• Course Description

    This course explores literary genres and emphasizes the connection between theme and real-life experiences. Students will explore recurring themes in literature and their impact on interpretation. Additionally, students will engage in interdisciplinary reading to develop both academic and personal interests. While the primary focus is persuasive writing within tenth-grade literature, students also demonstrate proficiency in narrative, expository, and technical writing. They will participate in research, timed writing exercises, and the writing process. Language conventions are taught in the context of reading, writing, and speaking rather than in isolation. Overall, students develop listening, speaking, and viewing skills for diverse purposes.

     

    By the end of this year, we should be able to:

    • Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what a text says explicitly and implicitly.
    • Determine a theme and/or central idea of a text and investigate its development through structure and supporting details.
    • Analyze how complex characters change over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or theme.
    • Explain how an author unfolds analysis or a series of ideas or events.
    • Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text including figurative and connotative meanings and analyze the impact of word choice on meaning and tone.
    • Analyze how an author’s choices concerning structure and organization create such effects as mystery, tension, or surprise.
    • Consider how an author’s ideas or claims are developed and refined by sentences, paragraphs, or larger portions of a text (e.g., a section or chapter).
    • Determine points of view, purpose, and reflected cultural experiences in texts spanning genre and name key elements of fiction writing (i.e., characterization, theme, and plot) and their impact on what a text means for individuals and larger communities.
    • Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts.
    • Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately.
    • Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.
    • Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience.
    • Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question) or solve a problem; narrow or broaden the inquiry when appropriate; synthesize multiple sources on the subject, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.
    • Analyze how an author draws on and transforms source material in a specific work (e.g., how Shakespeare treats a theme or topic from Ovid or the Bible or how a later author draws on a play by Shakespeare).
    • Analyze seminal U.S. documents of historical and literary significance (e.g., Washington’s Farewell Address, the Gettysburg Address, Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech, King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, Nelson Mandela’s Nobel Peace Prize Speech, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights), including how they address related themes and concepts.
If you are having trouble viewing the document, you may download the document.