Cushing School Code: 441680

Becky Talk

Cushing H.S. Cushing, TX.

Advanced Placement Literature and Composition Syllabus

This AP course is designed to teach college writing, close reading, and critical thinking skills following the curricular requirements described in the AP English Course Description.

Writing in this course:

You will write in a variety of modes and respond to a variety of literature. You will essentially learn to write to understand a work of literature, to explain a work of literature or an idea, and to evaluate the artistry and quality of a work of literature [C10]. To write well, you must read well, so we will focus on developing your close reading skills as well as your writing skills.

You will write almost every day in some form, either as a journal response to a work you’re reading, or in a quick-write response in class to a reading assignment and in timed in-class writing and in more formal writing polished outside of class [C7]. You will learn to revise your writing to eventually produce polished final drafts in writing finished outside of class. You will turn in a final writing portfolio at the end of the year, which is a record of how far you have come in your reading, writing, and reasoning skills since the beginning of the school year. I will conference with you frequently as you write, and you will develop a sense of choosing the exact right word to convey your thoughts [C12], an ability to vary your syntactical structure to produce certain effects in your writing [C13], an ability to develop a sense of coherence in your writing [C14], an ability to balance generalization with specific details [C15], and an ability to develop your own authentic voice in writing [C16].

The ability to write well will stand you in good stead in all your other high school courses, in your college classes, and in the eventual career path you choose. Those who can communicate well are those who become leaders in the work force, and one of the ultimate goals of this class is to develop more highly refined communication skills.

Writing Assignments:

Critical essays: In response to literature, you will write critical essays explicating poetry, fiction, and drama. You will choose evidence from the work to support your assertions, or your insights into the work. These essays are based on close analysis of the text, including the author’s style (figurative language, imagery, diction, syntax) and themes in the work [C3, C4]. You will also write creatively—you will write an original sonnet, villanelle, and other poems modeled after specific works.

In-class writing: Some of this writing will be in the form of free writing as you record your responses to reading assignments. Some will be double-entry journals, and some will be dialectical journals. You will learn to annotate every text we read as you find the patterns of language and the purpose in the work. The purpose of this free writing is to help you enter into the world of the text and have a conversation with it [C5]. Another form of in-class writing will be timed responses to former AP Literature prompts. These writings will be scored holistically according to a 9-point scoring guide [C6]. Some of your writing will be more formal, extended analyses which you will polish and take through several drafts [C7]. Most of this type of writing you should expect to do outside of class.

Grading:

Your grade in this course will take care of itself as long as you put forth the effort required to read challenging texts and write about them. In an AP class, your learning will depend not only on what the teacher says that day in class or how well you take notes. Your learning will depend on other factors, factors which successful college students have learned to develop. One of these factors is the ability to manage your time. You will be responsible for all assignments: some will be due the next day, some will be due in a few days, and some may be due in a few weeks. You will need to learn to manage your time and to expect to spend several hours a week studying outside of class. So be prepared for your daily life to change and be prepared for the extra work. Another way you will learn in this class is from your classmates. We will do a fair amount of peer editing, with you critiquing your classmates’ writing and vice versa. Below is the scale I will use for grading your work.

Course Work / Percent of Final Grade
In-class writing (tests, journals, free writing, timed responses to AP prompts, quick writes over assignments, etc.)
Out-of class writing assignments
Other class requirements (vocabulary study, reading assignments, etc.) / 40%
40%
20%

The school year will begin by reviewing skills learned in previous years and learning the basic skills of close reading and annotation. Since poetry is the genre my students are usually least familiar with and most apprehensive of, we will study poetry all year long in conjunction with the other major works being studied rather than consigning poetry to one six weeks grading period. To that end, we will begin the year learning to read poetry. I have chosen poems which are both accessible and ideal for teaching certain skills which students will need as a base upon which to build new skills. (See the list for the first six weeks below.) For instance, I use Roethke’s “Root Cellar” to teach sound devices, figurative language, and shifts in tone. I also introduce the sonnet form and use the sonnets Carol Jago recommends in her article on apcentral, adding other sonnets such as Shelley’s “Ozymandias” and Keats’ “On the Grasshopper and the Cricket.”

At the beginning of the year, students are introduced to the year-long method we will use for practicing the multiple choice part of the Literature exam. Each week, students will complete at least one passage from a released exam. In the first weeks, I use lessons I have written which offer guided questions which we discuss in class before students answer the actual multiple choice questions. The passages are a mixture of prose and poetry, modern and pre-19th century. Students are asked to write rationales for the questions they miss, explaining the correct answer and explaining why the four distractors are incorrect.

We also begin the year with the novel Ethan Frome. Since Cushing lies in a wooded, isolated, rural area of Texas, students can identify with Frome’s plight and with this sentiment uttered by a minor character: “Most of the smart ones get away [from Starkfield].” We also begin work on King Lear. As students read these two works, they are required to keep a reader-response journal covering specific elements of the work[C8].

Because many of my students will not have been exposed to Pre-AP classes, I also begin the year with four lessons I have written covering the four passages on the released 1991 AP Literature exam:

Excerpt from Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise (“The station wagons arrived at noon….”)
Soliloquy from Shakespeare’s Richard II (“I have been studying how I may compare”)
May Sarton poem “Lady with a Falcon”
John Ruskin passage (“The mountain paths stoop….”)

Each of the lessons has guided questions students answer as homework and which we then go over in class. They then answer the multiple choice questions and write rationales for the ones missed. We do one lesson a week for the first four weeks of school. On the fifth week of school, I give students the complete 1991 multiple choice exam and have them do the questions in 60 minutes. Since the students are familiar with the passages and the questions, they will develop more confidence in their ability to deal with the multiple choice part of the Literature Exam. As a year-long activity, we will work through a released multiple choice passage each week. Periodically students will sit for a complete multiple choice exam in a timed setting.

Textbooks:

Major Text:

Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense. Laurence Perrine, Thomas R. Arp. New York: Harcourt Brace College. 6th edition.

Other texts used:

Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology. Helen Vendler. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2nd edition.

The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. 8th edition.

Major works studied throughout the year: [C1, C2]

Drama:

The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde

King Lear, William Shakespeare

Hamlet, William Shakespeare

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Tom Stoppard

Novels:

Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton

The Awakening, Kate Chopin

Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier

Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

The Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy

Excerpts from Falling Man, Don DeLillo

Short Stories:

“Hills Like White Elephants,” Ernest Hemingway

“Eveline,” James Joyce

“Araby,” James Joyce

“Miss Brill,” Katherine Mansfield

Poetry taught in the first six weeks to establish and review basic skills and to teach students to discern the patterns in a poem:

“Root Cellar,” Theodore Roethke

“The Eagle,” Tennyson

“Those Winter Sundays,” Robert Hayden

“The Possessive,” Sharon Olds

Selected Sonnets:

“The World is Too much With Us,” Wordsworth“Holy Sonnet #9,” John Donne

“If We Must Die,” Claude McKaySonnet #5 from Clearance, Seamus Heaney

“Ozymandias,” Percy Shelley“On the Grasshopper and the Cricket,” Keats

Poetry taught throughout the year:

“At Great Pond,” Mary Oliver“Jasmine,” Yusef Komunyakaa

“A Myth of Devotion,” Louise Gluck“Gospel,” Philip Levine

“in Just—“ e.e. cummings“Spring and All,” William Carlos Williams

“Blackberrying,” Sylvia Plath“On Turning Ten,” Billy Collins

“Men at Forty,” Donald Justice“Ballad of Birmingham,” Dudley Randall

selected poems by John Donne“To His Coy Mistress,” Andrew Marvell

“To the Virgins,…” Robert Herrickselected poems by Emily Dickinson

“My Last Duchess,” Robert Browning“Dover Beach,” Matthew Arnold

“One Art,” Elizabeth Bishop“To Waken an Old Lady,” William Carlos Williams

“The School Children,” Louise Gluck“Titanic,” David Slavitt

“Convergence of the Twain,” Hardy“Spring and Fall,” Gerard Manley Hopkins

“Green Chiles,” Jimmy Santiago Baca“To the Confederate Dead,” Kevin Moore

selected poems by Langston Hughesselected poems by Philip Larkin

“Lear,” William Carlos Williams“Elegy of Fortinbras,” Zbigniew Herbert

“The Hollow Men,” T.S. Eliot“The Great Scarf of Birds,” John Updike

“Leda and the Swan,” Yeats“Warning,” Jenny Joseph

“King Lear,” Maurice Sagoff“Beautiful,” musical group Creed

Prompts from released Literature exams which students write in a 40-minute setting (I will choose from these prompts all year long.) By the end of the school year, students will have written essays on most of them.

The sirens poems (2000 exam)The Spectator, Joseph Addison (2000 exam)

Milton/Douglass poems (2001)Middlemarch, George Eliot (1998)

“Death of a Toad,” Wilbur (1997)Strachey on Florence Nightingale (1993)

Squire Allworthy, Fielding (2001)two star poems

Two Helen of Troy poems (1994)“A White Heron,” Sarah Jewett (1994)

House of the Seven Gables,Anne Bradstreet “The Author to her Book” (1996)

Hawthorne (1996)Wordsworth’s “The Prelude” (1992)

Life of Samuel Johnson, Boswell “The Last Night that She Lived,” Dickinson

“Old Leisure,” George Eliot“Blackberry Picking,” Seamus Heaney (1999)

The Crossing, McCarthy (1999)two Eros poems (2003)

Darkness and night poems (2004)“The Pupil,” Henry James (2004)

Two Blake poems (2005)“Evening Hawk,” Warren (2006)

Lady Windemere’s Fan, Wilde (2006)Wilbur/Collins poems (2007)

Johnny Got His Gun, Trumbo (2007)Keats/Longfellow poems (2008)

Fasting, Feasting, Anita Desai (2008)

1ST SIX WEEKS

Works studied:

Major Assignments:

Ethan Frome:

Chapter tests
Analysis of passages in quick writes: Discuss how Wharton uses stylistic elements to develop a sense of desolation.
Pair with Shipping News released prompt from Lit. exam, characterizing Quoyle. Discuss the similarities in Quoyle and Frome. Students write the Shipping News essay in a timed setting. Discuss student samples, scoring guide.

Beowulf:

As you read Beowulf, keep a dialectical journal over themes in the work. Look for the following thematic ideas as you read:

good vs. evil
immortality and wyrd
greed as man’s downfall
God’s intervention
Christianity vs. paganism
heroism
acceptance of an indifferent universe

Test over Anglo-Saxon history, memorization of section of Beowulf in old English
Dialectical journal for Falling Man, tracing these motifs throughout the novel: the performance “falling man,” the people falling from the Towers, the terrorists, two worldviews of what caused the 9-11 attack, “Bill Lawson” (Bin Laden)
Multiple choice questions over Beowulf and Falling Man excerpts
Essay prompt dealing with the “monsters” in both Beowulf and Falling Man:Javier Moscoso said that our understanding of monsters has “transition[ed” from understanding them as being “from outside to seeing them as deviations from within.” In Beowulf, the monster is able to be overcome with physical strength and courage. A different kind of monster, however, appears in Don DeLillo’s novel Falling Man. Using both texts and your knowledge of the events of 9-11 in this country, formulate a thesis concerning the aspects of monsters in both works, man’s attitude toward those monsters, and man’s response to them. Then develop your thesis into a well-written essay.

King Lear:

Tests over all five acts
Quick writes over the effect of stylistic devices in selected scenes
Poem “Lear” by William Carlos Williams: Essay prompt—How do the changing point of view and the recurrent images in “Lear” reveal Lear’s plight[C9]?
Essay prompts to choose from after play is completed:

In great literature, no scene of violence exists for its own sake. King Lear confronts the reader or audience with scenes of great violence. In a well-organized essay, explain how the scenes contribute to the meaning of the complete work. Avoid mere plot summary.
A critic has said that one important measure of a superior work of literature is its ability to produce in the reader a healthy confusion of pleasure and disquietude. Elements of King Lear do produce this “healthy confusion.” Write an essay in which you explain the sources of the “pleasure and disquietude” experienced by the readers of the work.
King Lear depicts conflicts between parents and sons and daughters. Write an essay in which you analyze the sources of the conflict, and explain how the conflict contributes to the meaning of the work. Be particularly careful to avoid mere plot summary with this prompt. Since you are so familiar with the parent/child conflict in this play, and since it forms the essence of the play, look beyond the obvious and focus on presenting analysis.
Choose three questions (from several quotes given) which seem important enough to you to indicate Lear’s mental metamorphosis. Make sure you understand the context in which each question is asked. Formulate a thesis statement which reveals some insight you have about Lear. Perhaps you will want to show a progression in his thought or some pattern of thought.

Poetry

Practice close reading of poems listed above—finding patterns in language.
Learn how to read a poem in sentences, how to interpret inversion, how to analyze poetry.
Discuss how stylistic elements, sound devices, and structure are used to create ultimate meaning in the poem.
Selected writing assignments
Write an original sonnet.

2ND SIX WEEKS:

Works Studied:

Major assignments:

The Awakening:

Quick-writes over passages in the novel: How does Chopin use the resources of language to establish a certain tone?
Reading quizzes
Timed essay

The Canterbury Tales:

Memorize Prologue in original language
Study historical/cultural/social background
Write an original poem characterizing your classmates using rhyming couplets. (As the teacher, I also do this assignment, writing about each of my seniors as a graduation gift to them.)

3RD SIX WEEKS

Works Studied:

Major Assignments:

The Importance of Being Earnest

Multiple choice questions over twelve passages from the work (I wrote these for Applied Practice).
Free response essays—some timed and some out-of-class

Read the following passage from The Importance of Being Earnest. In this passage, Algernon and Jack discuss the benefits of Bunburying, a term Algernon coins to explain his excuse for dodging unpleasant social occasions. Then, in a well-organized essay, analyze the techniques the author employs to create a comic effect. Support your analysis with specific references to the text.
Oscar Wilde said his philosophy in writing The Importance of Being Earnest was that “we should treat all the trivial things of life seriously and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.” Choose one “serious” thing of life that Wilde treats with triviality in The Importance of Being Earnest. Explain Wilde’s purpose in doing so and show how his treatment of this subject affects your understanding of the work as a whole
Oscar Wilde said the following: “The way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality we must see it on the tight-rope. When the Verities become acrobats we can judge them.” Discuss several of the paradoxes in the play The Importance of Being Earnest. Show how the author uses these paradoxes to reveal truths central to the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.
In many scenes in literature, characters are shown in social settings eating and drinking. Explain how such scenes in The Importance of Being Earnest affect the plot and contribute to the meaning of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.
Novels and plays are often used to mock pre-conceived ideas about social institutions such as marriage, church, social class, etc. In a well-organized essay, show how the author uses such elements as dialogue, characterization, and irony to provide social commentary which mocks one or more of such social institutions[C11].
The following is an excerpt from the opening scene of The Importance of Being Earnest. Read the passage carefully. Then, in a well-organized essay, analyze the techniques that the author employs to characterize the relationship between Algernon and Lane. Consider such elements as irony and satire.

Excerpt from Falling Man: