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Course Overview
In English IV, students deepen an understanding of writing and rhetorical arguments through careful reading, analysis, and writing as they explore the rhetorical situation, claims and evidence, reasoning, organization, and style. English IV will focus on the continued honing of reading skills (especially close reading skills), literary analysis, and exploration of the following themes: the nature of humanity, the nature of society, and our ethical responsibilities. Students will complete narrative essays, expository essays, researched arguments, and creative essays and writing. Importance will be placed on the study of rhetoric, thematic analysis, and review and instruction of mechanics. Revision will be considered an essential component of all writing. Outside readings are encouraged and may be assigned. This course prepares students for writing research papers, the continued development of reading and analytical skills, and other English Language Arts skills needed for college and career readiness.
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
Words at Work: Personal Narratives with Purpose
Learning Targets
Learning Targets
Analyze how authors use rhetorical strategies, literary devices, evidence, organization, and style to communicate a message.
Identify an author’s audience, purpose, and central message and explain how these influence the choices an author makes.
Evaluate how writers appeal to and influence different audiences.
Apply rhetorical and literary techniques to students’ own writing.
Develop and revise a personal narrative that uses purposeful choices in structure, language, detail, and style.
Essential Questions
Essential Questions
What is an author’s message, and how is that message developed?
How do audience and purpose influence the choices a writer makes?
How do authors make purposeful rhetorical and stylistic choices to achieve their goals?
How can writers use rhetorical and literary strategies to strengthen their own writing?
Instructional Snapshot
Instructional Snapshot
Students will:
Read and analyze nonfiction essays, personal essays, short texts, and multimedia selections.
Examine how writers use rhetorical appeals, evidence, organization, language, and style for particular audiences and purposes.
Practice close reading and analytical writing through shorter written responses.
Study mentor texts as models for effective writing.
Draft, revise, and polish an original personal narrative.
It Lives! Resurrecting a Classic
Learning Targets
Learning Targets
Analyze character, theme, conflict, symbolism, and other literary elements in a complex text.
Apply critical lenses to develop deeper interpretations of literature.
Examine how an author’s experiences, historical context, and perspective can influence a literary work.
Compare an original literary work with a modern adaptation, considering how changes in form affect meaning.
Develop a literary argument supported by relevant textual evidence and analysis.
Essential Questions
Essential Questions
How and why are archetypal or classic stories continually reinvented?
How can an adaptation preserve, reinterpret, or transform the themes of an original work for a modern audience?
How can an author’s experiences and historical context influence their writing?
How can critical lenses help readers develop deeper interpretations of a classic text?
What responsibilities do individuals have toward one another?
Instructional Snapshot
Instructional Snapshot
Students will:
Read a graphic-novel adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein alongside selected excerpts from the original novel.
Compare how language, imagery, characterization, and theme function across different versions of the story.
Explore the historical and biographical contexts surrounding Shelley and the novel.
Apply different critical lenses to characters, conflicts, and themes.
Develop and revise a literary analysis that uses textual evidence to support an interpretation.
Beyond the Text: Literature, Social Issues, and Research
Learning Targets
Learning Targets
By the end of the unit, students will know and be able to:
Analyze how literature explores complex social issues through characters, conflicts, perspectives, and themes.
Examine how historical and social contexts contribute to the meaning of a literary work.
Analyze complex characters whose perspectives reveal competing ideas about identity, opportunity, responsibility, and society.
Develop meaningful research questions connected to a literary text and its larger social or historical context.
Locate, evaluate, integrate, and cite credible sources.
Develop a sustained research-based argument supported by literary and informational evidence.
Essential Questions
Essential Questions
How can literature help readers understand complex social structures and ideals?
How can literature help us understand America’s ongoing journey toward equal opportunity?
How can the perspectives of complex characters help readers explore social issues in nuanced ways?
What additional meanings emerge when we examine literature through historical, social, or psychological lenses?
How do researchers develop a thoughtful question into a well-supported argument?
Instructional Snapshot
Instructional Snapshot
Students will:
Read and analyze August Wilson’s Fences, with attention to characterization, conflict, perspective, and historical context.
Explore issues such as identity, opportunity, family, race, gender, and responsibility as they emerge through the text.
Develop research questions inspired by the play and its larger historical or social contexts.
Practice research skills including source evaluation, note-taking, synthesis, citation, and integration of evidence.
Plan, draft, revise, and complete multiple drafts of a research-supported essay.
Proceed with Caution: Dystopian Fiction & Social Commentary
Learning Targets
Learning Targets
Identify and analyze common characteristics of utopian and dystopian literature.
Analyze how authors use satire, irony, symbolism, and other literary techniques to critique society.
Examine how dystopian literature explores questions about power, conformity, freedom, technology, censorship, and human behavior.
Connect ideas in dystopian literature to historical and contemporary social issues.
Develop and communicate interpretations through collaborative discussion, presentation, and textual evidence.
Essential Questions
Essential Questions
What features distinguish a utopian society from a dystopian one?
What can dystopian literature reveal about society and human nature?
How and why do dystopian authors use satire and irony?
How do systems of power influence individual freedom and behavior?
How can speculative fiction encourage readers to reconsider issues in their own society?
Instructional Snapshot
Instructional Snapshot
Students will:
Read George Orwell’s 1984 alongside selected classic and contemporary short texts and multimedia works.
Examine concepts such as surveillance, conformity, censorship, language, education, technology, and social control.
Analyze how Orwell and other creators use dystopian conventions, satire, and irony to develop social commentary.
Make connections between literary themes and relevant contemporary questions.
Collaborate on thematic presentations and participate in evidence-based Socratic discussions.
The Social Contract
Learning Targets
Learning Targets
Analyze how literature portrays the relationship between individuals and their communities.
Examine how loyalty, responsibility, belonging, identity, and community influence characters’ choices.
Compare how different authors and genres explore similar questions about individual and collective responsibility.
Analyze how social expectations and community values can both support and challenge individuals.
Develop evidence-based interpretations about the ethical responsibilities people have toward themselves and others.
Essential Questions
Essential Questions
What responsibilities do we have to ourselves and to one another?
How do the communities we live in shape us, and how do individuals shape their communities?
How do loyalty and responsibility influence one another?
What happens when an individual’s needs or values conflict with those of a community?
What holds a community together, and what can cause that social contract to break down?
Instructional Snapshot
Instructional Snapshot
Students will:
Read and analyze Fredrik Backman’s Beartown and Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.
Compare how contemporary fiction and drama portray community, belonging, relationships, loyalty, and responsibility.
Examine how characters respond when personal values, relationships, and community expectations come into conflict.
Connect literary themes to broader questions about community life and ethical responsibility.
Demonstrate understanding through discussion, analytical writing, collaborative activities, and a culminating task appropriate to the course schedule.
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