Welcome to Miss Nocera's 9th grade English class!

Course Description-

The course provides students with the basic foundations for studying literature by focusing on six particular areas: reading, writing, literature, grammar, vocabulary, and listening and speaking. The class is separated into seven units designed to take approximately 4-7 weeks each to complete. Units expose students to a wide variety of literature from multiple genres (speeches, poetry, novels, and plays). While studying each unit, students will consider the essential questions and develop their answers to those questions based on the texts they explore and the writing they are assigned.

Objectives: With the above as our course description, each student will work towards the following goals:

Strengthen writing and analyzing skills
To improve public speaking abilities through presentations
To increase critical thinking skills
To develop confidence as a reader and writer

Major Readings- (these will be distributed in class at time of use)

Poetry Packet
Speech Packet
Romeo and Juliet
Of Mice and Men
The Great Gatsby
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian

Grading Breakdown-

Participation............................5%

Classwork/Homework...........10%

Essays......................................40%

Tests/Projects.........................30%

Journals/Quizzes....................15%

All final copy essays will be handed in through www.turnitin.com in addition to a hard copy to me. This website will be used to check for plagiarism. The essay will be turned into this website by midnight of the due date and you will bring me a hard copy the next day. If both copies in this form are not handed in properly, points will be deducted.

Instructions on how to use www.turnitin.com will be discussed in class.

Journaling-

Writing is a very important skill that individuals will continually use throughout life! Due to this, students will be freewriting in their journals for 5-7 minutes before or after every class period. These freewrites are just as important as quiz grades, take them seriously! Each journal entry will have a centered theme. Each semester, you will hand in your journals for a grade.

Unit Topic Assignments-

Getting Started-

In this 4-week lesson to start the year, students will engage in developing ideas behind what influences writers to create. Students will look at a writer who creates multiple types of pieces of literature as well as multiple writers who do the same type of writing, just in different styles.

Objectives:

Analyze the work and determine to central idea,
Use technology to do background research on the writer to understand why they wrote the piece
Understand why writing is a powerful tool

Essential Questions:

Why do writers create pieces?
Why is writing used to express feeling/emotion?
How would you use writing to express emotion?
If you were to write, what form would it be in? (i.e. poetry, fiction, non-fiction, speech, etc.)

Material:

Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
Yet Do I Marvel by Countee Cullen
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now by A.E. Housman
Variety of Robert Frost’s poetry
- Mowing
- The Oven Bird
- Putting in the Seed
- Range-finding
- Out, Out
- Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening

Intro into Poetry-

Using the material from lesson 1 “Getting Started”, students will now use these next 4 weeks to learn how to analyze different works of poetry in a structural manner. Students will look at many different types of poetry and share their ways of decoding and understand the authors reasoning behind the work.

Objectives:

Determine the theme/central idea of the poem
Analyze the development of the authors theme throughout the entire text.
Understand word usage and stanza breaks.
Analyze the meaning of each stanza to later on come up with a general idea of what the poem is about.
Students will create their own poetry using the skills they have developed.

Essential Questions:

Why do authors create poetry opposed to other works of literature?
What are poetic devices? How are they used to engage readers?
Why is imagery and symbolism as poetic devices so important to understanding the poem?

Material: (Same as lesson 1!)

Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
Yet Do I Marvel by Countee Cullen
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now by A.E. Housman
Variety of Robert Frost’s poetry
- Mowing
- The Oven Bird
- Putting in the Seed
- Range-finding
- Out, Out
- Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening

Love-

In this 6-week lesson, students will read and analyze Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as well poetry and music.

Objectives:

Analyze the authors' and characters' definitions of love.
Develop their own definitions and attributes of love through class discussion and various texts and critical thinking.
Write, design, and express through theatrical drama their own poem/story/essay and virtual or hand painted design on their developed definition of love

Essential Questions:

What is the definition of love as seen through the characters/authors point of view?
What is your definition of love?
How does media influence this definition of love?

Material:

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
“What is Love” by Haddaway
Variety of different love songs
Romeo and Juliet (1968 DVD)

The Dream-

For this 7-week lesson, students will analyze the theme of the “American Dream” through John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Students will also be looking at the American Dream through MLK’s eyes.

Objectives:

Students will understand how the concept of the “American Dream” plays a role in Of Mice and Men, The Great Gatsby and MLK’s speech.
Students will reflect on what the “American Dream” means to them and if/how it plays a role in their lives.
Students will gain an understanding of what life was like in America during the 1930s.

Essential Questions:

What is the “American Dream” to the authors? To you?
How has the “American Dream” been redefined?

Material:

John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men
MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby DVD (2013)

Freedom-

For the next 6-weeks, students will read three speeches, each revolving around the theme of freedom. Students will uncover the speaker’s views on freedom and the message they are trying to convey, in addition to creating their own thoughts on the central theme.

Objectives:

Students will be able to analyze and synthesize three texts in order to define “freedom”, a theme central to all three texts.
Students will be able to apply their definition, using evidence from the three texts, to current, real-life issues and topics.
Students will understand that applying general, agreed-upon principles to specific, real-life cases may lead to differing interpretations and policy choices.

Essential Questions:

What is freedom?
Do you believe the freedom that each individual receives is equal to the next?
How does one’s perspective influence the concept of freedom?
Is freedom a necessity in life?

Material:

FDR’s “State of the Union Address”
Learned Hand’s “I Am an American Day Address”
Ronald Reagan’s “Address to Students at Moscow State University”

Justice, Judgment and Equality-

In this 5-week lesson, students will read and analyze Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, the American Memory collections, as well as poetry.

Objectives:

Learn about the history of African Americans in the South through analysis of historical and literary primary source photographs and documents
Demonstrate visual literacy skills
Master research skills necessary to use American Memory collections;
Distinguish points of view in several types of primary sources
Demonstrate the technique of recording oral histories
Write creative works that reflect the themes of racism, compassion, and tolerance in To Kill a Mockingbird.

Essential Questions:

What is the meaning of justice?
Does justice apply equality to; the rich and the poor? The white and non-white? Socially prominent and the social outcast? Male and female? Adult and child?
What can we do to overcome inequality?
From your experience, does one person always receive the same treatment as another?
Should society change? If so, how?

Material:

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
American Memory collections
“Women” by Alice Walker
“Lift Every Voice and Sing” by James Weldon Johnson

Pursuing Dreams and Opportunity-

In this 5-week lesson, students will read Sherman J. Alexie, Jr. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, Rita Pyrillis’ “Sorry for not being a stereotype”, analyze maps and explore their versions and dreams of success.

Objectives:

Read and respond to The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian as well as supplementary poetry by Native American authors.
Draw parallels between yourself and the characters in the novel, developing an understanding and knowledge of the internal and external expectations in their lives.
Discuss the idea of expectations in terms of race, class, gender, stereotyping, eating disorders, beauty etc.

Work collaboratively in groups as well as individually, developing communication skills and listening strategies. (Standard 4)

Essential Questions:

What happens when a person leaves their home environment in pursuit of success? Do they give up or betray their identity? Is it really true that “you can never go home again”?
What makes for a good high school experience? Do you have to be happy for your education to have been a good one?
How do we, as humans, overcome adversity? What tactics do we use to get through hard times, difficult situations, and general injustice?

Material:

Sherman J. Alexie, Jr.’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian
Rita Pyrillis’ “Sorry for not being a stereotype”
Maps of Native Indian tribes and their territories
Timeline of Native Indian history