Springboard Curriculum
Our new curriculum is divided into units. Each unit relates back to our year-long theme, "Choices". The pacing suggests one unit per grading period. Obviously, this may change depending on the students' progress and understanding of the concepts. Below you can see a contextual outline for each unit.
Unit 1
In this unit, students explore the art of storytelling as readers and writers. They encounter contemporary and classic stories about choices and consequences, and they write about their own real and imagined experiences. Students think figuratively and creatively, and they learn to appreciate the writer’s craft through their study and practice. Through attentive study of a published author’s style and craft, students are encouraged to emulate the writing style and techniques in the original narratives and myths they will write.
Unit 2
This unit shifts from the art of storytelling to the craft of informing, explaining, and convincing. Students learn to generate ideas through close reading, purposeful research, and productive collaboration. After learning how to write effective explanatory texts, students build on this knowledge to create convincing argumentative texts on relevant and engaging topics that focus on the issue of targeted marketing of products to youths.
Unit 3
This unit explores the idea of choices and consequences through a novel that focuses on one young man’s emerging realizations about himself, his family, and the society he lives in. Tangerine takes Paul Fisher, a visually impaired soccer player, on a personal journey of self-discovery. As Paul encounters environmental disasters small and large, he is able to face some personal disasters that plague his sense of self. His move into a new neighborhood and a new school allows him to unlock secrets about himself and to discover new self-confidence and strength to face the fears that have kept him a prisoner of the “zombie.” In this unit, students interpret, analyze, and evaluate a novel in terms of point of view, character, structure, and other key literary elements that create a unique text. Students analyze the choices made by the characters in the novel and relate the concept of choices and consequences to their own lives and the lives of prominent leaders whose choices have made positive impacts on society and the world.
Unit 4
In this unit, students explore a range of contemporary and classic poems, monologues, and dialogues to refine their understanding of how writers use language for effect. Students learn how to take their understanding of the written word and express meaning through vocal and visual delivery. Students have worked on collaboration skills all year, and in this unit they will collaborate to perform an original monologue as well as selected scenes from the comedy Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare.