Ms. Florence-Martinez, Ms. Berry and Ms. Watson

Ms. Florence-Martinez, Ms. Berry and Ms. Watson

English II

Ms. Florence-Martinez, Ms. Berry and Ms. Watson

Welcome to your sophomore year of English! We are excited to be your teacher this year, and we hope this overview answers most of your questions about the curriculum.

General Classroom Rules:

Come prepared to learn Be respectful of others. Follow instructions.

Follow all school rules:

1)Be on time to class. The tardy policy will be enforced. If you are late, expect phone calls home, detentions, and referrals.

2)Don’t wear hats or anything else on your head. The “no headgear” rule will be enforced.

3)No cell phones or personal electronics will be permitted during instructional time unless your teacher allows it.

Grading criteria:

•50% Daily Assignments: class participation, warmups, homework, and other daily activities.

•25% Major Grades: Projects, writing process assignments.

•25% Journals, Quizzes, and Tests

Getting Help:Please check your teacher’s FIT schedules and BLEND course page for tutoring times

Our emails: rachel.florence-martinez.austinisd.org, ,

Materials needed every day:

•Your school issued (or personal) electronic device will be needed for this class daily. (These will need to be charged at home every night.)

•Although we will primarily use technology, we will be writing every day, so you need to have notebook paper and a pen or pencil. Bring current reading material.

•Recommended: highlighters, markers, sticky notes, glue sticks.

Donations to teacher classroom: Reams of copy paper, boxes of tissue, hand sanitizer, pens, pencils, glue sticks. *bonus points will be awarded for donations.

Failing Grade Revisions: All failing grades, if revised, can be adjusted up to a 70. Please contact your teacher as soon as possible for help with failing grade revisions.

Academic dishonesty (cheating):

Any cheating or plagiarism will result in a zero for ALL parties involved- the person who cheated AND the person who allowed someone to cheat off his/her work. I will then decide whether to apply further consequences or allow any make-up work or retesting. The department policy on cheating is that the student will receive a zero and not be able to make up the assignment.

Course overview:
• Writing instruction and practice
• PSAT/ EOC and Standardized Test Prep
• Individual and group projects and class presentations
• Vocabulary development
• Grammar instruction and practice
• Relevant literary terms and concepts
• Analysis of poetry or songs related to the theme
• Connections among art, literature, film and music / Literary works we will be reading and studying:
  • Antigone by Sophocles
  • Twelfth Night by Shakespeare
  • Maus by Art Speigelman
  • Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (time-permitting)
  • Various poems, short stories, essays, literary non-fiction and fiction
  • Student-Selected books
/ Essential Questions are listed below. (Subject to Change!)
1st Unit:Who am I and how do I fit into the world around me?
2nd Unit: How do beliefs, ethics, and values, influence human behavior?
3rd Unit: How do others perceptions of us influence our identity?
4th Unit: How do writers use language to influence their audience?
5th Unit: How reliable are our systems for determining truth?In what ways are language and power inseparable?
6th Unit: How do I evaluate the relevance of the evidence I’m researching?

All Honest and Original Work

Honor Code for English II

We will insist on completely honest and original work in this class. Therefore, each student will be required to produce work free from plagiarism or cheating as described below:

Plagiarism:

  1. Submitting a paper, examination, or other assignment as one’s own when it was written or created by another
  2. Verbatim copying of portions of another’s writing without proper notation and acknowledgment of the source in an accepted scholarly format
  3. Paraphrasing or restating someone else’s ideas without proper acknowledgment of such text
  4. Falsely citing a source or attributing work to a source from which the referenced material was not obtained
  5. Fabricating or altering data
  6. Taking another student’s ideas or sentences and manipulating the syntax

Cheating:

  1. Giving/receiving/using unauthorized aid (from printed/online sources or individuals) on in-class or take home examinations.
  2. Giving/receiving/using unauthorized aid (from printed/online sources or individuals) on class work, in the preparation of reports, or in any other work that is to be used by the teacher as the basis of grading. If approved by the teacher, group study/peer collaboration may be acceptable.

Penalties for incidences of plagiarism or cheating will include:

  1. A grade of zero for the assignment.
  2. Parent(s) or guardian(s) will be contacted.
  3. Proper disciplinary procedures as established by the Anderson High School Handbook will be followed.

English II classes use BLEND, which has turnitin.com as a resource to check for plagiarism. Turnitin.com “ensures original work by checking submitted papers against 20+ billion web pages, 220+ million student papers and leading library databases and publications” (turnitin). If a paper is not submitted to BLEND, it will not be graded.

I have read the All Honest and Original Work Honor Code and agree to abide by its requirements.

Name ______(printed)

Student Signature ______Date ______

Guardian Signature ______Date ______

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