full year--first semester World Lit and second semester Am/Brit Lit
open to 10, 11, 12
range of difficulty 3-5
This course is for students who want to become more confident learners by improving their skills. By providing a class that individualizes instruction, students are able to develop the confidence they need for future classes. Short stories, novels, plays, research materials and movies provide the opportunity for students to learn and practice 5 paragraph essays, notetaking and outlining, vocabulary in context, and analytical and critical thinking skills.
For goals, see goals and expectations handout.
High interest themes such as discrimination, revenge, controversy, moral outrage are chosen to encourage students' participation.
--creative writing where students write in the style of an author
--notetaking skills (bluebooks are used to help in this process)
--controversy paper
--persuasive essays
--comparison papers based on short stories
--oral presentations of autobiographies
--vocabulary in context (context clues)
--element sheets of literary terms
--organization (see goals and expectations handout)
--oral reading
--nightly homework (may be reading or writing)
--evidence of prewriting, rough drafts, editing conferences
--typed final drafts of all written work
--research skills
--writing in many different styles
Short stories:
"Hop-Frog," Poe
"The Laugher," Boll
"Mateo Falcone," Merimee
"The Bound Man," Aichinger
"The Jewels," de Maupassant
"Flowers for Algernon," Keyes
Novels/Plays:
Friedrich, Richter
Harold and Maude, Higgins
Equus, Schaffer
A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry
1. Be organized!
a. Have a pen or pencil every day.
b. Have a looseleaf notebook.
c. Arrive to class on time each day.
d. All final drafts of assignments must be typed.
2. Our goals include the following:
a. To help you with the skills you need for other classes at L.S., particularly English and History classes;
b. To increase your confidence and competence in reading and writing;
c. To increase your vocabulary;
d. To increase your skills in discussing and analyzing what you read.
3. Directed Study:
a. Attendance is required at Directed Study unless you are caught up with your work. We will let you know the day before if you are expected to come.
b. If you are late to class during the week, you will be required to make up the total number of minutes late at Directed Study.
c. If you cut a class, you will be expected to come to the entire Directed Study as a detention, even if your work has been made up.
4. Please-Please-Please let us know when you are having a hard time. There are exceptions to all rules when outside issues are getting in the way of your being able to concentrate and work.
1 semester
open to 10, 11, 12
range of difficulty 1-4
The exercise and education of the imagination is the foundation of this course. Creative writing is taught to provide opportunities for students to explore inner landscapes and imagined vistas articulated by published writers and to enhance the skill necessary for them to try to cultivate their own artistic voices.
The following types of writing and components of writing are discussed and used in the course: journal writing, interior monologue, stream of consciousness, narrative voice, dramatic monologue, dramatic dialogue, screenplay writing and adaptation, poetry, children's literature, science fiction, fantasy, meter, tone, texture, scansion, tempo, style.
--Inspiration in the form of art, music, photography; anything that stirs the imagination.
--Vocabulary and word play.
--Grammar and editing skills.
--A variety of listening: guest speakers, recordings of readings, music.
--A variety of forms and critical reading skills.
--A critical language in order to edit one's own and others' work in a constructive manner.
--Workshop atmosphere in which writing is always considered in process.
Reading: Weekly: several poems, a short story, section of a novel.
Writing: Daily: work to be kept in a journal, much ungraded; some graded only after considerable editing and revision.
Listening and speaking: Students will listen every day to each other's works.
Other: Students will keep an ongoing journal of collected works. From it, at the end of the semester, each student may host a reading featuring material she or he selects for presentation.
What If?, Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter
readings selected by the teacher
Susan Cahill, ed., New Women and New Fiction: Short Stories Since
the Sixties
Florence Howe and Ellen Bass, eds., No More Masks!: An Anthology of Poems
by Women
Howe and Howe, eds., Short Shorts: An Anthology of the Shortest Stories
Paul Janeczko, ed., The Crystal Image: A Poetry Anthology
Carol Konek and Dorothy Walters, eds., I Hear My Sisters Saying: Poems
by Twentieth Century Women
Robert Creeley's poem "The First Time" addresses issues related to time and memory. In the excerpt from Light in August, Faulkner writes, "Memory believes before knowing remembers." Using your own experience, write ten images that use time, memory, or remembering as their source.
Each image should convey a specific, recognizable tone or texture.
Prepare two drafts (one paragraph for each) of a detailed description of an inanimate object. Use a different point of view in each. Accompany the drafts with process notes in which you explain which one you believe is more effective and why.
1 semester
open to 10, 11, 12
range of difficulty 1-3
Writing forces exploration and organization of one's thoughts. It produces a tangible and sharable body of ideas and information. Expository Writing hones the college-bound student's thinking and writing skills, skills required in most academic areas. Emphasis is on organization, technical control, development, and style. Students gain an understanding of the writing process: choosing a voice and an audience, drafting, revising, and editing. Through writing samples and shared student writings, students learn to edit their own as well as their peers' writing and then to revise their work.
--Expository essay
a. synopsis and precis
b. character sketch
c. personal experience
d. comparison/contrast
e. argumentative
f. literary analysis
--Evaluating, critiquing, and editing skills
--Writing style
--Understanding of writer's voice and chosen audience
--vocabulary
--Grammar and syntax
--Journal writing
--Timed, in-class essay writing
Kinds of questions and thinking required:
--Why write? Will I need to write in the 90's and beyond? What is the writing process? How is writing part of the thinking process and part of observation and assimilation? How is it connected to other disciplines? How does one develop a writing style? What is good writing? How does one become a good writer?
--Several days a week students evaluate and discuss sample writings in preparation for the writing assignment for the week. Some class periods are spent on grammar and vocabulary. Some class time is devoted to shared students writing and critiquing of papers. Students act as the editors for one another, and then they revise their work. The shared writing experience is most valuable.
Reading: Students are assigned sample essays as models for the type of essays they are assigned to write.
Writing: Students write frequent essays and there is some weekly writing. Essays are critiqued by one's peers and then rewritten to be evaluated again. Student have in-class writing assignments (perhaps sample SAT questions) and may have outside journals in which they write weekly. Journal entries consist of assigned and unassigned topics.
Listening and Speaking: Students are required to listen carefully to one another's writing and commentary. Their observations must be accurately presented. Students depend on one another as editors to aid in the revision of their work
Other: Vocabulary and grammar reviews and tests.
Elements of Style, Strunk and White
Sample essays: examples:
"Once More to the Lake," E.B. White
"A Room of One's Own," Virginia Woolf
"I Have a Dream," Martin Luther King
"The Headmaster," John MacPhee
Praisesong for the Widow, Paule Marshall
Maurice, E. M. Forster
Practical Guide to Writing, Barnett and Stubbs
Patterns of Exposition, Decker
At Large, Ellen Goodman
1. Comparison and contrast essay: Students write an essay comparing and contrasting an ad circa 1940's, 1950's, or 1960's with a contemporary ad for the same product.
2. Literary analysis: Students write on the use of the imagery to support the theme in "The Heavy Bear Who Goes with Me, " by D. Schwartz.
One semester course
Open to 10, 11, 12
Range of difficulty: 1 - 4
Memoir writing and personal writing focuses on the art and craft of writing about one’s life. This course provides students with the opportunity to become a community of writers working to give useful feedback on several issues every writer faces. Special attention will be given to the questions about selection of subject matter, narration, structure, and audience. Students will work towards developing a unique voice and style in both the essays shared with the class and in their reflection journals.
Memoir: Elements of fiction will be employed by students to tell their stories in the essays they produce for this class. The following will be emphasized: narrative voice, use of dialogue, providing descriptive details, creating scenes, knowing when to use summary, and plot. Students will be expected to provide essays that are carefully proofread before they are photocopied and shared with the class.
Personal writing: In journals, students are encouraged to write about emotions, discoveries, and impressions and to explore questions they are not yet ready to ask aloud. No emphasis is placed on spelling, punctuation, or grammar.
-- Grammar, punctuation, vocabulary, and editing skills emphasized
-- Workshop format - each student will present four pieces to the class for critique
-- Critical reading skills - evaluation of published works as well as student works
-- Constructive criticism - how to, when to, and why
-- Slice of life assignments; specific scenes required as opposed to broad strokes of summary of one’s life
-- Exploration of the past through mnemonics, music, friends, parents, teachers, etc.
-- Reflective writing in journals vs. polished pieces presented publicly
kinds of questions and thinking required
a.) Is it the writing or the life that makes successful personal writing?
b.) How does the writer recollect a life? How is the past reconstructed?
c.) What are readers looking for in personal stories? What is the role of the audience? Does a writer write for an audience?
d.) What is truth? How is fact different from personal truth? What is the difference? Is it possible to tell the whole truth? Who cares about the truth?
e.) Where does the writer’s story begin? End? What goes in the middle? What is the principle of selection?
f.) What is the writer’s ultimate goal: to analyze, justify, report, instruct, connect?
reading
Students will study several full-length memoirs as well as a variety of excerpted memoirs; in the final weeks of the semester, each student will study a memoir selected strictly on personal interest.
writing
a.) Students are given the opportunity to write up to eight three page essays per quarter based on their life experiences. The topics are up to the students, but the teacher will provide exercises that will assist in remembering the past. The teacher will also assist students in recognizing a good story.
b.)Student will keep journals throughout the semester. The journals will be checked eight times per quarter.
speaking and listening
Students are required to listen to one another, make useful commentary when discussing student essays, and present their own work several times during the semester.
Elements of Style, Strunk and White
Writing the Memoir, Judith Barrington
All Souls, Michael Patrick MacDonald
Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom
Lying, Lauren Slater
Autobiography of a Face, Lucy Grealy
Naked, David Sedaris
The Liars’ Club, Mary Karr
Wasted, Marya Hornbacher
When Broken Glass Floats, Chanrithy Him
Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt
Read This!, Volumes 1 and 2, edited by A. Notaro
assorted audio recordings of David Sedaris and Maya Angelou
Writing Toward Home, Georgia Heard
Discovering the Writer Within, Bruce Ballinger and Barry Lane
Life Passages, Allan Hunter
Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott