D840 Teaching English Language Arts in Secondary Schools, catalog number EDUC 6069, is the two-CU methods course on designing English language arts experiences for middle and high school students, and it begins where most candidates do not expect: oral communication. Speaking and listening are standards in their own right, not warm-ups for writing. A plan that treats discussion as a way to fill ten minutes before the real lesson misses the aspect the course opens with.
Speaking, listening and the integrated ELA lesson
Oral communication is assessable, and that is the first thing this course asks you to accept. Frameworks name specific speaking and listening outcomes: presenting information so an audience can follow it, participating in collaborative discussion, evaluating a speaker's evidence and reasoning, adapting speech to context. Each of those can be taught explicitly and observed with criteria. A plan that includes a discussion but has no way to say whether the discussion met a standard has treated it as an activity rather than as instruction.
The second demand is integration. English language arts is one subject with several strands, and secondary lessons usually carry more than one: students read a text, discuss it, then write about it. Rubric aspects often ask you to show how the strands support each other rather than sitting side by side. Discussion that surfaces the evidence students will later cite in writing is integration; discussion followed by unrelated writing is a sequence of tasks.
The third is design for a real range of learners. Middle and high school classrooms include students who will not speak in a whole-class setting, students still developing English, and students whose written performance far exceeds their spoken confidence or the reverse. Aspects that mention supports or engagement are asking what structure you would use so that participation is not optional for the quiet and not dominated by the loud.
Turning scored aspects into a lesson design
The scoring detail lives in your Course of Study. Read it before you design anything, because in this course the aspects usually determine which strands your lesson has to include and whether speaking has to be assessed rather than merely used.
Aspects score independently against a three-point scale and each needs a 2. In an integrated lesson that has a specific implication: the strand you find easiest to write about cannot carry the ones you rushed. If the plan includes discussion, the discussion needs its own criteria, its own structure and its own place in the assessment section.
The word budget, worked. Take five scored aspects and directions asking for about 1,600 words. Reserve 120 for the class context and 100 for a close, leaving roughly 1,380, or 275 an aspect. Then weight deliberately: the aspect covering the speaking and listening design and the aspect covering assessment each take an extra 65 words, taken from the descriptive sections. Candidates habitually write four hundred words on the reading and eighty on the discussion, which is precisely the imbalance this course is built to correct.
Time the talk. Discussion structures have real durations, and a plan that allocates six minutes to a protocol requiring fifteen is a feasibility problem an experienced evaluator will notice immediately.
A structure that fits an integrated ELA lesson
Use the directions' template where one exists. Otherwise this arrangement makes each scored element easy to find.
| Section | What belongs in it | What earns the aspect |
|---|---|---|
| Class context | Grade, composition, language backgrounds and prior work | Anchors the justification for every support and structure |
| Standards and objectives | Each strand's standard with its code, and objectives at matching levels | Scored for alignment across strands, not just for the reading standard |
| Text or stimulus | What students read, view or hear, with suitability noted | Scored for fit to the objective and the readers |
| Talk structure | The named discussion protocol, roles, timings and rules for evidence | Scored for making participation structural rather than voluntary |
| Reading and writing link | How talk feeds the written or analytical task that follows | Scored for integration; adjacency is not integration |
| Supports | Rehearsal time, sentence stems, small group first, roles for reluctant speakers | Scored for naming the mechanism, not the intention |
| Assessment | Observable criteria for speaking and listening as well as for written evidence | Scored for assessing the strand you claimed to teach |
| Sources | Standards, texts and any protocol you adopted, cited | Scored where citation is named |
Name the protocol. Structured discussion formats are documented practice with sources behind them, and naming one converts a vague plan for conversation into a defensible instructional choice.
Evidence craft when part of the learning is spoken
Spoken work is harder to evidence than written work, which is exactly why the course scores it.
- Write speaking criteria that describe observable behaviour: cites evidence from the text, responds to the previous speaker, asks a question that moves the discussion, adapts to the audience.
- Say how you would record it. A checklist for a group of five, a tally of contributions, a short rubric applied to two students per lesson: all workable, all better than intending to notice.
- Cite the discussion protocol and any framework for collaborative talk you rely on.
- Quote the standard's language for speaking and listening rather than paraphrasing, because these standards are specific about audience and adaptation.
- Keep student identities out of any observation you describe, and use categories rather than names.
- Cite texts and media fully, including anything students view or listen to.
One paragraph earns disproportionate credit here: what you would do about the student who does not speak. Naming a specific structure, a rehearsal in pairs before whole-class talk, an assigned role, a written contribution route, shows that participation was designed rather than hoped for.
What separates Competent from a plan sent back
Because each aspect scores alone, the return usually lands on the strand that was mentioned but never designed.
- Speaking and listening have a standard, a structure and criteria, not just a slot.
- Strands connect: talk produces something the writing uses.
- Objectives match the verbs in each standard cited.
- Supports name mechanisms that make participation structural.
- Assessment produces evidence for every strand claimed.
- Timing is realistic for the protocol chosen.
Work assessed by performance assessment can be revised and resubmitted with no grade penalty, so a return costs calendar time. In a six-month flat-rate term, that time is what decides whether the next course starts on schedule. The boundaries on our side stay constant: we never sit proctored objective assessments, never ask for portal credentials, and never teach lessons, contact schools or complete field placement paperwork.
Five mistakes that cost time in D840
- Treating discussion as a warm-up. If talk has no standard and no criteria, the aspect covering oral communication has nothing to score.
- Planning open discussion with no protocol. Unstructured conversation is dominated by four students and leaves the rest unassessed.
- Bolting writing onto the end. Integration means the earlier strand feeds the later one; two tasks in one period is not integration.
- Writing speaking criteria as adjectives. Confident and articulate cannot be observed. Cites evidence and responds to the prior speaker can.
- Forgetting the silent student. A plan with no route to participation for reluctant speakers loses the supports aspect, leaves part of the class unassessed on a standard they are entitled to be taught, and misrepresents what a real classroom does.
How support works on this course
Send the task directions and what your Course of Study says about scoring. What comes back is a lesson design where the speaking and listening strand has a named protocol, observable criteria and a recording method, where talk feeds the written task rather than preceding it, and where supports are specific enough that a colleague could run the lesson from your document.
Candidates usually arrive strong on text selection and thin on structured talk. That is the fixable half, and it is also the half that shows up in classroom observation later, so the work has a second payoff beyond the course.
We also check the arithmetic of the period. A plan is a schedule as well as a design, and the commonest feasibility failure is a lesson that would need seventy minutes in a forty-five minute class once entry routines, transitions between groupings and packing up are counted. Writing the timings honestly, then cutting the element you can least defend, is faster than discovering the problem through a return and rebuilding the sequence afterwards.
Questions students ask about D840
Is D840 the same course as EDUC 6069?
Why does an ELA methods course start with oral communication?
Can you help if I have never taught a class?
Integrated ELA lesson due and the talk section is thin?
Send your directions and standards. You get a named discussion protocol, observable speaking criteria and a lesson where talk actually feeds the writing.
Where D840 sits in WGU's programs
The July 2026 catalog places this code in 1 current WGU program. Open a program page for the complete standard path and term positions. The live Degree Plan remains authoritative after transfer credit, substitutions, and mentor planning.
The assessments, one by one
The public catalog does not publish this course's PA/OA identity or task count. WGU Tutors publishes at most one PA manual per course and only from a WGU-controlled public rubric. Until that source exists, PA help begins from the student's real Course of Study and OA support remains preparation only.