World Languages Curricula Grades 9-12

The World Languages Department at Norwell High School believes that all students can develop proficiency in the standards of World  Languages. 

• Communication                          
  Interpretive
  Interpersonal
  Presentational
  Intercultural
   
  • Students demonstrate understanding of multiple cultures and communities, as well as information, written or spoken, in the target language. 
  • Students engage in conversation in the target language to share information, and build empathetic and respectful connections.
  • Students use the target language to present information on a variety of topics that accounts for the diversity of their audience.
  • Students use their knowledge of target language cultures, and non-verbal communicative features to understand content and to make the content of their target language conversations and presentations comprehensible to their interlocutors or audience.
     
• Linguistic Cultures
  Cultures
  Comparisons
  • Students use the target language to investigate, explain, and reflect on: cultural products, practices, and perspectives; their own identities, and how culture shapes them; how cultures influence and interact with each other over time.
  • Students use the target language to investigate, explain, and reflect on: the concept of culture through comparisons of the culture studied and their own; the nature of language through comparisons of the language studied and their own.
     
• Lifelong Learning
  Connections
  Communities
  • Students use the target language to acquire information from target language resources and to explore diverse perspectives.
  • Students use the target language both within and beyond the classroom to: consider diverse perspectives; build empathy; contribute to strong communities; build strengths; enjoy the language; and build diverse relationships.
  • Students demonstrate self-awareness by: knowing the limits of their communicative abilities and cultural understanding, and respectfully adapting their message to their abilities; producing language that demonstrates empathy and understanding for their audience. Students demonstrate self-management by persisting and adapting their cultural skills in contexts they have not practiced or foreseen.  They take risks and they clarify the meaning of their attempts. Students use the language in a way that enhances their relationship skills through active listening, reading, or viewing, and responding respectfully and empathetically. Students make responsible decisions when choosing verbal and non-verbal messages to communicate in the target language.
  • Students demonstrate understanding of the impact language and culture have upon their own and others’ complex identities. Students respond with respectful curiosity and empathy to the history and lived experience of speakers/signers of world languages and members of many cultures. Students recognize and seek to correct stereotypes, systems, and privileges that harm speakers/signers of many languages and members of many cultures.

*Social and Emotional Well-being
*Social Justice
*Note: the skills described in the practices of Social and Emotional Well-being and Social Justice do not explicitly translate into standards. Rather they are woven through all standards.
**Per the WL MA Curriculum Framework-2021, it is recognized that students of classical languages (Latin) will demonstrate growth in interpretive reading and presentational writing, at a faster rate than other elements of the standards.

***Per the WL MA Curriculum Framework-2021, it is recognized that students of languages with diverse written representations (Arabic) likely will acquire proficiency in presentational writing and interpretive reading at a slower pace than other elements of the standards.