English 9 (College Prep)
Recommended For: Freshmen
Freshmen English is a year long, introductory course to the literary canon. The course involves reading selections from the classical canon, but also selections that celebrate diversity ultimately challenging its Euro-centricity. In this course, students analyze short stories, novels, plays, speeches, poetry, and nonfiction to discover how authors utilize literary devices to enhance the power of the written word. Evaluating a text’s grammar, imagery, syntax, word choice, and literary devices fosters an understanding of how authors create literature that exemplifies their personal cultural experience, while simultaneously sparking a cross-cultural dialogue regarding the human experience.
Students will be assessed on writing, speaking, reading, and listening. To develop writing mastery, students completeformalwritingassignmentsreflectingselectedliterature. Criticalcomponentsoftheclassinvolve generating a strong thesis, collecting supporting evidence, and advocating for an original position. Graded writing assignments include formal essays, timed pieces, reading quizzes, and journal writings. In addition, students practice confident, articulate public speaking. Reading and listening skills be assessed using a variety of in-class methods, including but not limited to class notes, vocabulary quizzes, reading quizzes, individual and group projects, pictorial renditions of text, Socratic Seminars, writing portfolios, and professional presentations.
Freshman English students explore the tensions and contradictions espoused in great literature. Practicing civic discourse, students develop their own claims about the text and learn to identify supporting evidence and counterclaims. All the while, learning the values of respect, tolerance, and self-expression. Freshman English aims to create an academic space where students are free to explore academic connections and their pragmatic implications.
Honors English 9
Recommended For: Freshmen
Honors English is a year long course in which students evaluate the deeper implications of literature. In this course, students analyze short stories, novels, plays, speeches, poetry, and nonfiction to discover how authors utilize literary devices to enhance the power of the written word. Evaluating a text’s grammar, imagery, syntax, word choice, and literary devices foster an understanding of how authors create literature that exemplifies their personal cultural experience, while simultaneously sparking a cross-cultural dialogue regarding the human experience.
Students writing, speaking, reading, and listening assessments include conceptual and grammatical rigor. Reading classic works independently, students enhance their reading ability. To develop writing mastery, students complete formal writing assignments reflecting selected literature. Critical components of the class involve generating a strong thesis, collecting supporting evidence, and advocating for an original position. Graded writing assignments include formal essays, timed pieces, reading quizzes, and journal writings. In addition, students practice confident, articulate public speaking. Reading and listening skills be assessed using a variety of in-class methods, including but not limited to class notes, vocabulary quizzes, reading quizzes, individual and group projects, pictorial renditions of text, Socratic Seminars, writing portfolios, and professional presentations.
Freshman English students explore the tensions and contradictions espoused in great literature.
Practicing civic discourse, students develop their own claims about the text and learn to identify supporting evidence and counterclaims. All the while, learning the values of respect, tolerance, and self- expression. Freshman English aims to create an academic space where students are free to explore academic connections and their pragmatic implications.
English 10: World Literature (College Prep)
Recommended For: Sophomores
World Literature is designed to expose students to perspectives that differ from their own, ultimately leading them to a deeper understanding of other cultures and the works that represent them. The course is a study of representative works of world literature from Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. The course emphasizes the study and consideration of the literary, cultural, and human significance of selected great works of the Western and non-Western literary traditions. An emphasis will be placed on writing, speaking, and research elements corresponding to California Standards. Therefore, students will thematically study, analyze, interpret, & critique various genres of literature and other media based on the historical and cultural context of the author and his/her culture.
An important goal of the class is to promote an understanding of the works in their cultural/historical contexts and of the enduring human values, which unite the different literary traditions. The course’s pedagogy gives special attention to critical thinking and writing within a framework of cultural diversity as well as comparative and interdisciplinary analysis.
Throughout the semester, the focus will be on developing one skill in particular: asking questions. In this course, an expectation will be for all students to be actively engaged in the reading and writing process by formulating and sharpening key questions about literary texts. Learning how to become a discriminating reader by posing interesting questions will be a central task per semester. Students are to think of each text as an “open” text. An “open” text is one that presents the reader with a multiplicity of contradictory meanings, and the pleasure of reading and rereading such a text is precisely to explore those contradictions. Indeed, as students will discover, each person brings different ideas to a literary text and draws different conclusions from it. While valuing these differences, it will also be their work not to fall into a flattening of meaning: not all interpretations and ideas are equally valid or productive. It will be their work to each have an opinion, an idea that matters, and to figure out where we stand in relation to the thoughts and opinions of others.
Such texts that may be read within the course are Antigone by Sophocles, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Marie Remarque, Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes, Lord of the Flies by William Golding and others.
Honors English 10: World Literature
Recommended For: Sophomores
World Literature is designed to expose students to perspectives that differ from their own, ultimately leading them to a deeper understanding of other cultures and the works that represent them. The course is a study of representative works of world literature from Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. The course emphasizes the study and consideration of the literary, cultural, and human significance of selected great works of the Western and non-Western literary traditions. An emphasis will be placed on writing, speaking, and research elements corresponding to California Standards. Therefore, students will thematically study, analyze, interpret, & critique various genres of literature and other media based on the historical and cultural context of the author and his/her culture. An important goal of the class is to promote an understanding of the works in their cultural/historical contexts and of the enduring human values, which unite the different literary traditions. The course’s pedagogy gives special attention to critical thinking and writing within a framework of cultural diversity as well as comparative and interdisciplinary analysis. A comprehensive, written final exam is required on all reading and discussions from class.
English 11
Recommended For: Juniors
English 11 is a language arts course that focuses on reading, interpreting, and analyzing literature of the various periods and genres of the American literary tradition through thematic units. Students examine the significant connections between American literature and American culture, with emphasis on the American experience. Students also examine how the use of literary and/or rhetorical devices and literary elements illuminate the meaning of a text. Students compose a number of writings for a variety of audiences, occasions and purposes and in doing so, come to understand the roles each of these play in the shaping of a piece of writing. Through the completion of a research essay, students evaluate sources, examine and employ use of ethos and logos, and learn to structure an argument that takes its place in an ongoing conversation about an important topic of the day.
In English 11, emphasis remains on the development of reading strategies, on vocabulary acquisition, and on grammar and writing skills. While literary and rhetorical analysis play central roles in American literature and honors American literature, it is the development of skills of reading and writing across the disciplines that takes center stage in English 11.
English 11: American Literature (College Prep)
Recommended For: Juniors
American Literature is a chronological study of the American literary tradition and its role in the emerging, developing and changing American experience and ethos. Students read works of national founders such as Jefferson and Franklin, the seminal works of masters of American literature such as Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, Twain, Poe, and Dickinson, as well as modern and contemporary works by authors such as Miller, Hemingway, Salinger and Morrison. The course focuses on historical as well as literary themes and on the use of literary devices and techniques. Students also continue to develop writing skills, most specifically skills of literary analysis and research.
Honors English 11: American Literature
Recommended For: Juniors
Honors American Literature differs from college preparatory American Literature primarily in level of expectation. Honors students read more texts, read more challenging texts, and are expected to support their analyses of those texts thoroughly. In their analyses, honors students are expected to utilize more fluid and effective explanations and transitions and to make clear links between the details and quotes being used and the points the details are illustrating or supporting. Other writings completed by honors students require more in-depth research and more convincing arguments.
In short, work completed by honors students must be more polished, more in-depth, and more thorough than work submitted by American Literature students. It should also exhibit a willingness to take risks and think independently.
The expectation of students in the honors courses is that they come to the course possessing strong comprehension skills and wide vocabularies (the hallmarks of avid readers) and that they come to class having understood the assigned reading and already having thought about it analytically before class discussion begins. In American literature, we develop and foster skills of analysis; in honors American literature classes, we hone them.
English 12: British Literature (College Prep)
Recommended For: Seniors
Students will read a wide variety of British literature from the Anglo-Saxon invasion through the first half of 20th century. In addition to the assigned text, students will also be responsible for outside independent reading. Emphasis is placed on historical background, cultural context, and literary analysis of selected prose, poetry, and drama. Readings in the first semester of the course range from Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales through works by Sir Thomas Malory, Edmund Spencer, Christopher Marlowe, Sir Walter Scott, John Donne and Andrew Marvell to discuss works from the Anglo-Saxon invasion to the Middle Ages and the 18th Century. Readings in the second semester of the course consist of major works of British Literature from 1789 to the present, including such texts by Blake, Byron, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelly, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Carlyle, Hardy, Conrad, Yeats, Woolfe, Joyce and Eliot. Upon completion, students should be able to interpret, analyze, and respond to literary works in their historical and cultural contexts.
Students will be responsible for learning through tests, quizzes, group and individual presentations, and a variety of writing assignments. The writing will stem directly from the reading and provide students the opportunity to improve expository and persuasive skills. Class writing activities will also include some informal, personal narrative, and creative writing to help clarify ideas and stimulate discussion about the readings. The course focuses on the specific history and development of British literature. Therefore one main objective is for students to learn information about writers, their works, and literary movements.
Throughout the semester, the focus will be on developing one skill in particular: asking questions. In this course, an expectation will be for all students to be actively engaged in the reading and writing process by formulating and sharpening key questions about literary texts. Learning how to become a discriminating reader by posing interesting questions will be a central task per semester. Students are to think of each text as an “open” text. It will be their work to each have an opinion, an idea that matters, and to figure out where we stand in relation to the thoughts and opinions of others.
Honors English 12: British Literature
Recommended For: Seniors
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to a wide range of British literature. It is a survey course and will cover all major literary time periods from Medieval English to Postmodern and Contemporary British voices. Students will read poetry, novels, plays, speeches, satires, and essays throughout the year, and will be expected to respond thoroughly to the texts using a breadth of both written and oral assessments. Students will be encouraged to read closely and to value textual evidence at all times. Thorough annotations of novels and texts will be expected.
English 12: Media In The Modern Age
Recommended For: Seniors
Description to come.
Creative Writing
Recommended For: Freshmen, Sophomores, Juniors, Seniors
Creative Writing is an extensive introduction to the writing of poetry and prose. Through close reading of the works of published authors and poets, students will examine the elements of writing, and through a variety of writing exercises and prompts, students will create writings of their own. Students will complete prose writings—essays, short stories, narratives, etc.—and a number of poems in a variety of formats and styles Specifically, students will examine and practice elements and techniques such as setting, tone, style, structure, plot, theme, diction, figurative language, symbolism and poetic forms. Students will share their work with other students in a workshop format and often with the class as a whole. A command of grammar and mechanics as well as literary terms and devices is essential for success in this class.
Mythology
Recommended For: Freshmen, Sophomores, Juniors, Seniors
This class is a thematic introduction to ancient mythology. The theme is; life and death in the ancient world. The course will follow heroes as they struggle with the deaths of their companions and their own inevitable demise. We shall move from Gilgamesh through the Roman, Greek and Indian myths.
Students show their comprehension of the stories by answering questions, acting out skits and discussing plot points in groups. Students interpret the stories by relating the text to art pieces, adapting stories to modern day circumstances and comparing and contrasting them.
In addition, we will read religious text from the Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions. Although religious text does not fall into the category of mythology, student will use similar strategies to examine the text and broaden their understanding of history, culture, allusions in literary text and more.