Overview

Description of institution and student population
The target audience for this class is incoming freshman. Students at[| Grayslake Community School District] are largely white and middle class. Currently Grayslake Central is meeting requirements for adequate yearly progress. Additional demographic information can be found in the [|School Report Card]. The relatively small enrollment of 1266 students leads to a close-knit and cohesive student body. The mission at Grayslake District 127 is: //Students engage in challenging tasks in which they draw upon personal strengths and diverse experiences, create meaningful connections, and develop innovative problem solving skills. With the confidence and character gained from these experiences, students pursue their individual passions and participate responsibly and effectively in their communities//. This mission is taken seriously by staff, who have been revising and creating curriculum over the past two years using the [|//Understanding by Design//] framework by Grant Wiggins. The culture of District 127 is to prepare students for college and is heavily weighted toward academic preparation, using mainly traditional teaching methods. To that end, it has opened the door to Advanced Placement for more students than previously. They have had much success with this philosophy.

Course Description
This course is designed to promote summer reading, acquaint students with their peers, and to provide a foundational framework for literary analysis for incoming freshman within a supportive and collaborative atmosphere. Students will interact in an online environment, analyze the readings and learn new technologies to demonstrate their learning. This course is designed to create a bridge from eighth grade into freshman year. Its aim is to provide continuity to the summer reading to ready students for immediate immersion into their English class on the first day of school. While GCHS currently requires summer reading for all its students, the results have been mixed at least partially due to expectations and assessments being misaligned. Toward that end, the assessments for this course are have been designed with this question in mind: “Does the proposed evidence enable us to infer a student’s knowledge, skill or understanding” (Wiggins, 2005, p. 150). Further, the faculty’s belief in the value of summer reading is supported by reading researcher Stephen Krashen, who writes that reading “five extra books over the summer [equals a] a 3 percentiles gain” (2004, p.9). In addition, since, as noted above, GCHS leans toward a traditional academic curriculum. This course is designed to provide not only support for student learning, but also to serve as an exemplar for staff in the power of embracing online instructional strategies. These strategies will be provide ample formative assessment. According to Marzano “research supports the conclusion that formative classroom assessment is one of the most powerful tools a classroom teacher might use” (Marzano, 2006, p.11). Additionally, due to the frequency of feedback on these activities, students will find further support for their growth and learning, since “one of the strongest findings from the research is the frequency of assessments is related to student academic achievement” (Marzano, 2006, p.9).

Technology Needs for Participants

 * · Broadband connection
 * · Microphone
 * · Webcam (optional)
 * · Internet Explorer 7 or higher
 * · FireFox 3.6 or higher

Pre-Course Assessment
Students will take this short pre-assessment survey to gauge what their knowledge of theme in literature. The results of this survey are to be used to determine the degree of instructor guidance that will be needed in the upcoming discussion. It will also be used to decide if a theme questions board is appropriate. [|Pre-Assessment Summer Reading Survey].

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