English - Language Arts

GUIDELINES FROM THE CARDINAL NEWMAN SOCIETY

Best Practice Suggestions for English Language Arts 

in Catholic Schools, Grades 7-12

• Introduce students to the great conversations of humanity—especially as those conversations are advanced in literary classics. Choose a majority of readings from the Great Books or recommended classics. Avoid simply selecting currently popular, scandalous, or titillating texts in the hopes of getting the students to read. Authentic engagement and lasting human and intellectual development can arise from authentic and impassioned study of the things that matter most from the greatest minds who have walked the earth.

• Read the greatest works by the greatest authors with an appropriate degree of humility and almost reverence, acknowledging that the great minds and artists have something to teach us, so as to grow in knowledge, understanding, and wisdom.

• Avoid an overemphasis on informational texts. Great Books better engage higher-order thinking skills and enhance student personal development, creativity, and engagement.

• Whenever possible, use a seminar format to discuss literature. Avoid canned materials, questions, or text units.

• Use multiple literary approaches beyond “close reading” to examine a text, such as moral analysis, or analyzing the text as an expression of the author’s philosophical and theological beliefs. Do more with the text than clinically dissect and disaggregate it. Link it with life, context, and transcendent meaning.

• Situate the study of literature within an interdisciplinary approach so that the theology, history, philosophy, beliefs, and practices of the time develop the “story” and inform the discussion of historical events.

• Writing is thinking. Exploring great literature on weighty transcendent topics invites rich opportunity for writing assignments: reflective, creative, and analytical. Take advantage of this opportunity.

• Good writing comes from good reading and good example. Use the beauty and skill evident in the works of the best writers to model and teach effective writing skills.