Weekly Goals
Text
Literary Skills
Writing Skills
Literary and Cultural History
Literary Influences and Associations
Interdisciplinary Connections
Week One
Introductions; Summer Reading Evaluations; community text and theme.
Understanding genre(s); frame story; limited perspective of narrator.
Submit essay and other writing projects on Summer Reading Assignment(s); Grammar and Usage Test/Discussion
How are Slave Narratives involved into the American canon today?
Twain, regionalism; James & Fitzgerald, narrator's perspective; strong female characters.
Immigration; city versus rural life; American myth of individualism. Cultural question:What is an American?
Week Two
Early American literature; New Republic Writers: Winthrop, Edwards, Bradstreet, Crevecoeur, Wheatly, A. Adams, Franklin.Forming an Identity. Introduce New Republic & Hawthorne.
Reviewing genre; critical reading skills required for junior year English at Suffield. Reading Quizzes!
Expectation for junior year writing standards and paragraph development delineated.
Colonial Background; Age of Reason, preference for form, order and symmetry in intellectual endeavors.
Future influences on Hawthorne, Twain, future female authors writing in a patriarchal system, et al.
Colonialism; City on hill; Puritan paradox; American identity; sense of place; religion in Amer. culture.
Week Three
New Republic continued and Hawthorne's short work(s):Forming an Identity. BeginThe Scarlet Letter.Emphasis on the individual.
Non fiction; click here for English III poetry terms.
Essay topics; paragraph assignments; comprehension quizzes and possible in-class writing test.
Effects of colonialism on colonized voices: slave narratives, Native American texts: Chief Seattle's reply to American Government.
Consideration of future connections toother voices that haunt subvert the canon.
Colonialism; City on hill; Puritan paradox; American identity; sense of place; religion in Amer. culture.
Week Four
Continue Scarlet Letter. Transcendentalism; early American Romanticism: Emerson, Fuller and Poe.
Click here for Poe's classic definition of a short story.
Creative writing; Short Story elements.
American Romanticism Emerging
Emerson'sAmerican Scholar Essay; Bradstreet anticipating Dickinson, Sexton, Rich.
Varies according to text selection; the cultural and social effects of Concord, MA, on nineteenth century America.
Week Five
Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.Emphasis on the individual.
Narrative techniques in the novel.
Reading comprehension writing exercises.
American Romanticism
Elements and form of the English Novel
Anne Hutchinson; cultural history of religion in American intellectual history.
Week Six
Hawthorne's The Scarlet Lettercontinued and completed.Emphasis on the individual.
Plot techniques in the novel.
Develop Essay Topics using elements of Romanticism.
New England Renaissance
Shakespeare's plot structure in the novel.
Elements of Theocracy
Week Seven
The Scarlet Letteressay writing projects; Shorter works of Melville or Hawthorne. Fireside poets (straw dogs to Dickinson and Whitman).
Further application of Poe's definition for short fiction.Introduce English III poetry terms.
Essay topic on Romanticism.
American RomanticismEmphasis on the individual.
Melville's appreciation of Shakespeare.
Cultural legacy of the Salem Witch Trials.
Week Seven-Eight
Thoreau's Civil DisobedienceandWalden;premeditations on Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman.
Click here for English III Poetry Terms
Poetry Explication paragraphs
American RomanticismEmphasis on the individual.
Why did Emerson and Thoreau have such eclectic literary influences?
Amherst as a American Studies nineteenth century text.
Week Eight-Nine
Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman.
Click here for English III Poetry Terms
Poetry Explication paragraphs
American Romanticism;American Realism
Emerson; King James Bible;Puritan habit of daily diary; Hymns.
The effects of the rail road and the Civil War on American cultural history.
Week Nine.
Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman.
Click here for English III Poetry Terms. Slave narrative tradition.
Poetry Explication paragraphs
American Romanticism;American Realism
Emerson; Thoreau. Slave narrative tradition in Twain's work.
Suffrage and Abolition movement; have students provide other links from their US History studies.
Click here for archival syllabi