In keeping with current research in language arts and the New York State Common Core curriculum, the English Department believes that the essential purpose of language study is to enable students to make meaning from and through spoken and written communication. Further, we believe that students become skilled in reading, writing, speaking, and listening through the integrated practice of these activities. Students in all English classes will participate in projects and activities that require research experiences.
EMBEDDED HONORS MODEL Students in English 9 will have the exciting opportunity to extend their learning and earn an Honors designation. While engaging in rich coursework, students will be invited, encouraged, and supported to pursue Honors credit; however, this enrichment opportunity is not required to be successful throughout the year. Students will have the opportunity to monitor their own growth and level of enriched learning experiences with varied reading and writing options. Furthermore, these tiered assessments offer the opportunity to explore differing depths of complexity, creativity, and skill, while personalized learning offers heightened autonomy and choice. Students will earn honors credit for the year upon completion of a predetermined percentage of tiered assessments at the honors level.
The ninth-grade curriculum involves both literature and language arts study. We will examine various literary genres (e.g., short story, novel, poetry, drama, essay, biography) through works by authors such as Alice Walker, Sandra Cisneros, John Steinbeck, Ray Bradbury, Homer, and William Shakespeare. Our language study stresses writing mechanics and vocabulary, with an emphasis on application in extended writing assignments. We will focus on developing and fostering independence in our learning as we strive to become lifelong readers and writers.
All students who successfully complete this course will earn credit for both Global History and Geography 9 and English 9. The course explores integral concepts related to the human experience – especially the theme of how identity is shaped and influenced – through the blended study of global history, geography, literature, and language arts. This class provides students with an opportunity to study the central themes, historical periods, and texts used in the ninth-grade English and Social Studies courses with a focus on personal inquiry, research, and writing. All students in this class will have the opportunity to extend their learning and earn an Honors designation through the completion of a predetermined number of tiered assessments at the advanced level. While engaging in rich coursework, students will be invited, encouraged, and supported to pursue Honors credit through advanced options; however, this enrichment opportunity is not required to be successful throughout the year. Students will have the opportunity to monitor their own growth with varied reading and writing options. Furthermore, tiered assignments offer the opportunity to explore differing depths of complexity, creativity, and skill. Personalized learning offers heightened autonomy and choice.
EMBEDDED HONORS MODEL As in 9th grade, all students in English 10 will have the opportunity to extend their learning and earn an Honors designation. While engaging in rich coursework, students will be invited, encouraged, and supported to pursue Honors credit; however, this enrichment opportunity is not required to be successful throughout the year. Students will have the opportunity to monitorap en their own growth and level of enriched learning experiences with varied reading and writing options. Furthermore, these tiered assessments offer the opportunity to explore differing depths of complexity, creativity, and skill, while personalized learning offers heightened autonomy and choice. Students will earn honors credit for the year upon completion of a predetermined percentage of tiered assessments at the honors level.
The tenth-grade curriculum includes an in-depth examination of American literature accomplished through readings including non-fiction, poetry, and selected works by such authors as Hansberry, Salinger, Miller, and Shakespeare as well as some non-fiction and film. Attention is given to speaking and listening skills through oral reports and class presentations and to writing skills through the study of narrative, expository, persuasive, and descriptive writing. Students will also engage in the research and writing of essays and projects/presentations on free-choice reading. Student success in this course helps to determine readiness for 11th grade English, AP English Language, or IB English HL Year 1 in junior year.
All students who successfully complete this course will earn credit for both English 10 and Global History and Geography 10. The course builds upon the foundations established in Humanities 9, exploring how the concepts of identity and conflict intertwine in history and literature. This class provides students with an opportunity to study the central themes, historical periods, and texts used in the tenth-grade English and Social Studies courses with a focus on personal inquiry, research, and writing. All students in this class will have the opportunity to extend their learning and earn an Honors designation through the completion of a predetermined number of tiered assessments at the advanced level. While engaging in rich coursework, students will be invited, encouraged, and supported to pursue Honors credit through advanced options; however, this enrichment opportunity is not required to be successful throughout the year. Students will have the opportunity to monitor their own growth with varied reading and writing options. Furthermore, tiered assignments offer the opportunity to explore differing depths of complexity, creativity, and skill. Personalized learning offers heightened autonomy and choice.
The English 11 class emphasizes communication and critical thinking skills that are honed through class discussion, oral reports, literary analysis, and a great deal of writing. Longer fictional texts will be supplemented by independent reading, short stories, essays, poetry, and the summer reading selections. Students produce a major research paper and other smaller research-based writing tasks during the course, and they all take the Common Core Regents Examination in English Language Arts at the end of the year.
This full year, college level course is designed for students who have an advanced command of the mechanics of language and seek to engage in higher level reading, analysis and discussion of writing. Students learn how to use language more effectively, and to think critically and analytically. To this end, students read a variety of both fiction and non-fiction from a wide range of time periods in order to learn how to read texts closely, paying careful attention to the subject, purpose, audience, and rhetorical strategies of the author. Students study genres including expository, narrative, argumentative, personal, and fiction; featured fiction works include Lord of the Flies, The Great Gatsby, Slaughterhouse-Five, and The Things They Carried; among the non-fiction writers studied are Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ho Chi Minh, Annie Dillard, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Zora Neale Hurston, Jamaica Kincaid, David Sedaris, Virginia Woolf, and George Orwell. Students must take both the AP Language and Composition exam and the New York State Regents exam.
This language and literature course aims to develop skills of textual analysis and the understanding that texts, both literary and non-literary, can relate to culturally-determined reading practices. The course also encourages students to question the meaning generated by language and texts. An understanding of the ways in which formal elements are used to create meaning in a text is combined with an exploration of how that meaning is affected by reading practices that are culturally defined and by the circumstances of production and reception. The study of literature in translation from other cultures is especially important to IB Diploma Candidate students because it contributes to a global perspective. Texts include: The Things They Carried, Macbeth, The Handmaid’s Tale, and The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass as well as numerous other shorter texts chosen from a variety of sources, genres, and media.
**All seniors are required to take a full year of English. For seniors who are not enrolled in AP or IB courses, there are two full-year course options (see below).
In the first semester of this full-year course, students will have opportunities to develop and strengthen their reading and writing skills, with an emphasis on college readiness tasks such as close reading, planning and organization for essay writing, revision, and formatting. Literary units are based on a variety of themes, using fiction and non-fiction selections to explore ideas concerned with understanding oneself, learning about and developing identity, introspection, and much more. In the second semester, students will explore additional content areas including creative writing, reading beyond the classics, and public speaking. The course will culminate in a student-driven project or internship in May and June.
IB ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE HL YEAR 2, 1 Credit
This course is a continuation of IB English Language and Literature Year One, which is a prerequisite for Year Two. It counts as a Group 1 class for IB Diploma Candidates, or it may be taken as a certificate course. Possible texts include: Purple Hibiscus, Persepolis, and the translated poetry of Wistawa Szymborska as well as numerous other shorter texts chosen from a variety of sources, genres, and media. The course will culminate with submission of all IB English internal and external assessments as well as a student-driven project or internship.
This full-year, college-level course has been designed for the 12th-grade student who loves literature. The course will emphasize close reading of poetry and prose and writing about literature with clarity and sophistication. A seminar approach emphasizing student participation will focus on the works of such writers as Ernest Hemingway, August Wilson, Denis Johnson, Yaa Gyasi, Terrance Hayes, and William Shakespeare. Students will take the AP examination in May, after which they will complete a student-driven project or internship.
IB LITERATURE AND PERFORMANCE SL, Grades 11-12. 1 Credit
This course is an interdisciplinary combination of an English class and a theater class, in which participants will examine both the literary and theatrical elements of 5 works chosen from among novels, plays, short stories, and poetry. Students will study and write about the literary aspects of these works, study the features of bringing drama to life on the stage (dialogue, body language, lighting, direction, sound, costume, acting, etc.), turn an excerpt of a novel or short story or poem into a dramatic work that they direct and/or perform, and reflect on the dramatic choices they make. This potentially college-credit bearing IB course has two formal projects and a culminating examination. It can be taken by any senior as the 12th grade English requirement, by any junior as an elective English course, and by an IB Diploma Programme Candidate as a Group 1 SL course during junior or senior year. To meet the required 150 hours for an IB SL course, it will run for one year with an additional lab.
This course is offered to students in all grades. The students in this half-year course will work in many forms, including but not limited to fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Students will study the techniques of exciting contemporary writers while honing their own craft through imaginative exercises and projects. Indeed, both words of the course’s title ring true: the course emphasizes creativity and how it manifests through the writing process.
MINDFULNESS THROUGH LITERATURE, Grades 9-12, ½ Credit
This course is offered to students in all grades. What does it mean to be “happy”? How does literature, journalism, writing, autobiography, song lyrics, podcasts, and research help us understand the Human Condition and connect to our authentic selves? Why do we love? Why do we hate? What does it mean to live a life of presence and purpose? Does money truly make us happy? How does taking time to be present and off of technology help us center and literally “rewire” our brains? We will examine life’s big questions by reading excerpts from Steve Jobs, Chris Rock, JayZ, U2, Eminem, Thoreau, Tibetan Buddhists, Deepak Chopra, Janice Kaplan, and a collection of advice columns, various podcasts, TEDtalks, viewing movie clips (“Grand Canyon” “Jojo Rabbit,” etc), and MUCH MORE!. And of course, the goal is to explore the meaning of life in reading, writing, presenting, and approaches to mindfulness. We will seek to “go to the woods… to live deliberately”-- “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” (Henry David Thoreau).
