English III AP Year at a Glance

1st Nine Weeks (40 days) / 2nd Nine Weeks (40 days)
Unit 1: Understanding Rhetoric
Lessons:
  1. The significance of rhetorical analysis by: defining rhetoric and the rhetorical situation: exigence, audience an constraints
  2. The analysis of persona and tone
  3. The rhetorical matrix: the elements of an effective text
  4. Close reading and annotation
  5. How to discern the difference in approaches in certain text targeted to specific audiences
  6. The significance of audience in development of a text
  7. Formal academic writing
  8. How to transcend the 5-paragraph “theme” essay
Assessed Summer Readings:
Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter
Cather: O, Pioneers!
Faulkner: As I Lay Dying
Egan: The Worst Hard Time
Class Readings:
Baldwin: “Notes of a Native Son”
Bitzer: “The Rhetorical Situation”
Heinrichs: Thank You for Arguing
Lehrer: “The Truth About Grit”
Lopate: “Writing Personal Essays…”
Mairs: “On Being a Cripple”
McMurtry: “Kill’Em! Crush ‘Em! Eat ‘Em Raw”
Rauch: “In Defense of Prejudice”
Roach: “How to Know If You’re Dead”
Woolf: “In Search of a Room of One’s Own”
Assessments:
Summer Reading Assessment
Summer Reading Essay
Analytical Essay
Response to Literature Essay
In-Class Timed Essay
Personal Narrative
Application Essay / Unit 2: Analyzing Rhetoric
Lessons:
  1. The 5 traditional Canons of rhetoric
  2. The rhetorical transaction
  3. Aristotelian Appeals
  4. Effective argument
  5. Enthymemes & warrants
  6. Style schemes and tropes
  7. How form can relate to function
  8. Means of communication
  9. Speech genre
  10. Effective pronoun usage
  11. The authorial voice
Class Readings:
Lawrence & Lee: Inherit the Wind
Lincoln: “Second Inaugural Address”
Lincoln: “Gettysburg Address”
Obama: “Inaugural Address”
Orwell: “Political and the English Language”
Postman: “Graduation Speech”
Assessments:
Speech Analysis Essay
Culture Synthesis Essay
Columnist Project
AP Analysis Prompt
Unit 3: Rhetoric & Effective Writing
Lessons:
  1. The writing process
  2. Writing as rhetorical process
  3. How to incorporate external sources
  4. The distinction between argument and persuasion
  5. The concept of the conversation
  6. How to synthesize diverse sources
  7. Logical fallacies
  8. How to analyze visual sources
  9. Revision process and strategies
  10. How to determine their own learning style
Class Readings:
Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
August: “Real Men Don’t”
Cross: “Propaganda”
Didion: “At the Dam”
Fussel: “Thank God for the Atomic Bomb”
Levin: “The Case for Torture”
Shulman: “Love is a Fallacy”
Sommer: “The Gender Wardens”
Assessments:
AP Multiple Choice Practice
AP Synthesis Prompts
Argumentative Essay
Rhetorical Synthesis Essay
3rd Nine Weeks (48 days) / 4th Nine Weeks (58 days)
Unit 4: Reading, Research & Rhetoric
Lessons:
Functionality of sentence structures and syntax
Satire – authorial appeals through humor
Context clues as a means to interpret archaic prose
Analyzing reader response
Constraints surrounding audience
Multiple choice strategies
Research and citation strategies
Discovering credible sources
Readings:
Chopin: The Awakening
Barry: “Art is more than the Eye of the Beholder”
Postman: “Future Schlock”
Swift: “A Modest Proposal”
Twain: Jim on “Lizbeth” from Huckleberry Finn
Assessments:
AP Prompts
Research Steps & Organization
Research Paper
Unit 5: Making Connections – Readers & Writers
Lessons:
Semiotics & effective communication
The power of punctuation
Shared experience as a tool for reasoning
Meanings behind images: visual rhetoric
Test expectations
Archaic prose
Readings:
Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Dillard: “Sight into Insight”
Ephron: “The Boston Photographs
Langer: “Language and Thought”
Plato: “The Allegory of the Cave”
Assessments:
Research Paper
Photograph Synthesis Essay
Complete Practice Exam
AP Prompts
Student-choice Essay / Unit 6: Rhetoric & NarrativeAssessment Dates:
Lessons:
Rhetorical strategies in film
Effectiveness of narrative styles
Universal truth in narrative – the power of themes
The expectations of AP English Literature & Composition
Readings:
TBD
Assessments:
TBD

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