Educational Programs at Orchard House
English
…like saplings growing in an orchard, we have within us the resources to bear fruit, to be and to feel useful and effective. Most of our own success and that of our children is experienced and demonstrated through accomplishments, the attainments of our heads and our hands, the sum total of our school, family, and career contributions.
-Mel Levine, The Myth of Laziness (2003)
In the English department, teachers believe that each student does bear fruit, and that each student wants to live a useful and effective life. The job is to guide them in putting their “heads and hands” together with their use of language. The department’s philosophy is driven by the conviction that each middle school girl thrives by engaging herself as an active and discerning reader, and by finding and strengthening her authentic voice. Middle school is seen as a time to enflame and nurture a lifelong passion for reading and writing.
Students come into the program with a wide variety of experience and ability, and teachers find that reading habits have not been formed for many girls. An open and pervasive environment of reading for the love of it is built into all class routines. In all grades, girls are given opportunities to choose their own titles for recreational reading. This instills in each girl a sense of personal control over her own literary path. Reading time takes place in the comfortable and lively English room, where girls may choose to read at a desk, to sit on a couch, or to flop onto pillows on the floor. The room’s walls are lined with books of all genres, and the room is designed to encourage the girls to explore, savor, and wade deeply into their reading. Because girls learn well in collaboration and by sharing, they absorb the endless reading possibilities available to them through student book recommendations called “Book Talks,” casual conversations within their class and cross-grade with other students, blogging, and correspondence with the teacher about their current reading. In each of these endeavors, the girls commit to a process of reading, interpreting, and sharing interpretation.
In addition to the girls’ choices for reading, specific books are chosen by the teacher as books to be read by the entire class. Students read, discuss, write about, and create projects to explore these books. The selections are chosen to develop depth of reading comprehension. Class books are read and discussed, age appropriately, for vocabulary development and analytical challenge, and for the exercise of critical thinking skills. Beginning in the fifth grade, students work to move beyond retelling of storyline to develop analysis of character and plot. Through the next three years, students continue to develop a reader’s awareness of literary device, technique, narrative voice, and reader perspective in their reading. Class readings are approached and taught in a way to cultivate students’ multiple intelligences and learning styles. In addition to many writing activities, students respond to class readings by doing various creative individual and group projects. These projects include creating visual representations of plotline or setting, making up skits to reinforce new vocabulary, designing and putting up bulletin boards to show themes and symbolism, and many other active, hands-on projects.
Early to middle adolescence is a crucial awakening time for girls: a time to experience success manipulating tools while branching ever outward in abstract thinking. Many tools, such as practice with punctuation, are consistently taught. Other abstract thinking tools are refined as well. For example, from sixth through eighth grade, girls work to recognize analogy types and to solve analogies.
This middle school time is recognized as also being a time to probe the heart and mind for connections to each girl’s life and environment. During this time, each girl can learn the power of her own voice and pen. Hence, the English program stresses practice with skillful language usage in a variety of written and spoken venues. In these different formats, each girl takes responsibility for her own learning. She has practice with stages in creative writing, such as short story writing and poetry, and with stages in analytical writing, such as persuasive or comparative essays. Peer editing and developing each girl’s comfort with interpreting rubrics play a crucial role in this process.
During this time, grammar is taught in short, absorbable units to enhance the girls’ understanding of how language works structurally. In writing workshop time, often lessons are driven by student need rather than a prescribed curriculum. Workshop time emphasizes opportunities for the girls to write and time for the girls to meet one-on-one with the teacher; the girls are challenged to discover their voice as writers while honing skills in the grammar/mechanics of writing. Whether writing about a book the class has read, a book she has individually read, researching reliable resources and documenting notes for an oral presentation or debate, or writing a persuasive essay, each girl cultivates an awareness that she has access to a world of learning, and that she, ultimately, maps her own journey.
Because middle school girls benefit from active learning environments, as well as from one-on-one engagement with the written word, students routinely alternate time spent generating and sharing their ideas in class. As students grow, they are encouraged to rely on and delight in their developing skills in reading and writing, and to understand the possibilities available to them in the written and well-spoken word. All of these foci in the English instruction are essential to girls’ successful and happy participation in the world around them.
Course descriptions for the grades may be seen by selecting one of the following:
