AP English Language and CompositionSyllabus
2015-2016
Ohatchee High School
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Instructor: Lindsay Ford
Phone: 256-741-4900
Email:
Website: teacher id#134
Office hours: 5th period or by appointment
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Reminders:Text @ohseh11 to 81010 OR go to
Course Overview
Students in this introductory college-level course read and carefully analyze a broad and challenging range of nonfiction prose selections, deepening their awareness of rhetoric and how language works. Through close reading and frequent writing, students develop their ability to work with language and text with a greater awareness of purpose and strategy, while strengthening their own composing abilities. Course readings feature expository, analytical, personal, and argumentative texts from a variety of authors and historical contexts. Students examine and work with essays, letters, speeches, images, media, and imaginative literature. Students prepare for the AP® English Language and Composition Exam and may be granted advanced placement, college credit, or both as a result of satisfactory performance. By early May of the school year, students will have nearly completed a course in close reading and purposeful writing. The critical skills that students learn to appreciate through close and continued analysis of a wide variety of nonfiction texts can serve them in their own writing as they grow increasingly aware of these skills and their pertinent uses.
During the course, a wide variety of texts (prose and image based) and writing tasks provide the focus for an energetic study of language, rhetoric, and argument. As this is a college-level course, performance expectations are appropriately high, and the workload is challenging. Students are expected to commit to a minimum of five hours of course work per week outside of class. Often, this work involves long-term writing and reading assignments, so effective time management is important. Because of the demanding curriculum, students must bring to the course sufficient command of mechanical conventions and an ability to read and discuss prose. The course is constructed in accordance with the guidelines described in the AP English Course Description.
Course Objectives
Over the course of the year, we will focus on the following goals:
- Using enhanced, wide-ranging vocabulary appropriately and effectively,
- Increasing students’ ability to recognize and analyze figurative language, rhetorical devices and strategies, tone and theme through critical reading,
- Producing effective, well-supported audience-directed prose with a variety of sentence structures, including appropriate use of subordination and coordination,
- Using effective rhetoric such as controlling tone, establishing and maintaining voice, and achieving appropriate emphasis through diction and sentence structure,
- Creating effective arguments—taking a position that supports, qualifies, or disputes an author’s point in a passage—with a balance of generalization and specific illustrative detail,
- Synthesizing and citing information from a variety of sources to create effective argument or analysis, and
- Familiarizing students with common styles of documentation including the MLA format, the APA format, Chicago, and the use of footnotes.
Goals
EVERYTHING WE DO WILL BE TO PREPARE YOU FOR YOUR COLLEGE AND/OR CAREER CHOICES
1.To achieve a scholarship-level score on the ACT
2.To accomplish benchmark scores in language and reading in order to avoid remedial college classes
3.To attain employer-ready scores on the ACT Work Keys exam
4.To prepare for the AP exam
5.To develop good workplace skills (attendance, punctuality, attitude, aptitude, preparedness)
6.To learn to communicate effectively through the written and spoken word
7.To prepare a portfolio to demonstrate your proficiency with college and/or career skills
8.To think, to write, to read, to speak, to discuss
Class Rules
A.Be in your desk on time every day with all classroom materials.
B.Be respectful to others.
C.Do not eat, drink, chew gum, or snack in class at any time.
D.Clean your desk and the area around it before leaving class.
E.Use restroom, sharpen pencils, and address other issues before the tardy bell rings.
F.Do not bring other subject material to class, or it will be taken up.
G.You are allowed two bathroom passes of five minutes per nine weeks.
Consequences
A.1st violation of minor class rules—warning.
B.Violating minor rule, second or consequent infraction—writing assignment, before or after school detention, and/or intermediate violation.
C.Parental Contact.
D. Refusing to complete discipline assignment or other violation deemed so by the COSC—intermediate or higher.
Grading Policy
50%Tests: Tests may consist of both objective and essay questions on novels, multiple-choice questions based on rhetorical devices and their function in given passages, and final copies of essays.
Writing: Most essays are first written as in-class essays and graded as rough drafts. Rough drafts are self-edited and peer-edited before students type the final copies. Reading Response Journals are outside writings that are included in this category.
Projects/Presentations: Projects are outside, creative assignments that may take various forms in the final product, such as posters, writing, performances, presentations, art work, etc. They are generally extensions of reading(s) or discussion(s) that take place within the classroom.
Quizzes: Quizzes will cover a variety of concepts, such as reading comprehension, grammatical and mechanical concepts, and vocabulary awareness. Quizzes can be in form of short answer, multiple-choice, identify, etc, and are often unannounced.
See below for additional assessments.
50%:Class work/Homework/Discussion/Participation: A variety of tasks may fall in this category including individual steps of the writing process, grammar reviews, vocabulary exercises, annotations of text, etc.
See below for additional assessments.
Assessments
Throughout the school year, students will be assessed using a variety of methods:
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Novel exams and projects
Independent reading exams and projects
In-class timed essays/writings
In-class timed multiple choice quizzes based on close
reading passages
Essays
Reader response and/or Journal entries
Grammar
Vocabulary
Projects
Current events
Presentations
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Students’ grades are based on an accumulated point system. Each graded assignment or activity is assigned a certain number of points based on its complexity and overall importance to the objectives of the course. At the end of each quarter, the student’s quarter grade is determined by dividing the number of points earned by the number of points possible.
Make-Up Work: This is your responsibility!!! I will follow board policy as it is written in the handbook. Assignments are posted online, and I am available after school to complete makeup assignments. I will not discuss these in class. Please be aware that when making up exams and in-class assignments, you will not be getting the same material as the rest of the class. If a major assignment (essay, project, etc.) was announced ahead of time and is due on a day that you are absent, you must send me an email with the assignment attached at the beginning of your class period and bring in the hard copy of the assignment on the next day that you are in class.
Late Work: Be aware that in an AP course, students should rarely, if ever, turn in late work because you will quickly fall behind. However, I will accept late work but will deduct 10% from the final score for each day an assignment is late. For example, if an assignment worth 100 points is turned in three days late, your score would be calculated this way: 83 (rubric score) - 30 (for three days late) = 53.
B.Y.O.D.
All forms of personal electronic communication devices must be out of sight and in the power-off mode unless I have instructed you to use the device. Your device distracts you from learning and/or provides you opportunities to plagiarize. During a testing or instructional period in class, any use of a personal electronic communication device, without the prior consent of the instructor, constitutes prima-facie evidence of academic dishonesty with no right of grade appeal. If the instructor observes the device, the presumption is that cheating has occurred and a grade of "F" will be assigned to that exam, quiz, material, etc.
Academic Dishonesty Policy
Students who are found guilty of cheating (receiving, providing, talking, aiding in any form, and/or not following teacher’s specific assignment instructions) will receive a “0” on the material or test. No credit for plagiarism of any sort. This includes claiming material as your own from any other source (student, teacher, book, magazine, Internet, etc.).
Common rules regarding etiquette and honesty which may not be explicitly stated within this syllabus are implicit expectations and must be followed.
Supplies
NOTEBOOK REQUIREMENTS
Purchase one 1 1/2" or 2" three-ring binder, insert tab dividers, and loose-leaf paper. Divide your notebook as noted below:
1. Handouts
2. DOLs/Grammar
3. Literature
4. Writing
5. Journals/Research
Include one plastic folder for graded papers.
ADDITIONAL SUPPLIES
NO SPIRAL NOTEBOOKS
- Notebook Paper
- Black or Blue Pens ONLY! I will not accept assignments in any other color.
- Flash drive
- Colored pencils, highlighters
- Textbooks will be issued at orientation/registration
- Workbooks will be issued in class
Course Planner
Reader Response Journals
Each week students will be given short reading assignments to read closely using the SOAPSTone (Speaker, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, Subject, Tone) text analysis strategy. They will respond to these in writing (½ to 2 pages). Because the purpose of keeping this journal is to expand students’ reading experiences and to encourage thoughtful responses to those experiences, this writing will be graded on effort and completion as well as grammar and mechanics. Students are encouraged to experiment with their writing, to learn to develop their own voice as a writer, to practice rhetorical analysis, and to practice writing argumentatively.
Compositions (several every grading period)
During the first quarter students will focus on argumentation while developing knowledge of rhetorical strategies and devices. In the second quarter students will continue to build on argumentation in addition to writing rhetorical analyses. Each grading period students will be assigned at least one synthesis essay. With each introduction of the types of essays on the AP exam, students will be given sample essays to examine and critique. This allows them to see what is expected of their writing and gives them a model to follow. Rubrics designed for each writing task are used to grade compositions.
Independent Reading (2-4 novels per grading period)
Students do annotated reading of these novels. They are responsible for identifying and understanding major elements of each novel: characterization, setting, plot, conflicts, climaxes, resolutions, conclusions, and themes. Students will be tested on these novels through objective and essay tests. Students will bring to class discussions and critical writings knowledge and experience gained through reading these novels.
Viewing
Using a variety of visuals, such as photos, political cartoons, magazine ads, graphs, charts, videos, etc…, students will practice analyzing how graphics and visual images both relate to written text and serve as alternative forms of texts themselves. Students will learn to analyze them in relation to three of the five canons of rhetoric: invention, arrangement, and style.
Grammar Practice
Grammar practice occurs daily on a whole-class basis and on an individual basis through the teacher revision and feedback of student essays and writing assignments. Using examples of writing from the students themselves, students are instructed to improve writing in ways such as, common grammatical errors, sentence structures, organization techniques, details—general and specific, and effective use of rhetoric.
Research and Presentation
We will work through this process together in steps using classroom resources, the school library, the local university library, and online sources. Plagiarism will result in a zero. We will do at least two major projects, one on careers/colleges and one on current events.
Performance Tasks
For each reading assignment students must identify the following:
• Thesis or Claim
• Tone or Attitude
• Purpose
• Audience and Occasion
• Evidence or Data
• Appeals: Logos, Ethos, Pathos
• Assumptions or Warrants
• Style (how the author communicates his message—rhetorical mode and rhetorical devices, which always include diction and syntax)
• Organizational patterns found in the text (i.e., main idea detail, comparison/ contrast, cause/effect, extended definition, problem/solution, etc.)
• Use of detail to develop a general idea
Writing Expectations
As this is a language and composition course, you will be expected to use every assignment that involves writing to practice your best composition skills. Composition assignments will include statements, paragraphs, literary glossaries, timed writes (essay tests), and formal essays (personal, expository, and argumentative). No matter the kind of writing assigned, your best composition skills should be practiced. We will work with various composition constructions, Standard Written English, sentence variety, and word choice.
- Please use complete sentences with clear support for your ideas.
- All assignments for formal papers will include a specific grading rubric. We will discuss the rubrics prior to submitting papers and review expectations for the particular composition or paper. Please consult each rubric carefully before submitting your work. You will be expected to rewrite larger papers and literary analysis after you receive feedback.
- Timed writes (essay tests) will include a scoring guide as feedback. These will be scoring guides as used by the AP English Language and Composition Exam for that specific question. You will be expected to rewrite longer papers and literary analyses after you receive feedback.
- As a student in an AP English Language and Composition course, you should have a good command of Standard Written English. There will be mini-lessons throughout the course dealing with complex grammar and usage issues, sentence constructions, and diction. Occasionally you may need some additional help with this.
- All written literary analyses must use proper in-text citations following the MLA format.
Novel and Nonfiction Selections
The list of novels and nonfiction works below will be used by the teacher and students when selecting in-class and independent reading. These lists have been drawn from a variety of sources: the central office approved list, College Board, other teachers, and Time and NY Times lists. Parents and students should discuss which works to select and choose appropriately. Parents, if you have concerns with instructor-assigned works, please let me know. Keep in mind that these texts frequently appear on the College Board exam.
Selected nonfiction works from Time’s List of Top 100 nonfiction books and the New York Times best seller list
Of Mice and MenJohn Steinbeck
The Grapes of WrathJohn Steinbeck
The Catcher in the RyeJ.D. Salinger
Inherit the Wind Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee
A Painted HouseJohn Grisham
Absalom! Absalom! William Faulkner
The AwakeningKate Chopin
NightElie Wiesel
Their Eyes Were Watching GodZora Neale Hurston
The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway
MythologyEdith Hamilton
FencesAugust Wilson
AnthemAyn Rand
1984George Orwell
Fahrenheit 451Ray Bradbury
Fast Food NationEric Schlosser
Ethan FromeEdith Wharton
The Great GatsbyF. Scott Fitzgerald
Of Mice and MenJohn Steinbeck
I Know Why the Caged Bird SingsMaya Angelou
One Writer’s BeginningsEudora Welty
The Fire Next TimeJames Baldwin
In Cold BloodTruman Capote
Midsummer Night’s DreamWilliam Shakespeare
The Things They CarriedTim O’Brien
The Old Man and the SeaErnest Hemingway
Our TownThornton Wilder
On the RoadJack Kerouac
When I Was Puerto Rican Esmeralda Santiago
Caramelo Sandra Cisneros
The Woman Warrior Maxine Hong
My Life and Hard TimesJames Thurber
Bread GiversAnzia Yezierska
Spoon River AnthologyEdgar Lee Masters
The MetamorphosisFrank Kafka
Dust Tracks on a RoadZora Neal Hurston
Black BoyRichard Wright
A Room of One’s OwnVirginia Woolf
An American ChildhoodAnne Dillard
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Johnathan Safran Foer
The Awakening Kate Chopin
As the World Watched Carolyn Maull McKinstry
Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain
Frankenstein Mary Shelley
The English Patient Michael Ondaatje
Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen
Nickel and Dimed Barbara Ehrenreich
FreakonomicsStephen J. Dubner
Beowulf trans. Burton Raffel
Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer
Macbeth, King Lear, and/or Hamlet Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing Shakespeare
The Fellowship of the Ring J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King J.R.R. Tolkien
Gulliver’s Travels Jonathan Swift
Pride and Prejudice, or EmmaJane Austen
Death Be Not Proud John Gunther
The FriendsRosa Guy
Animal Farm George Orwell
The Once and Future KingT. H. White
The Most They Ever Had Rick Bragg
Harry PotterJ.K. Rowling
All Quiet on the Western FrontErich Maria Remarque
Growing UpRussell Baker
Man’s Search for MeaningViktor Frankl
The Mayor of CasterbridgeThomas Hardy
Tess of the D’UrbervillesThomas Hardy
Jane EyreCharlotte Bronte
Wuthering HeightsEmily Bronte
A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens
Pygmalion George Bernard Shaw
All the Kings Men’sRobert Penn Warren
Catch 22 Joseph Heller
Pygmalion George Bernard Shaw
I Know Why the Caged Bird SingsMaya Angelou
Oedipus Rex Sophocles
The Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams
The Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
The Good EarthPearl S. Buck
The Autobiography of Benjamin FranklinBenjamin Franklin
The FountainheadAnn Rand
The PearlJohn Steinbeck
Silas MarnerGeorge Eliot
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Alexander Solzhenitsyn
A Country DoctorFranz Kafka
Atlas ShruggedAnn Rand
Dandelion WineRay Bradbury
Flowers for AlgernonDaniel Keyes