Description
This course utilizes both nonfiction and fiction texts to teach students to think critically about world history and culture. Students begin this course by reading a selection of famous speeches and documents. Throughout these lessons, students learn to summarize main ideas and key supporting details, analyze rhetoric and language, and employ vocabulary strategies to improve reading comprehension. This work culminates with a writing assignment in which students use these skills to analyze two speeches.
From there, students move on to reading and analyzing George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm, an allegory of the Russian Revolution and Stalin’s rise to power. As they read this text, students learn not only what an allegory is, but also how to make historical and cultural connections to a work of literature. Through a series of short responses, students will demonstrate their understanding of these concepts.
Part 2 of this course emphasizes the importance of the narrative form in both reading and writing. Throughout this course, students actively read and analyze both long and short works of literature, study the narrative form and elements of style, and write an original short story.
Students begin by reading William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies. As they read this novel, they learn to analyze the plot and structure of the text as well as key literary elements such as setting and symbolism. From there, students encounter a variety of short stories in lessons that teach them to evaluate various genres and forms of literature. The major writing assignment in this course is an original short story. By completing this writing assignment, students demonstrate their understanding of narrative elements including plot, conflict, setting, characters, dialogue, and imagery.
