Comm. Arts, Science departments to make curricular changes

By Opinions Editor James Wendt

The Naperville District 203 School Board of Education discussed the addition of three new classes to the 2014-2015 course-planning guide on Monday, October 7^th, according to the District website.

If the changes are implemented, one new course will be added to the Communication Arts Department, along with four course name changes, and two new courses will be added to the Science Department.

Honors 3 English would be added to the course-planning guide to offer an honors option that is not an Advanced Placement (AP) course for juniors, according to Communication Arts Department Chair Helena Hitzeman.

“We thought it might be nice to have that option for juniors who may not be ready for AP or ready to commit to AP, but who really want a challenge beyond the academic level,” Hitzeman said.

Hitzeman said juniors who would take Honors English 3 should expect to see some of the same curricular standards and assessments from English 3 but with increased text complexity, workload, and synthesis associated with a weighted course.

Additionally, four classes within the Communication Arts department may also undergo name changes to align more closely with both Common Core State Standards and Naperville Central’s curriculum. Below are the new course titles within the Communication Arts Department.

Two courses at NNHS are currently titled with the words “essay writing,” which Hitzeman and her colleagues believe is an incomplete reflection of the course material because Hitzeman said the material goes beyond essay writing; it is actually teaching the art of rhetoric through argument analysis and creation. If approved, the new course title would reflect the integration of Common Core standards and would be adopted by both high schools.

Film Composition and Analysis would get a name change that would communicate that the course is a study of film as literature, not a study of film as performance. Western Humanities and NCHS’s Western Literature would also be renamed and realigned so the courses parallel each other.

Acting, Advanced Acting, and Play Production would be moved from the Communication Arts Department to the Fine Arts Department, and students would no longer be able to earn an English credit from those classes.

In the Science department, new classes, AP Physics 1 and AP Physics 2, would replace and absorb concepts from Honors Physics and AP Physics B, according to Science Department Chair Andy McWhirter. Both AP Physics 1 and 2 are year-long courses.  McWhirter said AP Physics B was too fast-paced for students, and the hope is to streamline AP Physics to be more accessible to students seeking a challenge.

“Both of these courses are accessible to average students who want to take an AP course,” McWhirter said. “What’s nice about both these AP [courses], if a students wants to challenge themselves, it’s a good class to challenge without being too overwhelming.”

McWhirter said all students should consider AP courses, but those students seeking a math-heavy, more intense physics course might take AP Physics C. AP Physics C will remain in the course-planning guide, as the class focuses heavily on Calculus. It would be the alternative to the two-year AP Physics 1 and 2 and other AP educational tracks. If students want to continue with sciences, those currently in Honors Physics would take AP Physics 2 next year.