South Side High School - Totem Yearbook (Fort Wayne, IN)

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Students Rate In Top Percentile On English Achievement You don't understand me, and I have never understood you either, quotes Sondra Stouder to Karl Krause. The two became experts in the art of puppetry to bring to life the characters Nora and Torvald of Ibsen's The Doll's House, which Sondra read for her English 8 hour-long report. 20

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ACADEMICS A puzzled look, a raised hand, a question answered — this is the cycle of intellectual curiosity encouraged by Mr. Snider. Archers rated academically far above national average, gratifying a man who believed providing a superior education to be the prime duty of a high school. 19

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Tests After Year Of M.E.'s,9' Themes, Literary Analyses To cultivate a knowledge of literature — an indispensable part of a rich life — and a skill in composition, the English Depart- ment administered a program of study to cover all phases of English literature from short stories to poetry and allowed the student to try his hand at each. For the student progressing from the days of Chaucer to the era of Hemingway, class dramatizations provided an opportunity to enact such distinguished roles as Lady Macbeth and Henry Higgins. Also aiding his study were oral reports, dealing with the authors and even the architecture of the times. In preparation for the Minimum Essentials Test, sufficient time was allotted for studying grammar. By writing a minimum of nine themes per semester, the student increased his under- standing of the parts of the sentence and their functions. Serving as an additional composition aid, the research theme, which could be constructed on any topic, acquainted him with syllogisms, note cards, the Reader's Guide, and other resources of the library. This method of permitting the student to browse through the library on his own was employed as a preparation for his advanced work in college. With the same objective in mind, a semester's training in hour-long book reports was offered. Here the student analyzed the universality of such works as Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, and Finland's Kalevala, In addition to this work, the department instructed a class in developmental reading in which the student was timed in speed reading, tested for comprehension, and introduced to 1,000 vo- cabulary words by means of group drill. With this exasperating schedule many a student had to burn the midnight oil, but he verified the excellence of the program by convincingly rating in the top one per cent of the nation on the English Composition Achievement Tests. M. E. stands for more than Marsha Ehrmann as the new sophomore learned when she struggled through the Minimum Essentials Test. Developmental reading students concentrate on the him strip being shown to train them to read important words and omit irrelevant modifiers. Each student kept a daily record of his speed and comprehension on the films so that he could note his progress and overcome his weaknesses.