COURSE OVERVIEW

GRADUATION PROJECT OPTION

HONORS ENGLISH 12

Revised 1/2010

This rigorous full-year course provides a thorough and advanced study of key concepts derived from world literature. Writing in the various modes will require application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of complex course material. This course also requires the reading of a self-selected novel (from an approved reading list) that results in a researched literary analysis. Extensive reading and research of novels, plays, short stories, and poetry requires collaboration, self-direction, and independence. Intuitive, creative, and critical thinking are essential to understand, interpret, and apply abstract and complex concepts in the areas of reading, writing, vocabulary, and grammar.

I. Literature

A. Novels/Plays

1. Summer Reading: Things Fall Apart

2. Early Classics (one required)

  • Beowulf
  • The Canterbury Tales (poetry)
  • The Odyssey
  • “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”
  • “Le Morte d’Arthur”

3. Shakespeare

  • Hamlet or King Lear(one required)
  • Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, or Twelfth Night (optional)

4. Existentialism (one required)

  • The Stranger
  • The Metamorphosis
  • No Exit
  • Waiting for Godot

5. 19th and 20th Century Literature (one required)

  • Brave New World
  • Catch 22
  • Cat’s Cradle
  • A Clockwork Orange
  • The Elephant Man
  • Heart of Darkness
  • Lord of the Flies
  • Madame Bovary
  • Miss Lonelyhearts
  • 1984(continued on next page)
  • OneFlew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
  • Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
  • The Secret Sharer
  • Siddhartha
  • Slaughterhouse Five

B. Short Stories (six required world authors)

1. See approved department selections in L: drive

2. This requirement can be met with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and a

selection of tales from The Canterbury Tales

C.Poetry – minimum of nine poems required

1.See approved department selections in the L: drive

2.Required types, figures, and mechanics:

  1. Types of poetry: ballad, blank verse, dramatic monologue, elegy, epic, free verse, lyric poetry, ode, sonnet
  2. Figures of speech: apostrophe, hyperbole, irony, metaphor, metonymy, paradox, personification, simile, synecdoche, understatement
  3. Mechanics of poetry: meter, foot, line, stanza, tercet, quatrain, verse paragraph, couplet, rhyme, non-stanzaic form

II. Writing - Required Minimum

A. Critical literary researchedessay based on independent reading from suggested list, 25% of marking period grade

1. world author

2. five to six page minimum

3. four secondary sources and one primary source required

B. Expository essays - 4 minimum

C. One personal/narrative essay (college essay)

D. Reader’s response journal - optional

E. Creative writing - optional

III. Vocabulary - Vocabulary Workshop Level H

  1. Units 1-15
  1. Review units required

B. Department-wide standardized tests must be used

C. Percentage of grade - 20% to 25% of each marking period

IV. Grammar, Usage, and Conventions – review of mastery skills specified by Vertical Team document and assessed by final exam

V. OptionalFilms -The following films are approved but require parent permission:

  • One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (R) requires district-approved parent permission slip
  • Garden State (R) requires district-approved parent permission slip
  • Scotland, PA (R) requires district-approved parent permission slip
  • Waking Life (R) requires district-approved parent permission slip
  • Macbeth (Polanski) (R) requires district-approved parent permission slip
  • Hamlet (Hawke) (R) requires district-approved parent permission slip
  • Apocalypse Now(R) requires district-approved parent permission slip

Films rated PG-13 or below may be used with teacher discretion.

  • Throne of Blood

VI. Assessment

A. Portfolio -- mandatory

B. Standardized department vocabulary tests

C.Objective tests

D.Blue book essays

E.Out-of-class writing

F.Researched literary analysis

G. Oral presentation (individual / group)

H. Conferencing (teacher / peer)

I. Final examination

VII. Graduation Project – see departmental Graduation Project requirements

Re-aligned and revised 2/10: Johns, Miller Hosey, Storch, Walsh, Winski, Wysocki