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Course Overview
English III is a course based on the exploration of American literature across historical and environmental settings. Students will explore various literary genres (such as poetry, short stories, essays, novels, and plays), drawn from the American literary and cultural movements that shape the American identity. Students will independently synthesize these concepts in expository, narrative, creative, or analytical writing. Students continue the process of developing a thesis, concentrate on a variety of paragraph development strategies, and defend their claims in multi-paragraph essays and research papers. They experiment with finding their own writing style by employing various and more complex sentence lengths, as well as the fine points of syntax, grammar, usage, and mechanics. In addition to literary and expository essays, students may also write narratives related to course themes that challenge them to explore the nature of their personal American Dream. Topics or themes covered across course readings may include: the origin and conceptualization of the American Dream and work ethic, connection with nature, personal liberty, evolution of identity, the impact of environment, voices of war and revolt, and the effects of growth and materialism. Outside reading texts may be assigned throughout the year.
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
Introduction to The American Dream
Learning Targets
Learning Targets
Students will set personal goals for the year
Students will be able to define the American Dream, including being able to describe how concepts of the American Dream have changed throughout time and vary from individual to individual
Essential Questions
Essential Questions
How do you define happiness?
What is the American Dream? How has it changed over time?
How does the American Dream differ from one person to another?
How do external societal factors impact an individual’s ability to achieve the American Dream?
Instructional Snapshot
Instructional Snapshot
Students will:
Visual and paragraph explanation for goals
Create a product expressing their reflection on the American Dream
The Environment’s Impact on the Individual (Drama Study: The Crucible)
Learning Targets
Learning Targets
Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of a text. [RL.2]
Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grades 11–12 reading and content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies. [L.4a.-d.]
Write informative/explanatory texts (e.g., essays, oral reports, biographical feature articles) to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content [W.2.a-f]
Essential Questions
Essential Questions
What shapes a community’s principles and values?
Which is more important: personal integrity or survival?
How does literature expose societal flaws and how history repeats itself?
Instructional Snapshot
Instructional Snapshot
Students will:
Write an informative essay from one character’s point of view presenting his/her evidence to the magistrates of the court.
The Power of Stories (Novel Study: The They Things They Carried)
Learning Targets
Learning Targets
Analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story, poem, or drama [RL.11-12.3]
Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in different media or formats as well as in words in order to address a question or solve a problem. [RI/RL.11-12.7]
Write arguments (e.g., essays, letters to the editor, advocacy speeches) to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence. [W.11-12.1].
Essential Questions
Essential Questions
What is the importance of truth? How does storytelling contribute to “truth?”
How does a person’s perspective shape their understanding or experience? How can we strive to understand multiple perspectives and truths?
How do authors, filmmakers, and artists document and reflect upon the psychological, social, and environmental consequences of war on individual identity and the American Dream?
Instructional Snapshot
Instructional Snapshot
Students will:
Synthesize nonfiction and fiction, students will write a four paragraph analytical essay.
Defining Cultural and Personal Identity (Art, Poetry, and Music Study: The Harlem Renaissance)
Learning Targets
Learning Targets
Determine the figurative or connotative meaning(s) of words and phrases as they are used in a text; analyze the impact of specific words or rhetorical patterns (e.g., how the language evokes a sense of time and place, how shifts in rhetorical patterns signal new perspectives). [RL. 4]
Present information, findings, and supporting evidence, conveying a clear and distinct perspective, such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning, alternative or opposing perspectives are addressed, and the organization, development, vocabulary, substance, and style are appropriate to purpose, audience, and a range of formal and informal tasks. [SL.4]
Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., audio, visual, interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest. [SL.5]
Essential Questions
Essential Questions
How does literature, art, and music both shape and challenge a community’s identity?
In what ways does creativity become a form of resistance?
What does it mean to “find one’s voice,” and why does it matter in a society fighting inequalities?
Instructional Snapshot
Instructional Snapshot
Students will:
Work with an assigned group of peers, select an artist introduced within the unit, and research their work. Then answer the question “How does your selected [poet/musician/artist]’s craft reflect or impact American culture during the time of the Harlem Renaissance?” and present your work to your peers.
American Voices (The Research Paper)
Learning Targets
Learning Targets
Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question) or solve a problem; narrow or broaden the inquiry when appropriate; synthesize multiple sources on the subject, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation. [W.7]
When conducting research, gather relevant information from multiple authoritative print and digital sources, using advanced searches effectively; assess the strengths and limitations of each source in terms of the task, purpose, and audience; integrate information into the text selectively to maintain the flow of ideas, avoiding plagiarism and overreliance on any one source and following a standard format for citation. [W.8]
Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support written analysis, interpretation, reflection, and research, applying one or more grades 11–12 standards for Reading Literature or Reading Informational Text as needed. [W.9]
Essential Questions
Essential Questions
How does a person’s work impact and reflect American identity and culture?
Instructional Snapshot
Instructional Snapshot
Students will:
Select a musical artist or a poet whose work either reflects or has impacted American culture. Students will complete a sustained research project on that figure, culminating in a final research literary analysis paper using a standardized citation style.
The Reality of the American Dream (The Great Gatsby)
Learning Targets
Learning Targets
Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions with diverse partners on grades 11–12 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas) and expressing their own clearly and persuasively [SL.1].
Analyze a case in which grasping point of view requires distinguishing what is directly stated in a text from what is really meant (e.g., satire, sarcasm, irony, understatement, notable omission). [RL.6]
Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings. [L.5]
Essential Questions
Essential Questions
How did literature reflect the impact of political, social, and economic changes on American Identity and the American Dream?
What keeps dreams alive, and does getting what you want justify how you get it?
Instructional Snapshot
Instructional Snapshot
Students will:
Use textual evidence, express and support opinions about thematic concepts in a final culminating Socratic Seminar.
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