Final Exam Essay Prompt
To be completed in class the week before finals. You may use your notes, but you may not write an outline or a draft ahead of time.

Directions: Choose a six-weeks from this year and write a one-page reflection. In your reflection, please answer 1-3 essential questions from that six-weeks, and explain how the readings and project(s) enhanced your understanding of the questions.

1st Six Weeks: The Heroic Tradition – The heroic experience of various cultures shared in myths, epics, legends, poetry and prose.

  • Essential Questions: What is a hero? Can anyone be a hero? What is an archetype and how can analyzing archetypes help us understand the world around us? How does the study of a hero’s journey enhance understanding of who we are and our world? What rites of passage do different cultures experience? What kinds of connections are there between individuals in very different cultures?
  • Literary Works and Concepts: Summer Reading Assignment, Gilgamesh, Greek Mythology – Homer’s Iliad, selected Poetry and Non-Fiction
  • Project: Summer Reading Assignment

2nd Six Weeks: Analyzing conflict in literature – Analyzing literature helps enable students to understand the effects of conflict.

  • Essential Questions: What is conflict? How does conflict affect change? Can progress be made without conflict? How do authors’ presentations of conflict influence one’s personal decisions? How do writers influence the writings of others? Does all communication serve a positive purpose? How does analysis of an individual’s motives lead to understanding a person’s actions? How might focusing on individual goals and accomplishments strengthen a person’s self esteem and resolve? What prevents a person from following his own conscience in certain situations? How can a person maintain integrity in the face of pressure, which goes against his conscience?
  • Literary Works and Concepts: Aristotle’s Concept of Tragedy, Sophocles’ Antigone, Rhetoric, selected Poetry and Non-Fiction, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr.
  • Project: Antigone Trial

3rd Six Weeks: Gaining literary knowledge and literature as communication – Gaining knowledge through literature helps develop insight, awareness, and understanding of the world. In addition, the act of exchanging information can take on many forms.

  • Essential Questions: How does a writer choose a form of writing to express ideas? What are the effects of literary devices on a reader’s emotions? What different thought processes are engaged when being a reader or a viewer of literature? Does a visual representation of ideas change one’s perception of truth?
  • Literary Works and Concepts: Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night
  • Project: Twelfth Night performances

4th Six Weeks: Experience determines perception – Studying different types of literature helps to shape individual perception.

  • Essential Questions: How do one’s experiences influence reality? Does a writer’s personal bias influence another’s perceptions? How does a writer determine fact from fantasy? How does effective research communicate a writer’s beliefs? How does a writer determine reliable sources? What factors determine the information that should be included in research analysis?
  • Literary Works and Concepts: Self-selected Banned Book, Moliere’s The Misanthrope, selected Non-Fiction
  • Project: Misanthrope Memorization Performance, Banned Book presentation

5th Six Weeks: Literary exploration of reality and truth – Everyday expectations and everyday experiences can influence the way one views the world.

  • Essential Questions: What is reality? What is truth? Are truth and reality the same for everyone? How do people’s life experiences influence their perceptions of reality and truth? How do fiction and non-fiction allow readers to question whether reality and truth are always the same? How does writing fiction and non-fiction allow writers to influence others? What makes us who we are? What factors affect our views and identities? How do authors express their identities in writing?
  • Literary Works and Concepts: Spiegelman’s Maus (Book I), Graphic Novels, Narrative Poetry
  • Project: Graphic Novella

6th Six Weeks:Experience determines perception (continued) – Studying different types of literature helps to shape individual perception.

Essential Questions: – Studying different types of literature helps to shape individual perception.

  • Essential Questions: How do one’s experiences influence reality? Does a writer’s personal bias influence another’s perceptions? How does a writer determine fact from fantasy? How does effective research communicate a writer’s beliefs? How does a writer determine reliable sources? What factors determine the information that should be included in research analysis?
  • Literary Works and Concepts: All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
  • Project: 1000-word Research Paper, Research presentation