English 10 Options
Embedded Files
The sophomore curriculum was designed to scaffold from the freshman English study of archetypes and psychology. As freshmen, students looked at texts to determine commonalities in the world. During sophomore year, students will be introduced to three academic literary lenses (semiotics, sociology, and cultural criticism) to understand how group identities shape the way texts are interpreted and evaluated - and how these interpretations and evaluations might change over time. Students will be studying texts from various viewpoints and group identities as they develop their skills in writing, reading, grammar, and speaking.
Larger Goals:
Critical Thinking
Identify the various types of groups that you belong to and those that you don’t belong to. Explain these groups’ norms, expectations, definitions and use of words/concepts, values, customs, and other behaviors or elements of their identities. How do these groups intersect and diverge?
Identify the various groups that the characters, authors, speakers, and others you encounter in literature this semester belong to. Analyze how these groups shape the actions, feelings, thoughts, and even diction in the text and how they shape your own personal experience reading.
Adapt the texts you make to the groups you’re targeting.
Use your knowledge of groups and semiotics to generate productive, respectful discussions.
Review the difference between summarizing, analyzing, and evaluating. Apply those differences to all manners of communication, including discussions, presentations, researching, etc.
Writing, Language, and Research
Review freshman language skills; learn new sophomore ones as a way to improve your reading comprehension and the clarity, logic and style of your own writing.
Develop one essay and one presentation that have been through a rigorous revision process, focused heavily on the qualities of coherence, development, focus, and tending to your intended audience’s needs.
Develop questions to gather relevant information and present that information in a coherent, engaging way.
Reading
Feel confident approaching challenging texts; know how to approach these texts (use investigative reading approach).
Use the concepts of absence and contrast to help you delve deeper into a text’s meaning.
Experiment with various ways to comprehend a text, such as visual note taking.
Read texts that serve as mirrors, windows, and doors.
Find ways to relate to characters, authors, or speakers outside your social groups (think about universal archetypes or psychological principles). Observe differences respectfully.
Build understanding of where a person’s perspective stems from (including your own).
The Course Description is similar to English 10 Standard, but the main difference between honors and standard is text complexity, pacing, level of independence, and a higher level of expectations in assignments (not necessarily length of assignments but the complexity of thought).
The English 10 Honors course is designed for students seeking further challenges, who are willing and able to read more sophisticated literature, and to engage in more complex and extensive writing assignments. Students should be prepared to independently read significant amounts of texts. Students will learn how to critically read and analyze a text, synthesizing multiple sources to draw conclusions and formulate arguments.
There is also an expectation of mastery of 9th grade skills (including convention and grammar usage, spoken and written analytical skills and reading comprehension and analysis) as we scaffold directly from those skills.
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