English IV Humanities

Course Overview

The Humanities program is a comprehensive multi-level course that explores and analyzes literature, art, music, film, technology, and trending contemporary social issues. This intellectually rigorous Humanities/English IV course weaves the study and reading of literature, drama, art, economics, anthropology, philosophy, ethics, sociology, and history. The class is student-centered and — in addition to structured, thesis-driven essay assignments — is geared toward students who work best in a project/presentation-based environment and toward those who prefer alternative assessments. Research is a vital class component, and by fulfilling the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks for English, students will develop skills that will prepare them for college and careers. Humanities/English IV grapples with timeless themes that have challenged humankind for centuries: What are the origins of culture? What does it mean to be free? How and why do we make moral decisions? Why is art important to humanity? How do caste and class play into our lives?

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

Rhetoric, Myth & Meaning

Learning Targets

Analyze how accomplished writers use narrative techniques, rhetorical appeals, and stylistic choices to develop ideas and engage audiences.
Evaluate how structure, detail, diction, syntax, and voice contribute to a writer's purpose and meaning.
Analyze how stories and cultural narratives communicate values, beliefs, and understandings of human experience.
Develop a purposeful narrative that connects personal experience to a larger idea or insight.
Select precise details and organize experiences to create a coherent and compelling narrative.
Use language, sentence structure, rhetorical techniques, and conventions intentionally for emphasis and effect.
Strengthen writing through planning, feedback, revision, editing, and reflection.

Essential Questions

How do stories and myths shape individual and cultural identity?
What experiences, relationships, and ideas shape our beliefs and understanding of ourselves?
How does language shape meaning and influence an audience?
How do writers transform personal experience into meaningful narratives?
How do audience, purpose, and context influence the way we tell our stories?
How can rhetorical and stylistic choices strengthen a writer's message?

Instructional Snapshot

Students will:

Closely read and annotate exemplary personal, literary, and nonfiction texts as models of effective writing.
Analyze how writers establish voice, develop ideas, and appeal to particular audiences.
Examine relationships among language, rhetoric, structure, audience, and purpose.
Experiment with rhetorical techniques, narrative structure, syntax, and purposeful detail.
Plan, draft, conference, revise, and edit original writing.
Apply conventions of standard English while making deliberate stylistic choices appropriate to purpose and audience.

Society, Culture & Human Nature

Learning Targets

Analyze how complex literary and informational texts develop ideas about society, culture, human nature, power, and conflict.
Examine how authors use characterization, symbolism, structure, and other literary choices to comment on social issues.
Read and evaluate challenging nonfiction and scholarly texts through literary, cultural, historical, and interdisciplinary lenses.
Analyze how multiple themes and ideas interact to create complex interpretations of individuals and societies.
Synthesize ideas and evidence from literature, nonfiction, and social studies to develop nuanced interpretations.
Cite strong and thorough evidence from primary and secondary sources while recognizing ambiguity and competing interpretations.
Develop evidence-based literary analysis under both extended and timed conditions.

Essential Questions

Why do human beings create societies, cultures, and shared narratives?
How do rituals, traditions, and beliefs create meaning and belonging?
What holds societies together, and what causes social order to break down?
How do individuals shape society—and how does society shape individuals?
What do societies reveal about human nature?
How can literature illuminate conflicts within societies and cultures?

Instructional Snapshot

Students will:

Closely read and annotate complex literature, nonfiction, and scholarly texts.
Examine literary works through social, historical, cultural, and other critical lenses.
Connect ideas across English and social studies to develop interdisciplinary understandings.
Compare how different texts and disciplines approach questions of society, culture, and human behavior.
Support interpretations with a purposeful balance of primary and secondary evidence.
Develop analytical responses through discussion, collaborative inquiry, and timed and extended writing.

Potential core texts may include: Lord of the Flies and Braiding Sweetgrass.

Power, Justice & Social Institutions

Learning Targets

Analyze sophisticated arguments about justice, inequality, incarceration, class, and institutional responsibility.
Evaluate an author's purpose, perspective, rhetoric, reasoning, and use of evidence.
Research a complex social or justice-related issue using credible and authoritative sources.
Synthesize evidence from multiple sources to develop a precise, well-supported position.
Construct an argument with a logical line of reasoning, relevant evidence, and rhetorical choices appropriate to audience and purpose.
Address meaningful counterclaims and competing perspectives to strengthen an argument.
Adapt formal argumentation for an authentic civic audience.

Essential Questions

How do institutions create, maintain, or challenge systems of power and inequality?
To what extent does human nature shape our social institutions?
How do stereotypes and systemic inequities affect individuals and communities?
How do class and consumer culture influence identity, opportunity, and behavior?
To what extent are individuals shaped by systems, and how can they become agents of change?
What responsibilities do individuals and institutions have in pursuing justice?

Instructional Snapshot

Students will:

Read and annotate literary, informational, scholarly, and multimedia texts addressing justice and social institutions.
Investigate contemporary issues within legal and justice systems through sustained inquiry.
Evaluate the credibility, relevance, strengths, and limitations of sources and evidence.
Compare competing perspectives and identify assumptions within complex arguments.
Develop claims and counterclaims through research, discussion, and analytical writing.
Apply rhetorical strategies to compose a researched argument for an authentic audience, such as a policymaker, government agency, or advocacy organization.

Potential core texts and media may include: Just Mercy, Devil's Knot, Justice U.S.A., 13th, and selected nonfiction.

Truth, Ethics & Reality

Learning Targets

Analyze how complex texts develop interconnected ideas about truth, ethics, power, conformity, and individual freedom.
Apply an appropriate literary or critical lens to develop an original interpretation of a complex text.
Develop an original, focused research question that supports sustained literary inquiry.
Conduct independent research using authoritative primary and secondary sources, including scholarly databases.
Evaluate sources for credibility, relevance, perspective, and limitations and synthesize them to deepen literary analysis.
Develop a sustained argument supported by close textual analysis and relevant scholarly evidence.
Integrate and cite sources accurately and ethically using MLA conventions.
Produce a polished 6–8 page literary research paper demonstrating sustained analysis, independent thinking, and command of academic writing.

Essential Questions

What is truth, and how do we determine what is true?
How do individuals determine what is right and wrong?
What forces influence our perceptions and ethical decisions?
How can institutions shape, control, or distort understandings of truth?
When do social institutions protect individuals, and when do they suppress individual freedom?
How can literature challenge our assumptions about reality, knowledge, and power?

Instructional Snapshot

Students will:

Independently read and analyze a complex dystopian novel.
Read scholarly criticism and applying literary lenses to develop interpretations.
Develop and refine an original research question through sustained inquiry.
Locate, evaluate, and synthesize primary and secondary sources.
Practice close analysis through discussion and short, timed literary responses.
Develop a research-based literary argument through planning, drafting, feedback, revision, and editing.

Potential core texts and media may include: 1984, The Handmaid's Tale, The Matrix, Black Mirror: “Nosedive,” and selected episodes of The X-Files.

Existentialism, Choice & Meaning

Learning Targets

Understand and accurately apply key concepts of existential philosophy.
Analyze how literary and artistic works explore free will, authenticity, absurdity, suffering, mortality, and the search for meaning.
Examine how authors and artists use form, language, imagery, symbolism, and perspective to communicate philosophical ideas.
Compare how existential questions are represented across literature, philosophy, music, visual art, and film.
Analyze ambiguity and competing interpretations of complex philosophical and artistic works.
Synthesize ideas across disciplines and media to develop nuanced interpretations of human experience.
Create an original analytical or artistic work that demonstrates sophisticated understanding and application of existential concepts.

Essential Questions

What does it mean to live an authentic life?
To what extent do human beings have free will?
How do circumstances and experiences shape our choices and perceptions of reality?
How do individuals create meaning in the face of uncertainty, suffering, or mortality?
What relationships exist among freedom, responsibility, choice, and consequence?
How do existential concepts such as authenticity, facticity, absurdity, angst, dread, and despair help us understand human experience?

Instructional Snapshot

Students will:

Read philosophical, literary, and nonfiction works through an existential lens.
Connect their study of Man's Search for Meaning in social studies to literary and artistic analysis.
Closely read modern and classic short fiction for representations of existential ideas.
Analyze music, visual art, and other media as expressions of philosophical perspectives.
Compare how different writers, thinkers, and artists respond to common questions about freedom, meaning, suffering, and mortality.
Engage in evidence-based discussion and writing to test, defend, and refine complex interpretations.
Synthesize learning through an original project connecting existential concepts across texts, disciplines, and media.

Potential core text: Man's Search for Meaning.

Writing, Research & Communication Across the Course

Instructional Snapshot

Throughout Grade 12 Honors Humanities, students will:

Develop precise, nuanced claims supported by strong and thorough textual evidence and logical reasoning.
Analyze rather than simply summarize evidence, explaining how specific details support larger interpretations and arguments.
Conduct sustained independent research, refining questions and synthesizing authoritative primary and secondary sources.
Evaluate sources for credibility, relevance, perspective, strengths, and limitations and integrate them accurately and ethically.
Write for varied purposes and audiences, including personal narrative, literary analysis, research-based argument, authentic civic communication, and timed writing.
Strengthen organization, cohesion, voice, diction, syntax, grammar, and style through deliberate choices appropriate to audience and purpose.
Engage in a recursive writing process of planning, drafting, feedback, revision, editing, and reflection, with increasing independence.
Participate thoughtfully in evidence-based discussions and presentations, building on others' ideas, considering competing perspectives, and communicating complex ideas clearly.

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