Course+Expectations

=Course Expectations =

//Overall Goal://
The student will improve reading skills in four areas: speed, vocabulary, comprehension, and test-taking. Improvement will be measured with the **Stanford Diagnostic Test of Reading Skills**, used as a pre and post-test, as well as weekly vocabulary quizzes and a cumulative vocabulary final exam. Generally more than 90% of the students show some improvement, many by three or four grade levels. Students will also complete a Verbal SAT as a diagnostic instrument.

//Daily Expectations//
Students keep all work in a classroom folder in which they record the day’s assignment and the teacher records a daily grade. A weekly grade will be given consisting of the daily average and one weekly quiz.

• To improve speed students will complete three **Timed Readings** each week. • To improve comprehension students will read a short story or novella from the **Great Books,** levels 7-9, each week. Students will listen to oral reading at least once a week to improve vocabulary and gain a better sense of how to first imaginative construct and then analyze difficult selections. The **Great Books** inquiry method will be emphasized, encouraging students to construct their own open-ended questions and then go back to the text to answer them. Students will learn that the only really interesting questions have more than one answer, and that the teacher has no monopoly on insights into the texts. • To improve vocabulary students will read at least one outside magazine article in a challenging magazine of their own choosing each week. As a class, we will identify and be tested on twenty words to add to the students' speaking and reading vocabulary each week.