinking skills and the skills to closely and attentively read texts in a way that supports them understanding and enjoying complex works of literature and text as essential sources of information. Students learn to use cogent reasoning and evidence collection skills that are essential for success in college, career, and life beyond school. The ELA Standards offer a vision of what it means to be a literate person who is prepared for success in the 21st century.
     
     
    In addition, The Council of Great City Schools provides information on such topics as: 1) the progression of student learning across grade levels; 2) suggestions for helping your child at home; 3) questions to ask your child's teacher for a better understanding of your child's growth; and 4) parents may find ways to enrich a child's work at home by understanding the learning that will happen in the following year. 
    High School ELA Spanish Version: Great City Schools High School ELA Parent Roadmaps 
     
     
    Reading: Complex Texts and Growing Comprehension
    The reading standards place equal emphasis on the sophistication of what students read and the skill with which they read. Standard 10 defines a grade-by-grade “staircase” of increasing text complexity that rises from beginning reading to the college and career readiness level. With standards for reading literature and informational texts, students must also demonstrate a steadily growing proficiency in learning more from text, including making an increasing number of connections among ideas and between texts, considering a wider range of textual evidence, and becoming more sensitive to inconsistencies, ambiguities, and reasoning.
     
    Writing: Text types, Responding to Reading, and Research
    HS Group Work
    The writing standards acknowledge the fact that some writing skills, such as planning, revising, editing, and publishing, are applicable to many types of writing. Other skills are more properly defined in terms of specific writing types: arguments, informative/explanatory texts, and narratives. Standard 9 stresses the importance of the writing-reading connection by requiring students to draw upon and write about evidence from literary and informational texts. The importance of writing to most forms of inquiry is such that research standards are prominently included in this standard, though skills important to research are infused throughout the document.
     
    Speaking and Listening: Flexible Communication and Collaboration
    The speaking and listening standards require students to develop a range of broadly useful oral communication and interpersonal skills, including but not limited to skills necessary for formal presentations. Students must learn to work together, to express and listen carefully to ideas, to integrate information from oral, visual, quantitative, and media sources, to evaluate what they hear, use media and visual displays strategically in support of achieve communicative purposes, and to adapt speech to context and task.
     
    Language: Conventions, Effective Use, and Vocabulary
    The ELA standards include the essential “rules” of standard written and spoken English. They also approach language as a matter of craft and informed choice among alternatives. The vocabulary standards focus on understanding words and phrases, their relationships, and their nuances, and on acquiring new vocabulary, particularly general academic and domain-specific words and phrases. 
     
     
    9th grade group work
     
    The ELA portion of the Michigan Merit Curriculum is grounded in the Michigan ELA Standards . Appendix A includes the research that supports the key elements of the standards. Suggestions for complex text can be found in Appendix B. Student writing samples are provided in Appendix C.
     
    For additional information about course selection and possible English course sequences, see the Ann Arbor Public School Student Services Guide. 

    Typical English Sequence for Comprehensive High School:  

    9th Grade

    10th Grade

    11th Grade

    12th Grade

    English 9

     English 10

     1.0 English Elective*

     1.0 English Elective*

     

    • Acting I & II
    • Argumentation
    • Creative Writing I & II
    • Composition
    • English 11
    • English 12
    • English Language and Composition AP (11)
    • English Literature and Composition AP (12)
    • Film I & II
    • Humanities 
    • Humanities African American Literature AC
    • Journalism I & II
    • African-American Literature
    • American Literature
    • British Literature
    • Contemporary World Literature
    • Twentieth Century Literature
    • Women's Literature
    • Speech & Communication
    • TV & Radio Production I & II
    • Writing Center
    • Writing for Publication - Newspaper & Yearbook