English 10, Second Semester

Course Overview

This course continues the first semester course, and is designed to help you develop your writing, critical thinking and reading skills. All assignments and assessments are aligned to the English 10 Indiana Language Arts Standards, and each lesson will tell you which standard/s we are tackling. Assignments include reading, writing, and speaking; independent and collaborative work; and low-stakes and high-stakes writing assignments.

Organized to allow a flexible schedule, pacing guidelines and suggested benchmarks are provided to help students maximize their learning and earn their course credit in a timely way. Students can expect to interact with peers as well as to receive regular constructive feedback from their teacher. The course provides learning experiences focused on Indiana state literature and composition standards. The course content is designed to lead students towards a final capstone project of creating their own podcast.

This course is designed for high-school sophomores.
Please note that Cooperative courses are restricted to teen-age students only; you must be under 19½ at the time of registration.

View a demo version of the course at https://iu.instructure.com/courses/2197653

Prerequisite

One semester of English 10, or Sophomore-level English equivalent.

Required Materials

While there is no required textbook, the course is centered around the book Sugar Changed the World.

• You can find the book's full information on Amazon.com by clicking here.
• You can check out an e-book version of Sugar Changed the World, by clicking here. You will need to set up an account with Open Library to check out the book, but both the account and the book are free.

We don't have a textbook, because, quite simply, we don't need one. In an online classroom, we can find plenty of good information open-source (free), which saves you money and hassle. The class is aligned to Indiana's learning standards, so it's not just literature based. Actually, it's very skill-based. It will teach you how to do some new things and how to do some old things better...instead of just having you read literature and write about it, although (of course) we will do some of that, too!

In this class, we will practice conducting academic research. Academic research is not exactly the same as general "internet searches," although it can be done online.  You will be required to gain access to an online academic database. This can be done in a variety of ways, and none of them cost any money! Various options will be provided.