From the Desk of Terry Mobley
Language Arts Department Chair

The teachers who comprise the language arts department at Deer Park Middle Magnet School represent a wide variety of teaching experiences. There are teachers who have taught high school, who help us to better understand what how to best prepare our students for the next steps in their educational careers. There are teachers who have a background in journalism and writing, who help us guide our students to be better writers. The language arts teachers at Deer Park work closely with each other, planning in grade level teams to provide the best possible education for our children. They meet weekly to examine student work, to evaluate what is working and to identify strategies that might be implemented to improve instruction.

The very capable language arts teachers at Deer Park Middle Magnet School adhere to the curriculum guides developed by the Baltimore County Office of Reading/Language Arts. The English Language Arts Curriculum at each grade level is designed to help students meet the educational objectives identified in the Baltimore County Public Schools’ Essential Curriculum. The Essential Curriculum is correlated with the Maryland State Content Standards, the High School Core Learning Goals, the Voluntary State Curriculum, the Maryland School Assessment, and the High School Assessment.

The Language Arts Curriculum Guides for grades six and eight are being revised during the summer of 2006 and will be implemented fully in the 2006/2007 school year. The grade seven curriculum guide was revised in 2004. All three guides are built around the Maryland Content Standards for reading, writing, language, speaking and listening. All three are designed to meet the needs of students and prepare them to read, write, think, speak, listen and act.

Imbedded in each curriculum guide are strategies for;

• Developing critical and creative thinking
• Using technology as a teaching and learning tool
• Implementing education which is multicultural
• Differentiating instructional content, processes, products and the learning environment to meet the learning needs of all students

At all three grade levels, language arts teachers provide an integrated program that includes reading, writing and language instruction (grammar, usage and mechanics), vocabulary instruction, outside reading and oral/aural presentation skills and opportunities. These components help to create a well-rounded English instructional program that is challenging and preparatory for high school and for life.

Each year students are expected to read a minimum of four major works of literature. The bulk of the reading is done outside of class, allowing class time to be used for relevant instruction. Below are tables with the names of the longer works of fiction that are currently assigned throughout the school year. Since our language arts teachers meet weekly to plan together, all of the teachers on a particular grade level usually assign the same novel at the same time. Occasionally, however, a teacher may choose an alternate selection in order to best meet the needs and/or interests of his/her students. The following is a list of novels that will most probably be assigned to the students in each grade level.

Regular (Non-GT) Students

Grade 6 Grade 7 Grade 8
Belle Prater’s Boy The Diary of Anne Frank (the 1950’s play version) Fever 1793*
Hatchet Maniac McGee Nothing But the Truth
Sadako and the 1000 Paper Cranes Out of the Dust Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Esperanza Rising* Seedfolks The Wave
Yolanda’s Genius Self-selected biography Self-selected novel

Gifted and Talented Students

Grade 6 Grade 7 Grade 8
Father’s Arcane Daughter Waiting for the Rain The Killer Angels
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer The Call of the Wild Farewell to Manzanar
The Giver Watership Down A Tale of Two Cities
Shakespeare Stealer Animal Farm The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
4 to 10 Black-Eyed Susan Award nominees The Taming of the Shrew A Midsummer Night’s Dream

In addition to the longer works, students will read and analyze short stories, personal narratives, poems and short plays. Each of our language arts classrooms is equipped with brand new sets of Glencoe Literature, an anthology that was carefully selected for its rich variety of literature and its straight forward approach to the analysis of that literature.

Throughout the year students will explore their own writing processes in an ongoing effort to identify and apply effective elements of style and writers’ craft to their own writing. They will examine reading as a process and learn to construct, examine and extend meaning as they read. Finally, they will read and analyze literature in order to create literature of their own. At Deer Park Middle Magnet School, our language arts teachers work to create an atmosphere in which purposeful reading, writing, speaking and listening take place every day. Out ultimate goal is to encourage and enable students to become lifelong readers and writers.

We teach young people how to learn so that they become independent learners.