Describes a curriculum in which teachers and students cooperatively plan both curriculum and courses, in Newton Center, Massachusetts; a paper presented at convention of National Council of Teachers of English (Washington, D.C., November 28, 1969). (RD)

College English departments and methods courses share responsibility for the conventional nature of supposedly innovative high school English elective programs. (JH)

"Death in Literature," a nine-week elective course for high school juniors and seniors, was added to the English curriculum at a Kansas City high school in 1976. It has proved very popular with students and is being expanded to 18 weeks. The explicit objectives of the course are to help students to explore the theme of death in various types of…

This revised English curriculum guide contains descriptions of the numerous courses offered in eight South Bend high schools. A separate set of electives is presented for students in the 9th grade, and a nongraded phase program is presented for students in the 10th, 11th, and 12th grades. Course descriptions, course objectives, course content,…

Articles in this volume of the "Illinois English Bulletin" include "Competencies in Teaching English" by Alan C. Purves, which sets forth a tentative model for planning competency-based instruction and certification based on concepts, teaching acts, skills, and strategies; "Passing the Buck Versus the Teaching of English" by Dennis Q. McInerny,…

This study of curricula for English programs from 1958-1968 reviewed both secondary and primary sources, including personal interviews, solicited correspondence, unpublished material, and curriculum guides. Three somewhat conflicting models emerged from the study: (1) the content-centered approach, emphasizing the study of language, literature,…

This curriculum guide discusses the selective Language Arts program at Concord High School in the Mount Diablo Unified School District in California. Included are (1) a discussion of the philosophy behind the Language Arts program; (2) a description of the Language Arts program, which is a phase-elective, ungraded program in which the student and…

Examination of the history of secondary school English elective curricula--from their development and growth between 1962 and 1968, through their refinement and variation between 1968 and 1972, to their critical examination and decline between 1972 and 1977--can be summarized in six points. First, the curriculum was a logical development springing…

The major purpose of this dissertation is to develop a new series of courses, within an elective English curriculum, which will both enhance the immediate lives of high school students and motivate a lifelong desire to read literature. The new literature program involves a series of five courses organized on the basis of five values of literature…

This study examined the effects of two instructional practices on cognitive response to three sonnets at the sense level of comprehension. The subjects were twelfth grade students in an elective English program who had not had work in poetry that year before the experiment. One teaching method dealt with morphological, lexical, and syntactical…

This document describes the design and development of a structured elective program in English at Fayetteville-Manlius Senior High School. It provides a brief analysis of the events which caused the curriculum change, a description of the development of a modified version of the elective system, and a description of the course offerings in…

Academic anxiety, person/group relations, and subject satisfaction were investigated in three secondary schools in various stages of curriculum reform: a traditional school, a school in which a short-course elective program was being implemented, and a school in which such a program was fully implemented. Attitude measures were completed by 482…

The minimum requirements for sequential programs in the language arts and related enrichment programs recommended in this document were determined by the results of an Alabama State Department of Education survey, which ranked 60 educational goals in order of importance and in which the top five goals reflected an overwhelming concern for language…

The 11th grade English course described in this document consists of a core program for the first semester and three elective minicourses for the second semester. Emphasis in the core program is on the movements, writers, and major works which have dominated American literature as well as on the fundamentals of communication and on learning to…