To My Students
Teaching Philosophy
Language Arts ««
For Language Arts, the state has identified the skills, concepts, and applications to be mastered, which have, in turn, been organized by the state into "standards" for reading, writing, listening, and speaking; each unit of study is guided by two or more of those standards. In order to help students be more successful, before any unit of study is undertaken, the standards for that unit will be clearly identified for and by each student. In addition, each standard will be broken down into smaller, succinct parts or steps — and, yes, all students will be held accountable for the all of the vocabulary in each standard.
For a complete list of the California ELA standards, click here. In addition, El Monte City School District has identified essential standards that are to be the focus of instruction at Columbia. For a list of those standards, click here.
Students in Language Arts receive two grades: one for reading and another for writing. Reading grades are based primarily on how students read, analyze, synthesize, and respond to various texts. Writing grades are the result of writing: In other words, students who do not turn in all of their writing assignments cannot expect to receive a passing grade in writing; spelling and grammar tests can help improve a writing grade, but, by themselves, they will never be enough to earn a passing writing grade — even if the scores for every single spelling and grammar test are perfect.
On the other hand, students cannot choose to ignore spelling and grammar tests either, thereby relying only on their writing assignments for a writing grade: Perfect compositions accompanied by zeroes in spelling and grammar will result in lowering the writing grade by at least one full grade.
One other very important note: Homework and other assignments that are incomplete or messy, illegible, torn, soiled, folded, wrinkled, tagged, decorated or otherwise less than neat will not be accepted. In addition, all letters and numbers must be correctly written or the assignment will not be accepted.
Journalism and School Media
Speech and Debate
Social Studies (U.S. History)
Academic Activities
