WRITING ASSIGNMENTS: ESSAYS: Course Syllabus A.P. Literature & Composition Brian Jennings

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1 Course Syllabus A.P. Literature & Composition Brian Jennings This course is designed to challenge and train the literary analytic, evaluative and writing skills of seniors who have followed a rigorous program in their high school studies. Following a chronological approach to British literature with additional texts, the class studies the development of literature within the culture and strives to critically analyze and assess the selections in their writings and tests. The writing assignments include creative writings, in class timed writings (AP practice), in class essays, research papers, research projects, and short writes. Assessments are a combination of multiple choice over content and literary terms, essays over cold readings, essays analyzing literature read and use of vocabulary in their own sentences. Texts: The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors, Norton, 8th ed. Literature of Britain, Holt, Rinehart and Winston Chinua Achebe s Things Fall Apart Aldous Huxley s Brave New World Jhumpa Lahiri s The Interpreter of Maladies WRITING ASSIGNMENTS: ESSAYS: You will write six major essays this year, three per semester. Each of these assignments, with the exception of the College Application essay, will challenge you to engage in a thoughtful writing process to analyze and evaluate one or more of the texts you read in class. Essays will be evaluated using the 6+1 Traits of Writing Scoring Guide and AP Essay scoring guides. A brief description of the essays follows: College Application Essay/Personal Narrative: This essay is tailored to meet the entry requirements of a college you are interested in attending. You will write to a specific prompt for a specific audience. We will use this essay to

2 review brainstorming and the pre writing process and to establish methods to improve Word Choice (vocabulary). Researched New Criticism Essay: This essay is an intensive researched essay that challenges you to create an interesting, personal interpretation of a piece of literature by carefully examining your own and other s observations of the text s literary elements such as structure, style, themes, figurative language, imagery, symbolism and tone. We will use this essay to review and improve methods to strengthen your Ideas. Literary Persuasive Essay: This essay challenges you to persuade your audience that a work of literature should or should not be judged based on current social and historical values, including a supported explanation of why the social and historical values conveyed by a text are or are not still relevant to your culture s social and historical values. We will use this essay to review and improve the use of Voice. Compare/Contrast Essay: This essay challenges you to create an interesting and personal comparison between the social and historical values of two major texts. We will use this essay to review and improve methods of Organization. Theoretical Methods Essay: This essay challenges you to take one of the dominant theoretical approaches to literary criticism (feminist, new historical, psychoanalytical, Marxist, post colonial, etc.) and apply this approach to analyze and evaluate a text. We will use this essay to review and improve Sentence Fluency. Persuasive Essay: This researched essay challenges you to take a position on a current issue and persuade a hostile or neutral audience that your position is the best position to hold. We will use this essay to review and improve the use of Conventions. IN CLASS WRITING:

3 Since a major component of the AP Exam is writing an essay within a time limit, we will spend a minimum of one class period every other week writing to a specific prompt. These prompts will challenge you to analyze, synthesize and evaluate works that you have read and/or cold readings and to examine the social and historical contexts of these works. We will also frequently engage in other in class writing such as freewriting to help prompt your ideas and class discussion. OUT OF CLASS WRITING: You will need to keep a dialogue journal for responding to the texts we read. We will review several methods of journaling at the beginning of the semester. Journals will be collected every other week. Journals are called journal dialogues because they will be a space outside of class for us to communicate back and forth about your responses and reactions to your reading. THE WRITING PROCESS PART 1: For each essay, I will expect you to engage in an in depth pre writing process that allows you to generate ideas that are interesting to you and an audience. We will workshop each essay in rough draft form. Please note that the rough draft will be one week before the final draft and should look like, feel like, smell like and taste like a final essay. During workshopping, your teacher and peer s will give you feedback on what you might consider doing to improve the strength of your ideas. When you submit your final draft, you will also submit a Self Assessment that analyzes and evaluates your own writing process and product. (As strong writers, you should not simply automatically take the advice of your peers and teacher. You must, however, show either in your essay or self assessment that you have given this feedback thoughtful consideration and used effective criticism). I will give you more written feedback returned with your evaluated final draft.

4 THE WRITING PROCESS PART 2: Only one writer I know of could get away with writing only one draft of a text, and Jack Kerouac has been dead a long time. For everyone else, revision is the key to effective writing. Everyone will revise a minimum of one of his or her final drafts for the portfolio. I will also expect anyone who does not receive an A or B on any essay to revise the essay. Anyone who wishes to revise additional essays will be urged to do so. You must attend a minute conference with me before, after or during free time at school to be granted a week to revise. If at the end of this week you have a new draft, I will grade it as if it were new. If the evaluation is better than the previous evaluation, we will see if it satisfies you. If the evaluation is worse, we will keep the previous evaluation and need to conference again. If at the end of the week you are not done with your new draft, we will need to meet for another conference to extend the due date another week. All revision except the portfolio revision are due one month prior to the end of the semester. THE PORTFOLIO: The portfolio will be collected the last week of each semester and will include all of your written work to date as well as an overall analysis and evaluation of your strengths as a writer. The final portfolio will also include the new final draft of the essay you choose to revise specifically for your portfolio. The following is a tentative schedule for the year. I reserve the right to alter readings and/or assignments based on our needs and desires.

5 Anglo Saxon Era 2 weeks Objectives covered within this unit: 1. Students will evaluate an author s work by using elements of literature and literary devices. 2. Students will identify and analyze the various periods of British Literature. 3. Students will analyze the relationship between literature and culture 4. Students will identify the literary elements of Anglo Saxon Poetry 5. Observe the beginning of various themes in British literature Assessment: Students will demonstrate an understanding of the Anglo Saxon period and Literature by writing compositions Materials Studied: Beowulf, trans.heaney Summer Reading Beowulf as a Heroic Elegaic Poem, J.R.R. Tolkien The Wanderer, trans. Kennedy The Seafarer, trans. Raffel Middle Ages 2 weeks Unit Objectives: 1. Identify the most important aspects of medieval culture 2. Identify the various types of literature of the period 3. Describe the characteristics of realism and satire 4. Identify the elements of Romance 5. Analyze the essential qualities of a epic hero and a chivalric hero 6. Identify the Celtic and medieval elements in the legend 7. Identify the Medieval elements in the legends 8. Identify and explain the mixture of Druid and Christian elements. 9. Demonstrate an understanding of the medieval period and literature by writing compositions of analysis and comparison. The Canterbury Tales, Prologue, The Pardoner s Tale Presentation to class of one of the travelers. Creative paper A modern traveler described in the style of Chaucer Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, trans. Gardner Morte D arthur, Malory

6 Assessment: Cold reading with analysis/evaluation of poetry and Romantic elements, chivalric influence, etc. Renaissance 7 weeks Unit Objectives: 1. Identify various literary forms of the era: Sonnets, Elizabethan Drama, Pastoral poetry, Metaphysical Poetry, Cavalier poetry, neoclassicism, Epics and prose 2. Relate the literature of the major political events and philosophical currents of the time 3. Compare themes and Big Ideas with other works of literature 4. Analyze the use of figurative language, diction, metaphor, conceit, structure, etc, in Renaissance poetry and drama. 5. Analyze the influence of Italian and classical writers on Renaissance writers Major research paper covering three elements of one of Shakespeare s plays Wyatt, Whoso List to Hunt, They Flee from Me Sonnets: Petrarchan, Shakespearean, Spenserian Spenser, The Fairie Queen, Amoretti Marlowe, Dr. Faustus Raleigh, The Nymph s Reply to the Shepherd Shakespeare, Sonnets, Macbeth, Hamlet Donne, Song, Valediction, Meditation 17, Death be not Proud Herrick, Delight in Disorder, To the Virgins Herbert, The Altar, The Pulley Suckling & Lovelace KJB, Psalms 8, 23,24,137, Jonah, Good Samaritan Milton, Paradise Lost ; Bunyan,The Pilgrims Progress Additional Comparative Works: Oedipus, Antigone

7 The Restoration and the 18th Century 3 weeks Objectives: 1. Identify the major authors, popular genres, recurring themes, and dominant style of the literature of the period. 2. Analyze the methods used by Pope and Swift to create satire. 3. Examine and analyze non fiction texts and compare the elements to fiction. Pepys, from The Diary Addison, from The Spectator Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year Swift, Gulliver s Travels Swift, Modest Proposal Behn, from Oroonoko Johnson A Brief to Free a Slave Dryden, A Song for St. Cecelia s Day The Romantic Period 4 weeks Objectives: 1. Identify the characteristics of the Romantic Period and their relationship to the historical occurrences of the time. 2. Study in depth a specific poet and his works. 3. Present the results of research to the class in a creative way. 4. Compare and contrast the characteristics of the Romantic Age to the previous and following ages. In small groups or pairs, students study a poet and then create a presentation to fully explain three of the poet s poems, the effects of his life and the culture. Early Romantics Burns, To A Mouse, others Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience, others Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard Wordsworth Coleridge, Kubla Khan, This Lime Tree Bower, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Byron, She Walks in Beauty, Don Juan

8 Shelley, Ode to the West Wind, Ozymandias, England in 1819 Keats, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, When I Have Fears Shelley,Frankenstein Bronte, Wuthering Heights The Victorian Period 5 weeks Unit Objectives: 1. Identify and analyze the elements and stylistic characteristic of Victorian poetry and prose. 2. Analyze and interpret Victorian attitudes toward recurring philosophical concerns, such as aesthetics, death, immortality, religious faith, and nature. 3. Demonstrate an understanding of Romantic themes and characteristics retained in Victorian literature. 4. Analyzing the cultural attitudes of Victorian writers. 5. Recognizing and evaluating the literature of the three periods of the Victorian Age Conrad, Heart of Darkness Tennyson, many Browning, My Last Duchess, Prospice Browning, E.B., Sonnets from the Portuguese Arnold, Dover Beach Hopkins, Spring and Fall, Pied Beauty Hardy, Channel Firing, The Convergence of the Twain, Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave. Housman, When I was One and Twenty, To an Athlete Dying Young, Dickens, The Signalman Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest The Twentieth Century 10 weeks Unit Objectives: 1. Identify, analyze, and interpret imagery, diction, figurative language, sound devices, tone, and stylistic characteristics of twentieth century poetry, prose and drama. 2. Identify and explain the symbolism in the literature 3. Identify and explain the motives of the characters and purposes of the writers in the

9 literature. Trench Poets: Owen, Sasson, Muir, Brooke Munro, Sredni Vashtar T.S. Eliot, Preludes, Hollow Men Yeats, The Second Coming, Irish Airman Forsees His Death Lawrence, Rocking Horse Winner Sitwell, Still Falls the Rain Lawrence, Snake Heaney, Follower Greene, The Destructors Graves, Warning to Children Lessing, A Sunrise on the Veld Smith, Not Waving but Drowning MacNeice, Prayer Before Birth Conrad, The Lagoon McCourt, from Angela s Ashes Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle Woolf,from A Room of One s Own A Refusal to Mourn Orwell, Shooting an Elephant Huxley, Brave New World Achebe, Things Fall Apart Lahiri The Interpreter of Maladies During this unit more time is spent preparing for the AP exam. Students practice various essays adapted from previous essays. In addition they review works they have read during the last several years to prepare for Question 3. Time is also spent preparing for the multiple choice questions. The content of this course has remained English literature based in order to fulfill the curriculum as decided by our department and state Grade Level Expectations.

Curriculum Pacing Guide Grade/Course 12 th Grade English Grading Period: 1 st Nine Weeks

2013-2014 Curriculum Pacing Guide Grade/Course 12 th Grade English Grading Period: 1 st Nine Weeks Unit/ Weeks 1-9 Unit 1: Anglo-Saxon Period 1450-1066 s covered in s covered in this nine The Lyric Poem/