This is a college level class that ultimately prepares students for the Advanced Placement^® exam in May. In addition, it provides students with other skills associated with the most advanced classes in high school English, including research skills. When they have completed the class, students will have acquired the reading and critical thinking skills necessary for understanding challenging new material, analyzing that material to deduce meaning, and applying what they have learned to their world. They will have the composition skills needed to communicate their understanding effectively to a variety of audiences. Students will read and analyze classic works of literature because these works contain literary qualities that merit study and provoke thinking, not because of a requirement to know a particular work or author. They will also look at modern and contemporary works as they examine all genres: plays, short stories, poetry, essays, and novels.

Students will learn to apply critical literary terms as tools for learning, understanding, and communication. Learning activities include close reading, paraphrasing, discussions, essays, short answer exams, research papers, reflective journals, web quests and others. The unit structure below identifies the main headings of the units only. Most units will include a combination of genres and activities. The structure to the class is not based upon a sequence of chronology, national origin, or genres. It is instead based upon the sequence that best supports the learning needs of the student.

Students should have completed Junior English.

Two Semesters or Block

None

• Major literary works used within units are identified in this schedule. The learning units will also include poetry and short stories for analysis throughout the year.
• Introduction to the course
• Observing, Thinking and Learning: an introduction to the analysis of literature
• Oedipus the King
• The Odyssey: Literature as Ethnology
• Reading and Rhetoric
• First Novel: Introduction to Literary Research
• Poetry Analysis
• Second Novel

• Major literary works used within units are identified in this schedule. The learning units will also include other genres for analysis throughout the year.
• Medieval Literature
• Hamlet
• Romanticism
• Realism and the 20th Century: The Changing Focus of Literature
• Independent Thematic Study: the Individual in Society.
• Independent Project

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