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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Each grade in high school has the same English teacher so that is the entire class load, you can see exactly how many students the teacher has based on how many kids are in that grade and all kids in a grade are getting the exact same instruction unless some are doing the AP track (which is usually offered the same time as the regular class, with extra assignments and some in-class breakouts). Some English teachers also teach an elective like film or Shakespeare.

H-B focuses a lot on research and writing. They do year-long projects where they break down how to write a long paper, they spend a whole year doing an English research paper in 9th and a whole year doing a paper on a historic person in 10th. They also spend a lot of time on different kinds of writing--persuasive, descriptive, argumentative, etc. Science classes also require papers.

But what I really appreciated was the very structured approach to writing in English classes, to help them develop the skills to develop college-length research papers: they had to develop a topic, come up with research questions, then an outline, then an introduction, then the body, write the paper, and do a presentation--all over two semesters with a very specific rubric and feedback at each step.

[/quote]

This is really helpful, thank you. 
Can anyone comment on whether other APS schools assign similar year-long writing projects?[/quote]

At WHS, you will get this in AP Seminar and AP Research and potentially with Senior Project, depending on what the student chooses to do for their project. Most, I believe, are not long research papers per se; but a year-long project. As far as the different kinds of writing mentioned above, yes; though much more intensely in the AP English classes. There are science reports; but I wouldn't consider them frequent or extensive (at least in the gen ed and intensified courses we've seen so far). History classes will also focus on research, citations, arguments, etc. But the bulk of writing instruction and experience (as it should be) is in the ELA department. Unfortunately, you have to take AP to do those long research papers.[/quote]

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