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Course Overview
Honors English II is a course based on exploring World Literature and Rhetoric. In this honors-level class, students will pursue more independent learning and work to demonstrate increasingly complex essay-writing skills. Students master various forms of paragraph development and thoroughly analyze the multi-paragraph essay. Students review grammar, mechanics, and style rules and are expected to incorporate more sophisticated sentence patterns into their writing. Students work to increase contextual vocabulary and hone close reading skills. Readings will be derived from the following genres, offered through a global lens: the epic; Shakespearean tragedy; allegory and satire; the 19th-century novel; memoir; historical fiction; poetry, short stories, and varied cultural readings. The course requires students to submit intensive and rigorous work in research, thesis crafting, and expository writing, as well as narrative and creative writing. In addition to the class reading assignments, students may be expected to read extended outside works.
About Our Curriculum
The curriculum for each English course is continually reviewed and revised to ensure every student receives an engaging, rigorous learning experience aligned with the Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for English Language Arts and Literacy.
Course teams meet regularly to review student learning and make informed adjustments to curriculum and instruction to meet their students' unique needs and strengths. While teachers collaborate to establish shared learning experiences with core content, essential skills, and common outcomes within each course, we also intentionally preserve flexibility for teachers to tailor select texts, assignments, and learning experiences and to adjust unit sequencing or instructional approaches as appropriate.
For this reason, the unit overviews on this site represent the course's shared learning goals and experiences; specific texts, assignments, and sequencing may vary by teacher and class section. Please check your teacher's Schoology page regularly for the most current information about your student's class, including upcoming novel and media selections.
Thank you!
Ms. Crystal Laliberte, MA, CAGS
English Curriculum Coordinator, Grades 6–12
Environment, Culture, and the Self
Learning Targets
Learning Targets
Analyze how setting influences character development.
Analyze how authors develop themes related to identity, culture, and belonging.
Analyze literary elements including characterization, symbolism, imagery, figurative language, and point of view.
Write analytical responses using textual evidence.
Engage in literary discussions that build on others’ ideas.
Essential Questions
Essential Questions
How does environment shape identity, belonging, and self-understanding?
In what ways can perception of self or others differ from reality?
How is human dignity maintained or challenged in different environments?
Instructional Snapshot
Instructional Snapshot
Students will:
Read and analyze literary elements and themes in a collection of short stories and poems. Authors may include Jhumpa Lahiri, Safia Elhillo, and Laura Esquivel.
Examine how authors use language and structure to convey cultural experiences.
Participate in small and large group discussions about literary elements and themes.
Independently read and analyze the themes of one of the following novels: The Queen of Water; Women of the Silk; Purple Hibiscus.
Write a formal literary analysis essay about outside reading novel.
Quests, Heroes, and Honor
Learning Targets
Learning Targets
Analyze archetypal patterns in quest narratives.
Evaluate the construction of heroism and moral testing in literary works.
Compare traditional heroic ideals with satirical reinterpretations.
Essential Questions
Essential Questions
What defines heroism across cultures and time periods?
How does the quest structure reveal human values and limitations?
Instructional Snapshot
Instructional Snapshot
Students will:
Read and analyze the themes of heroism and the quest pattern in literary excerpts from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight or Beowulf
Study medieval literary conventions of honor, temptation, and morality
Analyze Monty Python and The Holy Grail as a parody of the quest
Compare representations of heroism across texts
Voices of Critique: Satire and Social Commentary
Learning Targets
Learning Targets
Identify and analyze satirical techniques.
Evaluate depictions of social hierarchy, corruption, and justice
Develop arguments about literature’s social and moral commentary
Relate societal critiques found in literature to modern-day issues
Essential Questions
Essential Questions
How do writers expose injustice through satire and critique?
What happens when individual values conflict with societal systems?
How can appearances conceal deeper moral or structural corruption?
Instructional Snapshot
Instructional Snapshot
Students will:
Read, analyze, and discuss selections from The Canterbury Tales and supplemental readings.
Analyze characterization as a tool for satire and social critique.
Analyze poetic elements.
Research a contemporary issue that relates to The Canterbury Tales and write about how that issue exists in modern day
The Power of Story: Memoir and the Personal Essay
Learning Targets
Learning Targets
Analyze voice, narrative structure, and authorial authority.
Evaluate how humor and memory shape memoir.
Examine the relationship between personal narrative and larger social systems.
Produce reflective and analytical writing grounded in textual evidence.
Essential Questions
Essential Questions
Who has the authority to tell a story, and why does it matter?
Whose voices are centered or silenced in narrative?
How does personal storytelling shape truth and memory?
Is truth stable, or shaped by perspective and experience?
Instructional Snapshot
Instructional Snapshot
Students will:
Read Born a Crime, analyzing narrative voice, humor, and structural storytelling choices.
Supplement Born a Crime with excerpts from Night, Holocaust poetry, and Persepolis.
Examine how truth is constructed through memory and perspective.
Write personal narrative and analytical responses.
Fate vs. Free Will: Shakespearean Tragedy
Learning Targets
Learning Targets
Analyze Shakespearean dramatic structure and tragic conventions.
Interpret complex character motivation and moral conflict.
Evaluate the roles of fate, free will, and ambition.
Essential Questions
Essential Questions
Are human beings guided by fate, free will, or a combination of both?
How do forces of good and evil operate within individuals?
How do appearance and deception shape tragedy?
Instructional Snapshot
Instructional Snapshot
Students will:
Study Macbeth as a conventional tragedy.
Analyze symbolism, motifs, soliloquies, dramatic irony, and themes.
Perform excerpts of the play in class.
Present on key motifs in the play.
Develop analytical essays.
Historical Fiction and Post-Colonial Literature
Learning Targets
Learning Targets
Analyze how Achebe represents Igbo culture through character, ritual, and social structure.
Evaluate the relationship between individual identity and communal expectations.
Examine how systems of law, gender roles, economics, and tradition shape society.
Use textual evidence to draw conclusions about cultural values and worldview.
Synthesize literary analysis with “field-based” interpretive research.
Present findings using collaborative inquiry, evidence, and structured argumentation.
Analyze how the novel fits the characteristics of classical tragedy.
Essential Questions
Essential Questions
How does a society define identity, belonging, and justice?
How do individuals understand their place within cultural traditions and communal expectations?
What happens when different value systems come into contact or conflict?
How do literature and narrative shape our understanding of a culture?
How do individuals and communities respond to cultural disruption and change?
Instructional Snapshot
Instructional Snapshot
Students will:
Read and analyze Things Fall Apart as both a literary text and a cultural document.
Examine how Achebe constructs Igbo society through narrative detail, oral tradition, and characterization.
Engage in discussions focused on cultural values, conflict, and change.
Complete a collaborative anthropological inquiry project centered on cultural systems within the novel.
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