Honors Classic and Contemporary Literature
Honors Classic and Contemporary Literature
Online High School Course
COURSE LENGTH:
Full Year (30 Sessions)
Course Overview
This year-long honors level English course works to create a foundation for students in the skills of high-school-level literary inquiry across a wide range of material, from short stories to a novel to poetry to a play. Beginning with developing students’ reading strategies and centering close attention to textual details, the course then emphasizes the dispositions required for effective student-centered Harkness discussion and the writing process underlying clear and concise expressions of students’ analytical understanding. The course also asks students to represent their grasp of an author’s content and form through a series of creative responses to texts. Throughout the course, students are required to think critically as they generate their own questions, reflect constantly upon their own strengths and areas of development, and develop an appreciation for the value of careful, sustained reading, incisive and well-articulated analytical writing, and informed, elevated critical discourse. Successful students will complete the course comfortable with and valuing the skills of a literary scholar and prepared to lead their peers in their next English classes across the fields of reading, writing, discussion, and metacognition.
In this honors-level course, asynchronous assignments will require students to practice multiple skills and will often have multiple steps of parts. Students in this honors-level course are expected to complete asynchronous work fully and on time and to participate regularly during synchronous sessions. Students will be asked to reflect often on their learning.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
To develop a range of strategies for reading and comprehending a variety of literary texts and forms, including a novel, short stories, plays, and poetry
To independently research references, context, and historical background encountered in a piece of literature and apply this understanding to the text at hand
To understand and apply the strategies of close textual analysis and communicate this understanding in both written and verbal forms
To build an understanding of literary devices and techniques including figurative language, characterization, themes, motifs, etc.
To participate actively in group discussions guided by a teacher’s questions
To familiarize oneself with the goals and skills of an effective Harkness discussion
To lead group discussions through posing one’s own questions and building tactics for engaging and involving all peers
To develop analytical claims and support these with textual evidence in a discussion
To demonstrate the dispositions of effective learning, including active listening, enthusiasm, curiosity, and full engagement with peers and teachers
To synthesize across discussions, texts, and questions in conversation and in writing, making thematic connections between disparate areas of the course