Speech Team

Student Council

College Credit Speech

Composition II

Literature II

Advanced Literature 

Important Note  to Parents and to Students

This class is designed for the college bound student who wants to embrace a challenge. In this course, I compare the work of these students to the work of other college bound students at our state's best high schools.  I genuinely believe that our students must be prepared to compete against the best; therefore, I measure them against the best.  This is an honors course. If a student earns a B, it counts as an A in his/her grade point average. I applaud students who take this more difficult course and want you to know that I have hundreds of testimonials from students telling me that this class made all the difference to them in their ability to excel in college.  Although this is a lit course, we write a great deal. That is why I STRONGLY recommend that students take Advanced Composition prior to taking Advanced Literatuare.  I also want you to know that students in this class are so motivated that for the past five years when I offer them a choice about whether or not they wish to read and EXTRA award winning novel of their choice, they willingly read an extra book and come in for an hour of their own time to engage in a stimulating book discussion group. The students select the novels and I read them, too, and discuss with them.  They love creating an assignment for the teacher and selecting a book that she has to read. 

Advanced Literature Course Description, Outcomes,

and State Standards Addressed :

Prerequisite/Requirements: Literature II if taken as a 9^th grader or a grade of A or B in Literature and Composition I. 

Costs to Students: $25.00 for summer reading novels        

            Upon completion of this course The proficient student will know and be able to: (core concepts/essential skills).

1. Use the six active reader strategies
2. Know the literary terms and be able to apply that knowledge to discussion and to written analysis
3. Participate in a quality discussion about great works of literature
4. Appreciate quality literature
5. Respond to literature through discussion, essays, and papers
6. Appreciate viewpoints other than his own
7. Interpret and evaluate literary, expository, and technical text
8. Know the parts of a drama
9. Use information to solve a problem
10.  Express, support, and defend a point-of-view
11.  Show the relationship between works of literature and history
12.  Apply themes in works of literature to modern life
13.  Paraphrase information
14.  Summarize information
15. Synthesize information

Standards:

List State Standards addressed in this course.  (Identify the course outcomes that support those standards.)

Standard 1: Read and understand a variety of materials

·          Paraphrase, summarize, synthesize, and evaluate information from a variety of sources

·          Read and understand literary, expository, and technical text at the literal, interpretive, and evaluative levels

·          Identify main ideas, supporting details, sequence of events or procedures, facts and opinions in literary, expository, and technical texts

·          Summarize literary, expository, and technical tests

·          Infer by making connections within and among texts

*Course outcomes that address Standard 1: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9

Standard 2: Write and speak for a variety of purposes and audiences

·          Write in a variety of genres including narrative, expository, descriptive, persuasive, and technical to extend understanding for purposes such as synthesis, analysis, evaluation

·          Plan, draft, revise, and edit for a final copy

·          Use the format, voice, and style appropriate for audience and purpose

·          Develop main ideas and content fully focused on a prompt that requires critical thinking as well as thorough and effective support

·          Organize writing using chronological, logical, spatial, and topical patterns as well as developing by cause/effect, problem/solution, and compare/contrast

·          Organize writing so that it has an engaging introduction, logical and effective development of ideas, and a satisfying conclusion

·          Create power thesis statements that follow the five criteria

·          Create power topic sentences that follow the five criteria

·          Use a variety of appropriate and sophisticated transitions

·          Use a significant number and quality of major and minor supports

·          Incorporate material from a variety of appropriate sources, understand and discern the difference between quality and sub par source material

*Course outcomes that address Standard 2: 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

Standard 3: Write and speak using conventional grammar, usage, sentence structure, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling

·          Edit for correct grammatical conventions

·          Use standard formal English in writing, including agreement of subject and verb, agreement of pronoun and its antecedent, eliminating fragments and run-ons, and then properly using parallel structure, correct modifiers, active voice, who and whom, coordination and subordination of clauses, capitalization, commas, apostrophes, colons, semicolons, and quotation marks, and parenthesis, dashes, and brackets.

·          Paragraph correctly

*Course outcomes that address Standard 3: 5, 10, 13, 14, 15

Standard 4: Apply critical thinking skills to their reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing

·          Use reading and writing to define a problem, evaluate options, and propose solutions

·          Be able to identify an author’s viewpoint and purpose

·          Discern and understand historical and cultural context from information presented in text

·          Evaluate the reliability, accuracy, and relevance of various texts

·          Make predictions, draw conclusions and analyze a variety of text including editorials, stories, movies, essays, technical material, and advertisements

·          Make predictions, draw conclusions and analyze text

·          Evaluate the quality of ideas by applying criteria to determine validity

*Course outcomes that address Standard 4: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

Standard 5: Read to locate, select, and make use of relevant information from a variety of media, reference, and technological sources

·          Use organizational features of printed text such as prefaces, appendices, annotations, citations, and bibliographic references to locate relevant information

·          Evaluate information for specific needs, validity, credibility, and bias

·          Paraphrase, summarize, organize, and synthesize information from a variety of sources

          Give appropriate and properly formatted credit for others’ ideas, images, or information

·          Evaluate information in light of their own experiences

*Course outcomes that address Standard 5: 5, 7, 9, 13, 14, 15

 Standard 6: Students read and recognize literature as a record of human experience

·          Identify themes

·          Respond to classic and contemporary novels, poems, plays, short stories, non-fiction, and essays from a variety of cultural and historical periods

·          Apply knowledge of literary terminology

·          Develop a thesis statement about a particular text and provide solid support for that thesis, using information from the text

*Course outcomes that address Standard 6: 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12

Required Unit of Study:

Themes within the course/Specific concepts being targeted

See the general course outcomes for the units of study which target the following general concepts:

1. knowing how to be a critical reader
2. understanding the human condition through the exploration of a variety of literary genres
3. listening respectfully to the ideas of others
4. presenting and supporting critical arguments based on elements of literature
5. proficiently creating essays and papers grounded in works of literature
6. knowing how to analyze literature and how to draw clearly supported conclusions
7. being an effective discussion participant
8. using literary terminology to extend understanding of plays, short stories, novels, and essays
9. Relating works of literature to their historical time frame
10. Applying literature to personal experiences to gain a greater understanding of the human condition

Unit Modifications/Enrichments:

• Assistance to students having difficulty and/or special needs-

                 -Students needing assistance may obtain that help through conferences, through peer tutoring, through reading practice, and through writer’s workshops

• Additional experiences for students capable of advanced work (cooperative learning, adaptive materials, re-teaching, second chance, etc.

                  -Students may challenge themselves through reading additional books from the college reading list, through engaging in book discussion groups, and through conferencing.

Materials/Resources:

• Textbooks

-         The American Experience: Fiction, MacMillan, 1974

-         The Growing Years of American Literature, MacMillan, 1965

-         Masterpieces of the Drama, Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller, MacMillan, 1986

-         Literary Cavalcade, Scholastic, monthly magazine

-         Current History, monthly magazine

-         Scarlet Letter, American Companies, 1987

-         Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck, Penguin Books, 1967

-         The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver, Harpers, 1989

-         Macbeth, Shakespeare, The Folger Library, 1992

• Media materials used

-         movie With Honors

-         movie John Steinbeck’s East of Eaden

• Technology needs

                  -Computer lab  for essay and paper writing lab work