Welcome to the 2019-2020 School Year!
ENGLISH I Our English I class will balance classic works by William Shakespeare, Homer, Sophocles, and Ovid with contemporary writing by authors such as Ray Bradbury, Martin Luther King, Jr., George Orwell, Sherman Alexie, Karen Russell, and Malala Yousafzai. Through the study of a variety of text types and media, students build knowledge, analyze ideas, delineate arguments, and develop writing, collaboration, and communication skills. To further the development of their reading and writing skills, students study grammar and vocabulary throughout the year. Lessons within each of the modules are linked explicitly to Grade 9/10 Common Core Learning Standards.
ENGLISH II In our English II class, students may read from a few of the following texts: Frankenstein, Things Fall Apart, Fahrenheit 451, Romeo & Juliet, Persepolis, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Crucible, and others. Students will also read essays, short stories, and an extensive selection of poetry; they will view films and listen to audio essays to further explore genre and theme. Writing instruction focuses on developing unified, coherent and text-supported paragraphs and essays. Creative writing assignments and essays develop each individual writer’s voice and may include: personal narratives, poetry, reflections, audio/video-essays, short stories, plays. The lessons within each of the modules are linked explicitly to Grade 9/10 Common Core Learning Standards.
English III In ENGLISH III, we’ll be developing students’ skills in analyzing complex literary and informational texts as we delve deeply into works by acclaimed authors and historical figures, including classics from William Shakespeare, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Kate Chopin; seminal pieces from W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and Elie Wiesel; and contemporary literature from Margaret Atwood, Tim O’Brien, David Sedaris, and Ray Bradbury. Writing instruction focuses on developing each individual writer’s voice and may include: personal narratives, poetry, reflections, audio/video-essays, short stories, plays. The lessons within each of the modules are linked explicitly to Grade 11 Common Core Learning Standards.
ENGLISH IV We’ll explore a wide range of quality texts that engage students in the exploration of the American Dream via analysis of autobiographical nonfiction, speeches, poetry, drama, fiction, and literary research projects. The grade 12 modules comprise classic and contemporary voices including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Zora Neale Hurston, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, Jhumpa Lahiri, Cormac McCarthy, Amy Tan. The lessons within each of the modules are linked explicitly to Grade 12 Common Core Learning Standards.