Using the text box on the lower left talk about this 10th Grade Curriculum Map with your teaching friends. Remember that the ultimate goal is to present the Department Chairs with ideas for raising the intellectual and academic level of the class and creating truly meaningful units for the students.

1. This curriculum map organizes English instruction around literary genres. What are the advantages and limitations of this approach? What other approaches are possible? What approach might you recommend? Why?

2. Between these two units students will be reading a play (Julius Caesar, Midsummer Night's Dream, Oedipus, Antigone) and a novel (Lord of the Flies or To Kill A Mockingbird) What issues or problems in one or more of these works might offer a starting point or points for student critical inquiry?

3. What additional materials - reading, websites, films, etc -- might be added to these texts to enrich opportunities to inquire into specific issues or problems?

4. How can you incorporate student choice into the curriculum?

5. Rather than having the research paper as a stand alone assignment, how could you incorporate different kinds of research into student inquiry into issues and problems related to the literary works?

6. What other kinds of writing would you want students to do? How could they meaningfully use digital writing resources and technologies?

7. After you have come up with some new curriculum ideas involving inquiry, look back at the standards. How do your new ideas meet and exceed the standards?

6. What would you say to teachers in the different schools of the district to encourage them to consider an inquiry approach?