Yokohama International School English Department

Middle school course outline with guide for students

and parents
!

Aims/Objectives
The grades 6-8 English courses are designed to encourage students to plan, write,
discuss and edit their own ideas independently. Students will also become skillful,
insightful readers, viewers and listeners by encountering a wide variety of texts.  
Specific language skills are developed in terms of register, technical accuracy and
fluency. It is the aim of the YIS English Department to foster a life-long appreciation
and enjoyment of literature.

Skills
Students will be able to read, write, speak and listen in a variety of genres and for
different purposes. The development of specific language skills is integrated into
units of study as appropriate and according to the needs of the students in mixed
ability groups.

Assessment
These skills are assessed against the English subject criteria. These are:

(A) Ideas (B) Structures (C) Style & Language.

Folios of formally assessed work are maintained. These are designed to help
students, parents and teachers track the progress of student learning.  In order to
give the students the chance to demonstrate real understanding, they complete a
range of assessments, both formative and summative, over the course of a year.
These may take the familiar form of essays written in class or at home, or the
mandatory end of year examination that normally focuses on comprehension and
literary analysis skills.  However, assessment can also include a range of
interpretative, expressive and creative tasks such as posters, magazine articles, short
films, comic strips, transformations of stories, diaries or imagined responses to
fictional contexts.

How are the departmental assessment criteria used?

In middle school English classes, we encourage the students to refer to the relevant
criteria whenever they are working on an assignment. Indeed, we create individual
assessment sheets for each major task. To help the students focus on the different
skill, we create questions for them to consider as they are working. For example, for a
recent grade 6 creative writing project the questions were:

Criterion A Criterion B Criterion C

Ideas Structures Style and Language

Questions to help you Questions to help you Questions to help you

How entertaining and How well did I plan and How accurate was my
imaginative were my structure my piece of spelling, punctuation and
ideas? writing? use of tenses?

How effective was my use How varied and effective

of sentences, paragraphs was my use of language?
and dialogue (if used)?

There are ten levels for each criteria and the students assess themselves and
sometimes peer assess before the teacher adds his or her levels and comments. We
then send the assessment sheets home with the assignments to be signed by parents.
These pieces are collated by the student, creating a portfolio of their work that they
can refer to.

Individual student progress and reports

As well as viewing the portfolios that record and store all students' major assessment
pieces, parents will be sent report cards at the end of each semester. These report
cards will communicate the students’ levels in each of the three English assessment
criteria. These levels will be determined using evidence from assessments completed
during the assessment period and aim to reflect as accurately as possible the
students’ current level of performance. Our focus on the portfolio of assessed work
and the consistent use of published assessment criteria is designed to provide
students, parents and teachers with timely and accurate assessment information in
order to best support learning.

Self and peer assessment

In order to ensure the emphasis is always on the students improving their skills and
reflecting on their understanding, they assess their own work and sometimes receive
feedback from classmates. This process helps the students to use the criteria and
consider the effectiveness of their work.

Course Descriptions
Grade 6 English
Grade 6 units include a study linked to Gary Paulsen's novel, ‘The Hatchet', an
author study based on the work and ideas of Roald Dahl, a poetry unit and a ‘News’
media unit in which the students create and edit their own newspapers.

Grade 7 English
Grade 7 units include studies linked to the novel ‘Journey to Jo’Burg’ by Beverly
Naidoo and Sandra Cisneros's collection of vignettes, ‘The House on Mango Street'.
Students also study a drama text, non-fiction and poetry.

Grade 8 English
Grade 8 units start to look towards the language and literature challenges the
students will face in high school and include novel studies of S. E. Hinton's ‘The
Outsiders' and David Almond's ‘Skellig'. The students also tackle a Shakespeare play
and complete a film making unit.
Middle School Texts

The following is a fuller list of the texts we have used over recent years. These are
subject to change.

Grade 6 Grade 7 Grade 8

Hatchet’ by Gary ‘Daydreamer’ by Of Mice and Men’ by

Paulsen Ian McEwan John Steinbeck

‘Boy’ by Roald ‘The House on Mango ‘Skellig’ by David

Dahl Street’ by Sandra Almond
Cisneros
‘Axed Between ‘Macbeth’ by William
the Ears’ a poetry ‘Two Weeks With the Shakespeare (original and
selection Queen’ by Morris adapted versions)
Gleitzman, adapted by
‘The Midwife’s Mary Morris ‘A Midsummer Night’s
Apprentice’ by Dream’ by William
Karen Kushman ‘Journey to Jo'burg’ by Shakespeare
Beverley Naidoo
The poetry of Selection of short stories
Rodger McGough A selection of ballads
The poetry of William
Greek mythology Blake

Language skills
Our approach to teaching language and grammar is integrated into the units of study
that the students follow. Language skills are developed through a variety of activities
including whole class directed teaching, differentiated small group work, one-to-one
tuition and peer teaching. Students are also taught proof reading and editing skills,
and are encouraged to use their own language books to support the development of
their ability to communicate accurately and effectively.

Student websites and digital portfolios

Students use technology regularly as part of their studies in English. Recent projects
have included desktop publishing, film making and creating web pages. These tasks
always support core English literacy and literary skills as well as encouraging the
effective use of technology. Some tasks also specifically target problem solving, time-
management and collaborative skills.
Each YIS middle school student has their own website that serves as a digital
portfolio and weblog. The students use their websites for a variety of purposes
including:
• anaylsing, reviewing and recording books, films and plays they have read or seen
• presenting a point of view by writing a blog entry

• commenting on and assessing each other’s work

• displaying films, essays, posters and other media artifacts that they have created

Our approach to using these digital tools aims at enabling the students to be self-
reliant and knowledgeable users of technology and web based information. The
websites are public, but the students can password protect individual items.
Learning to use the internet responsibly and safely is a major element of this part of
the course.

YIS Website
Our course outlines are available on the public part of the school website and we
have developed the English portal pages to give us the facility to upload the task and
assessment sheets for all the major tasks in middle school English. These will be
posted on the class websites with the dates they are due to be completed.

The English Department also has its own website as part of the YIS Learning Hub.
This is used to communicate directly with students and is linked to their own
websites. Major assessment tasks and information are also stored here but the main
purpose of this site is to provide a space to post resources and host discussion as part
of our units of study.

Homework and Communication

Grade 6 students should receive approximately 60 minutes of homework a week and
grade 7 and 8 around 90 minutes of homework. Teachers may set a wide variety of
tasks to be completed at home, including reading, answering and creating questions,
editing, researching and writing.
To encourage student independence and self-reliance students use the YIS homework
diary to record homework tasks, projects, deadlines and organize themselves
generally. Please support them in using this tool as effectively as possible.

Personal reading, library skills and authors' visits

Developing and sustaining a love of reading is a key part of our programme. To
support this, the students do some silent reading in class, discuss their reading
choices with their teachers, and are developing their own reading and viewing blogs
to share and practice writing about literature.

In conjunction with the library and readathon, we organize authors' visits and
reading weeks. Award-winning writers like David Almond, Micheal Coleman and
Donna-Jo Napoli have visited us in recent years, spending time reading from, and
talking about, their work.

How can parents help students improve in English?

Parents can:
• encourage and help the students to review their work, using the questions from
the assessment sheets as a guide (this is most effective when the student is
creating the assignment)
• be an audience for any any written or oral pieces before they are due, and give

feedback on how a piece could be improved and, as much as possible, highlight

mistakes and have the students correct them themselves
• encourage the students to write rules, new vocabulary and correct spellings in
their language books
Teachers

Name Grade levels E-mail address

Susie Clifford 6 and 8 cliffords@yis.ac.jp

Colin Campbell 6,7 and 8 campbellc@yis.ac.jp

Kathleen de Vries 7 devriesk@yis.ac.jp

Trevor Kew 8 kewt@yis.ac.jp

Dan Cowan 7 cowand@yis.ac.jp

Websites

School Website http://www.yis.ac.jp/

English Department Website http://blogs.yis.ac.jp/english/

Log-in page to parent portal https://www.yis.ac.jp/userlogin.cfm

YIS Students' Websites http://blogs.yis.ac.jp/student-

portfolios-blogs/