British Literature/Composition Honors Syllabus
SY 2013-2014
Mrs. Carrie Swiderski
Woodville Tompkins Technical and Career High School
Course Description:
Honors British Literature /Composition is a study of the major literary periods, topics and themes beginning with the Anglo-Saxon period and ending with the Restorative/Eighteenth Century period. Students will focus on the major literary forms of the emerging nation, analyze the literary themes and trends, research and compose several papers, speeches, and presentations using representative forms of discourse. Students are expected to be active readers as they analyze and interpret textual detail, establish connections among their observations, and draw logical inferences toward an interpretive conclusion. The course will also include a writing component that focuses on argumentative, informational, and explanatory writing about the literature through both discussion and essay format. A formal, documented research paper is required.
Summary of Standards:
SCCPSS and the State of Georgia now use the Common Core Georgia Performance Standards Curriculum, a nationalized set of academic standards that require the students to think, read and write rigorously. The standards can be found at https://www.georgiastandards.org/Common-Core/Common%20Core%20Frameworks/CCGPS_ELA_11-12_Standards(BritLit).pdf
As an Honors course, these standards will be extended and/or enriched by regular class discussions using the Harkness discussion method, which puts the students in control of the conversation, as they seek, as a team, to come to consensus on a specific questions or issues. Information about this methodology can be found at http://learn.quinnipiac.edu/teaching/gettinghelp/documents/Harkness_Discussion.pdf
Curriculum and Texts:
The major works Honors British Literature/Composition students will read are listed below, along with their supporting, smaller texts. As a department, we at WTTCHS *strongly* encourage parents to provide individual copies of the starred texts, as there are not enough copies of the books for each student. In addition, having a personal copy of the book allows the student to more easily practice annotation skills required in active reading.
Theme / Major works / Supplementary Texts(provided by teachers) / Writing Focus /
A Royal Mess: An Examination of the Lives, Scandals, and Impact of Britain’s Most Notorious and Noteworthy King and Queens (The Old English and Medieval Periods) / Macbeth by William Shakespeare / Short Texts:
Grendel
Beowulf
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Poetry
“The Seafarer”
“The Wanderer”
“The Wife’s Lament”
The Canterbury Tales: prologue, Pardoner’s Tale, Nun Priest’s Tale, Wife of Bath Tale
Informational Texts:
The Magna Carta
The Martyrdom of Thomas a’ Becket / Argumentative
The World as a Stage/How Art Imitates Life (The English Renaissance Period) / Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson
Macbeth by William Shakespeare / Short Texts:
“All the World’s a Stage” by William Shakespeare
“A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
From Utopia by Sir Thomas Moore
Informational Texts
Poetry:
Sonnets
Informational Texts:
“To be or Not to be Shakespeare” by Doug Stewart
Declaration of Reasonable Doubt by Derek Jacobi / Informative
Explanatory
Good and Evil in Literature (The Romantic Period) / *****Frankenstein by Mary Shelley / Poetry selections by:
John Donne – S. T. Coleridge
Robert Herrick – W. Wordsworth
Andrew Marvell - Byron – R. Burns
Short Text:
Milton’s Paradise Lost
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Stevenson
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Informational Texts:
Charles I of England
The execution of Charles I of England / Informative
Explanatory
The Language of our Lives (The Victorian and Modern Eras) / The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester / Short Texts by:
Lewis Carroll
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Robert Browning
Thomas Hardy
Emily Bronte
T. S. Eliot
Jane Austen
Rudyard Kipling
William Butler Yeats / Argumentative
Research Paper
Instruction will be extended for this honors course with extended timed writing, double-entry journaling, analysis of related images, Harkness-style discussions, Socratic Seminars, close reading, annotation and collaborative annotation.
Contact Information:
Carrie Swiderski, Room 619
Work: (912) 395-6750 Extension 754619
Tutorial: Thursday, until 4 PM