English 9 Options
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COURSE DESCRIPTION: In Freshman English, students will learn strategies for comprehending challenging classical and contemporary world literature texts that feature unfamiliar contexts along with complicated characters, themes, vocabulary, and figurative language.
Using principles of psychological (1st semester) and archetypal literary criticism (2nd semester), students will identify the needs, desires, fears, values, struggles, and strengths people across time and cultures share. To build their capacity for complex thinking, discussing, and writing, students will increase their vocabulary for describing traits and feelings and practice using the small words and phrases of grammar, like coordinating and subordinating conjunctions, transitions, appositives, and relative clauses, to express the logical relationships between their ideas. They will practice their small group discussion skills, including paraphrasing, asking clarifying and probing questions, and presenting themselves and their ideas in a respectful, diplomatic manner.
Descriptive and narrative writing will focus on using concrete, sensory language and expanding their repertoire of what to describe in order to build authentic, complex characters and settings in stories, poetry, and/or plays. Analytical reading and writing will ask students to distinguish between summarizing and analyzing and will cover the basics of thesis statements, topic sentences, using enough details and explanation to satisfy readers’ needs, and accurately incorporating outside research. For argument, students will examine how authors and advertisers or others who desire to persuade us, rely on their understanding of humans’ basic needs, desires, fears, and archetypal symbology to appeal to our sense of ethos and pathos. In turn, they convince us to connect with the characters in their films, to reaffirm our opinions, and to buy their products. Students will also be introduced to the concept using sources ethically in the academic world as they will be held accountable for academic integrity.
The Course Description is similar to English 9 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 9 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 middle school 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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