Dear Prospective Language Arts Teachers,

I write to you with a request for help. Last year, our school did not
meet Annual Yearly Progress in accordance with the national No Child
Left Behind legislation. Because of low attendance rates and Schools of
Choice, which allows parents to remove their children from a failing
school, our numbers have dwindled. As you can see from the attached
Standards and Poors data, our writing scores are especially low in relation
to the district and state.

Our only hope is to improve our Language Arts program by

establishing a rigorous curriculum that is also motivating for students. As
pre-service teachers, you are poised on the boundary between the world of
students and the world of educators. Who better to advise us as we decide
what is of value in our Language Arts curriculum?

Below are two resolutions we are considering for Grades 9 and 10

as part of this revision process. We hope you will take the time to share
your suggestions and your reasoning with us. For your reference, we have
attached a list of our last year’s required curricular texts for these grade
levels.

• Resolution 1: Writing curriculum will emphasize timed writing

to commonly-used test prompts

• Resolution 2: Grade levels will adopt common writing

assignments and standardized rubrics

Thank you for your input; we look forward to your responses!

Sincerely,

Sherry Michaels
Vice-Principal
Detroit Area Middle/High School
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Detroit Area Middle/High School▪2009 Spartan Street▪Detroit, Michigan 40780

From http://www.schoolmatters.com/...
9th grade required texts, 2004-2005

Animal Farm - Orwell

Antigone - Sophocles
Fahrenheit 451 – Bradbury
Of Mice and Men - Steinbeck
Romeo and Juliet – Shakespeare

10th grade required texts, 2004-2005

Macbeth - Shakespeare
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Twain
The Crucible - Miller
The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald