English department meeting

August 26, 2015

Upcoming professional conferences
The annual UCTE Annual Conference is Friday, November 13 at the
Jordan Commons. Linda Simpson will be presenting. The following
people have expressed an interest in attending:
1. Jeff Baird
2. Linda Simpson
3. Chris McGill
4. Bryan Jeffreys
5. Matt Vanderlaan
The annual NCTE Annual Convention will be held November 19-22 in
Minneapolis. Chris Sloan will be presenting at this conference.
International students
We value our international students at Judge, but we feel that we might
better serve them with a slight modification of our curriculum. Some
international students are not able to understand basic directions and
their writing needs a lot of work. Would it be possible to offer a ESLtype support course (of SIOP) to help students learn academic English?
Or could this be offered as an elective for the international students
who are not yet proficient in English? Once they meet a certain level of
proficiency, they would be done with the class.
Q: is there data on international students reading level or writing
proficiency exam results that might help us better understand their
level of English language proficiency?
Library server
Ninth grade teachers, intro to library. Dont bring students before
September 4 because the server in the library isnt working properly.
Membean
Students need to create new passwords and they will be able to use
the same account from previous years. Other than that, things are
going smoothly
Book orders

No one in the department has expressed any problems with books.

Although most of us are still having students discuss and write about
summer reading books, so it might be too soon to tell.
AP placement and course load
The department feels that the course load seems to be fine.