For New Teachers

Are you a new teacher to English Language Arts B30? Will you be administering a departmental exam at the end of the semester? Here are some helpful hints and tips to help make your semester flow smoothly.

The objectives for ELA B30 are divided into the five strands. These objectives should be met throughout the semestSeptember 19, 2006 11:05 AMes and Learning Objectives for each English course.

It is important to focus on ELA B30 because these objectives differ from ELA A30 and are more advanced than ELA A20. Of course there are objectives that will carry over from other classes, but it is important to highlight and meet those objectives that are different.

Consult the Evergreen Curriculum for a list of the objectives for each of the English courses. You can also find all of the objectives for ELA B30 on this website with corresponding lessons in order to achieve them in your classroom.

If you are having difficulty coming up with new and creative ideas to achieve the objectives listed under the five strands, here are some Teaching-Learning Strategies found in the ELA curriculum guide for each strand.

Speaking
Reading
Writing
Listening
Viewing and Representing

The guiding questions provide an excellent starting point for the different concepts that students should learn in each sub-unit.

Students should be able to answer the guiding questions at the end of the unit using examples from the literature they have read and the activities they have completed.

An assignment that proves useful, both for practicing essay writing for the departmental exam and reviewing the concepts learned through the literature, is having the students write a five-paragraph essay using the guiding questions as a starting point. This helps students to write a theme-based essay using the literature that they have studied.

The contents of this website are designed around the Guiding Questions provided by the Evergreen Curriculum.

Teachers who are not accredited must administer a Departmental Examination created by the Saskatchewan Department of Learning. In order to prepare your students for the format of the exam, you may work through a prototype exam provided by the Department. Along with the prototype, Saskatchewan Learning provides an exam key with sample student responses to the questions.

It is important to allow a few classes near the end of the semester to focus on writing the departmental exam. It is also important to focus on essay writing with your students throughout the semester, as well as some sight reading exercises and poetry analysis.

Check out the section on Provincial Examinations on the Saskatchewan Learning website for more information.

If you have a student or students in your class that you feel would be unable to complete a Departmental Exam successfully because of weaker skills, it may be possible to assign them a modified credit for ELA B30 and give them a final exam that you have written, based on the literature that you have studied throughout the semester.

It is important to talk to the student, the guidance counsellor, the principal and the student's parents/guardians to determine if this may be an option.

It is important to note that on the Departmental Exam, there will not be any specific questions on the literature; there will simply be genre-based and theme-based questions. Students will be expected to pull from the resources they have read throughout the semester to answer the question. To prepare for this, it is useful to cover many different pieces of literature so that students have a wide variety to choose from on the exam. It is important to read a variety from each genre (short story, non-fiction, full-length drama, novel, etc) so students may have two or three choices for any given question.

When students are writing a Departmental Exam, they will be given no content marks if they reference material that is from another English Language Arts curriculum. For this reason, it is imperative that you use only selections from the ELA B30 curriculum. If you are not sure whether a selection is from the ELA B30 curriculum or another ELA curriculum, you can do a title search through the Evergreen Curriculum.

Throughout this website, we have used a variety of literature from the ELA B30 curriculum to help you in your classroom.  We have provided an intensive play and a novel study, as well as an extensive novel study.

The first section of the Departmental Exam focuses on language conventions and usage; so it is important to prepare your students. You will have to review these concepts throughout the semester.

The mini-lesson section on this website provides methods you may use to teach these concepts. Also, check out the Language Study section from the Evergreen Curriculum for concepts you should cover for each level of English.

Evaluation and Assessment can be difficult for beginning teachers.  Throughout this site, we have tried to provide evaluation tools for as many assignments as possible. 

There is a comprehensive list of the evaluation and assessment tools that we have created or adapted for this website on the useful links page.

One difficult challenge that teachers often face in their first few years is the reality that within their classes they have students who are at much different learning levels.

The adaptive dimension allows teachers to adapt within their classroom to meet the needs of students who are struggling or students who require more challenges.

We have tried to offer teachers some information about the adaptive dimension along with some practical suggestions and examples for how to adapt instruction, activities and assignments for students who require more support and students who require more challenges.

We hope this site will prove useful to both beginning and veteran teachers.  Please keep in mind that this website is meant to act as a resource and not as a course.

Why this site is only a starting point for a course:

• There are too many hours worth of lessons

• Many lessons cover the same objectives as others

• There is no overall plan of assessment and evaluation

• While lessons generally build on one another, they do not have the scope and sequence of a course.

• The lessons are generic, they are not adapted to the needs of specific students

What these lessons are good for:

• Individual lessons, tasks, or groups of lessons are designed for instruction

• The lessons are designed to meet specific learning objectives of the curriculum

• The lessons model diverse instructional methods

• The lessons include assessment tools

• The handouts are ready for classroom use

• There is additional information and many good links

We have tried to include a variety of activities, while covering all of the strands and objectives within the English Language Arts B30 Curriculum.  We believe we have developed a resource that many teachers will find valuable.  Enjoy!