English Language Arts for YouthBuild McLean County

It's been a few years since I've updated the IFP page here, but I've been very busy with teaching in the meantime.  Currently, I'm developing two online teaching resources.  The fun part about developing new websites is figuring just how best to convey information, but it's also a major challenge trying to make everything work together coherently.  This is especially a challenge when building lesson plans — it's difficult trying to scaffold the material in a way that students will easily understand the content so they can apply new skills toward their assignments.

Here's a look at the main curriculum page I'm building right now as part of my teaching position at YouthBuild McLean County (YBMC):

English Language Arts Curriculum

On this website, I'm building the core curriculum for high school students attending a vocational charter school.  Given the nontraditional and asynchronous approaches we take toward education, it can be difficult finding common interests among our students.  We have new students entering our program four times a year, and each student arrives with different needs and expectations, so I'm putting together a wide variety of courses that follow a modular format.  With the modular format, students can enter a course at any point, learn a key skill, and then apply that skill to a given task.  This way, we can have workshops with groups of students who may be at very different points in their learning.