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British Literature with Mr. Haller
This course involves three major areas of study: British literature, the culture and authors that produced it, and composition. Our study of British literature will be chronological, beginning with works from the eighth century and ending in May with the twentieth century. We will explore literature, history and ideas, while encountering dozens of authors and works representing many different eras, movements, genres, outlooks, styles and types.
The coursework in your sophomore English class is not simply "different" from what you did as a freshman; it is more intensive and demanding. Today you have a strong foundation of reading, writing and grammar, but this year you will begin the real work of mastering the standards of analysis, composition and study that will make you a capable high school graduate.
British literature is also just a rich and entertaining pursuit. It was well-taught British literature classes, and the wonderful, challenging books that came with them, that made most of your English teachers into English majors at college in the first place. I frankly love teaching British literature. At a school where all of the English classes are a demanding pleasure to teach, this course may be my favorite. Your experience will be full and varied, too. Because we cover so many different authors and time periods, this class offers you a tremendous amount of range and contrast. Some days we'll talk about relevant history, other days we'll learn about our authors' lives, and we'll always be turning our attention, curiosity and appreciation toward the great writing England has given us for study.
Let's get specific about the class. Our work with composition will encompass comparison/contrast, cause/effect, analysis focused on theme and literary technique, and timed writings. Throughout the year, you will also be held responsible for the summer reading, through essays, test questions and discussion.
Fall semester opens with some summer reading work and a grammar unit before we tour the literature of the Anglo-Saxon and Middle English periods, including the historical film Becket. We'll cover 1984 and Oliver Twist in an fuller comp/contr essay due in the first month or so. We will then spend much of the fall in the Renaissance and reading Shakespeare's Macbeth. As with the whole year, expect a unit test when we complete each time period, or sometimes over a couple of units joined together. Mr. Haller's unit tests are also composition opportunities, 50-90 minutes of in-class writing about what we've studied.
Spring semester will see us complete the Renaissance unit and then bring us to the Enlightenment and Romanticism, the Victorian era and the twentieth century. We will cover the novel Jane Eyre and discuss Oliver Twist and 1984 in brief review now and then. Expect three or four major essays, a pattern that will hold for each semester.
Take notes! You are responsible for everything we read, discuss, or cover in lecture: always, everything!
Our Books Adventures in English Literature, Oliver Twist, 1984, Jane Eyre, BK English (a grammar text)
Your grade
Written unit tests are worth 50 to 80 points each. Each semester concludes with a final exam worth 100 points. "Cumulative" means that the tests in December and in May will both cover everything we've done since August. In-class essays are 40 to 60 points and out-of-class essays are worth up to 100. There will also be points for random reading quizzes, note checks, points for essay outlines, etc. Mr. Haller has no set total number of points in mind for the semester. We will just keep working and keep adding points. Stay informed about your grade through Infinite Campus. There will be no extra credit assignments.
Your success
Your success in your English class depends upon your sincere and constant effort. Take notes. Have your work done on time and done well. Ask questions. Seek help. Check my online calendar (available on my school website and on google classroom, under "classwork") and also check the boards for due dates.
Submit all of your work. If you are missing one major assignment (an essay or a major test), you will not earn above a D at semester, regardless of your point total. By missing a major assignment, you may even do worse, threatening your ability to pass at all. If you are missing two or more major assignments, you will fail the class, regardless of your point total. This is an English department policy.
Submit your work on time. Major assignments (essays and major tests) lose 25% every day they are late. Minor assignments (notes on an author, a reading quiz, other daily work) are half credit if they’re one day late and zero beyond that. "On time" means having it in the classroom when the bell rings.
Cheating and Plagiarism
Cheating and plagiarism are very serious violations of the academic program at D’Evelyn Jr./Sr. High School. D’Evelyn holds high academic expectations for all students and academic integrity is an extremely important aspect of those expectations. Any student caught cheating on a quiz, test, homework, or any classroom assignment, or found guilty of plagiarism (to pass off the ideas or works of another as one’s own without crediting the source) or giving work to others will receive a grade of “zero” on that assignment or paper. Consequences for cheating/plagiarism will range from a detention to suspension in addition to the zero on the assignment. Plagiarism is a matter of having done it at all, not a matter of amount or intentions.
If you ever force this choice upon yourself, please know that it is endlessly better for you, both ethically and for your grade, to hand in a terrible, embarrassing, clueless essay you wrote all by yourself than to steal and get a zero plus office and home drama.
Your absences
An excused absence gives you certain rights, but you are responsible for getting and completing your make-up work. That is a county rule, not an exclusive D'Evelyn one. Mr. Haller’s make-up calendar on his webpage, and linked to Google Classroom, records how we spent the day, what may have been checked for points, and what was assigned for a day or days ahead. Use that calendar—and use it while your makeup window is alive, not after you’re upset because your delay earned you a zero.
Makeup resources will be traditional, not a recorded google meet lesson. Thus, your makeup resources will be just as they were in all other school years. That missed lecture on, say, Keats and his poem “To Autumn,” means reading and taking notes yourself, consulting a classmate’s notes and getting any needed clarification from me. My google calendar will describe what was missed. But it will not repost videos of it all.
For every day you are absent, the school district gives you two school days to complete your makeup work--for all six of your teachers. And that rule holds only for newly assigned work, not for assignments you already knew about. If you were present when I made the class responsible for some assignment, you need to give it to me when it's due or immediately upon your return. If you miss a day or more before an essay is due, I still expect your essay on the due date. Or if you miss my class on the due date but are around for other classes, your essay is late unless you get it to me that day. Further, your coaches, music teachers and field-trip sponsors all know that D'Evelyn students must hand in their work before an absence caused by a school activity.
All the little stuff counts. Each semester will mean 700 to 800 or so possible gradebook points; thus, every 70 or 80 points is a letter grade. Missing just one little note check a month, or reading poorly before a reading quiz, can mean 40 or 50 points that you yourself have robbed from your semester grade. Meanwhile, D’Evelyn’s challenging standards make it normal for even the best students to lose 10 to 20 points on a test or essay. So commit to your work when it’s assigned and expected. Do not present me with long expired work simply due to your own later regret or parental frustration at the end of a semester. It cannot earn you credit. Plus, note checks and reading quizzes reward you for doing work you have to do anyway just to keep up with the class. So it’s simple: keep up! It can give you a nice solid base for your grade.
Your classroom, whether in-person or online:
In Mr. Haller's class, on time means being in your seat and getting to work when the bell rings. Online, it means you are visibly present in Google Meets. At the bell, I will mark you tardy for not being in your seat, for not working, for being turned around, or for talking. Bring water to my room if you want. No other food or drink is allowed.
Do not cheat the rest of us by packing up early. Do not ask to leave the room during lecture or discussion unless it is truly necessary. Come to class prepared. If your book is in your locker, you're just without it, and you will not be looking off of someone else. When you’re home in a Google Meet, have your book and note-taking material ready.
You will compile notes in a spiral notebook that you use specifically for my class. You should also have at least a section in a binder for handouts, graded essays, paper for in-class essays, etc.
This syllabus includes the reading lists to keep yourself aware of where we are in the reading requirements. The reading load is uneven. In the Renaissance, there may be days when we only get through a couple sonnets. Other days may involve many pages of unit introduction reading and note-taking, or a lengthy short story. Since you have the list now, you can help yourself by taking author notes or doing some reading even before I assign it.
I will remind you of this, but every author listed on these reading lists comes with a little introduction in your book--information about his life and artistic aims. On the day we start discussing an author, you are expected to come to class with notes from that introduction. That is a standing assignment, even though I will remind you about it regularly. As I said earlier, you will keep those notes in a spiral notebook that will hold all of your notes for the entire year. For the big unit introductions, we will break down our note-taking into key terms, essential concepts that will help you organize your reading into good, clear, full notes that we will add to in class. We will have new key terms for many of the pieces of writing, too. The author intros, unit ideas, literary terms--all those key terms will give order to the tremendous amount of material this course explores
How to contact me
e-mail: bhaller@jeffco.k12.co.us, or the Gmail function in Google Classroom
phone: 303/982-2614 Important note: I will respond with 24 hours to emails or phone calls only during working days and hours, not on weekends or evenings. It’s fine to leave a message/email whenever you wish, truly. I just won’t respond until I return to my expected work hours.
British Literature Base Reading List
The following listing represent the readings that will form the basis of British Literature at D’Evelyn. In addition to these selections, teachers may assign other readings to add to the course. All textual selections are from Adventures in English Literature. For each author named, the text’s biographical introduction is assigned.
First Semester
Introduction to The Anglo-Saxon Period
All the Beowulf readings
“The Seafarer”
Introduction to The Medieval Period
The film Becket
Chaucer, the text’s introduction to The Canterbury Tales, and the following selections from “The
General Prologue”: the spring invocation, meeting at the Tabard, the Knight, the
Prioress, the Monk, the Wife of Bath, the Parson, the Summoner, and the Pardoner.
Finally, “The Pardoner’s Tale” intro and reading.
Malory, Morte D’Arthur reading
Introduction to The Elizabethan Age
“The Sonnet”
Wyatt, “Whoso List to Hunt”
Sidney, Sonnet 39
Spenser, Sonnets 67 and 75
Shakespeare, Sonnets 29, 30, 73, 116, 130, and the play Macbeth
Second Semester
“The Metaphysical Poets”
Donne, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” “Holy Sonnets” 6 and 10, and “Meditation 17”
Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress”
“The Tribe of Ben”
Ben Jonson, “On My First Son,” “Song: To Celia,” and “It Is Not Growing Like a Tree”
Robert Herrick, “To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time” and “To Daffodils”
John Milton, reading from Paradise Lost
Introduction to The Restoration and Eighteenth Century
Dryden, his bio intro only
Swift, the two Gulliver’s Travels readings and “A Modest Proposal”
Pope, from “Essay on Man” (handout)
Johnson, his bio intro only
Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
Introduction to The Romantic Age
Blake, all poems in the text
Wordsworth, “Tintern Abbey,” “My Heart Leaps Up” and “The World Is Too Much With Us”
Coleridge, “Kubla Khan”
Byron, “After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos,” “Apostrophe to the Ocean,” and “On this Day
I Complete My 36th Year”
Shelley, “Ozymandias” and “Ode to the West Wind”
Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” and “To Autumn”
Bronte, Jane Eyre (continued…scroll down)
Introduction to The Victorian Age
Tennyson, “Break, Break, Break,” In Memoriam sections 7, 54, and 130, and “Crossing the Bar”
Robert Browning, “My Last Duchess” and “Prospice”
Arnold, “Dover Beach”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnet 43
Introduction to The Twentieth Century
Joyce, “Araby”
Yeats, “The Second Coming”
Eliot, “The Hollow Men”
Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night”
Summer readings prior to this year:
Dickens, Oliver Twist
Orwell, 1984
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