At the heart of Open Up Resources’ HS ELA offering Odell Education High School Literacy Program is a student-centered focus on course content with student-led analysis of rich, robust texts and topics that fill the curriculum.
The program is built to empower students by inquiring deeply, posing questions, reflecting on the content and discussion, and inevitably evolving as independent thinkers. These students become engaged students in their learning community, enabling them to become engaged citizens in their own communities.
Odell Education High School Literacy Program acknowledges that each student has his or her own personal, cultural and academic background. Regardless of the students’ reading levels, they each bring a unique set of knowledge and skills to the classroom. This curriculum provides substantial collaborative opportunities for students to learn from each other.
Key Student Benefits
This curriculum allows students to develop a deep knowledge of diverse ideas, perspectives and literature by conducting their own analyses supported by textual evidence. Odell Education High School Literacy Program explores a wide variety of classic and contemporary authors and other texts with content important for high school students (such as trade books and licensed articles), and that will prepare them to thrive in a world full of different ideas and means of expression.
Students collaborate on meaningful tasks that reflect on their learning, enabling them to transfer skills and knowledge to new tasks, problems and scenarios. This curriculum emphasizes active learning through inquiry, which plays a vital role in preparing students for college, workforce training, civic participation in a democratic society as well as in their own self-actualized lives. Odell Education High School Literacy Program allows students to take ownership of their inquiry by providing opportunity for student-generated questions that guide research, or during activities such as Socratic seminars.
Students dive into questions with multiple answers and explore their meanings together. Each student can bring his or her own knowledge of the texts and topics to the table, while also acknowledging and considering the perspectives of peers. By collaborating with other students regularly in research and argumentation, they are able to take charge of their own literacy development.
Because of the highly effective scaffolding and support, students of all reading levels are able to access and analyze grade-level texts. The program contains a variety of tools to help students build a robust body of vocabulary and incorporate vocabulary into their own writing and speech.
Meaningful Student Collaboration
Students create a learning community where they work together on a yearlong project and actively participate in community-based learning throughout the school year in group and class discussions, and in research teams.
The year begins with a Foundation Unit where the newly established learning community determines goals, such as “Who changes the world?” and “What does it mean to be an American?”
Later, the learning community moves through the Development Units that have both independent and collaborative learning opportunities. Students work together through texts to explore important topics that stoke critical thinking such as public health or feeding the world.
Each unit concludes with a Culminating Task that is either written or presented in which students use text to support their conclusions, analyses, or evaluations. This may be done individually or in groups. In each section, students have opportunities to practice writing and speaking in writing tasks that focus on one or several aspects of writing, or in discussions with their peers.
As the year comes to a close, students can apply their abilities to their wider school community through an Application Unit. Students choose a topic important to them, form teams, and later present their research to the school.
Supporting Diverse Learning Needs
Students might read below or above their grade level for a myriad of reasons, such as a disability or acquiring English as an additional language. Some students may read at grade level but struggle with writing. Others may struggle with reading but excel at speaking and presenting. The learning needs of students are diverse, and it is important that an ELA curriculum can meet each student where they are.
The Odell High School Literacy Program supports the needs of all students—students whose work is at grade level, students whose work is below the expectations of the grade level, students who are English learners, students with disabilities (identified or not), and students whose work exceeds the expectations for grade-level mastery.
To learn more about how the Odell High School Literacy Program can benefit students at your school, contact us today.