Advanced Placement English Literature And Composition

Course Syllabus and Student Expectations 2011-2012

Welcome:The primary goal of the senior Advanced Placement English Literature Class is to develop your abilities as an independent reader and writer by giving you a college-level course during you senior year. If you successfully complete the examination in May, you can qualify for up to one years credit in English at the college you select this year. Advanced Placement English is both demanding and intellectually stimulating. It requires your best effort consistently and puts emphasis upon your developing independence of thought and mature habits of critical thinking. Classroom discussion and active participation are vital and serve as a means of testing your ideas. Written assignments both short and long-term, will be an important and frequent feature of the course. We will work with both canonical and modern fiction and poetry, concentrating and teaching you to encounter new works and respond in your own informed voice. The following is a basic outline of the A.P. course that I have designed for you this year. First Semester: Short Fiction and Approach to Literature Summer Reading essays, follow-up, and examination (one week of discussion, testing, and teacher insomnia) A.P. Boot Camp learning to write about literature through short stories (covering sections II and III ofThe AP exam) The College Essay the common application and beyond: who am I and what do I have to say that matters? A Streetcar Named Desire and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead how to analyze a text and generate your own essay topics Crime and Punishment Analysis through the essay and beyond Second Semester: Poetry and the Novel Dead (and Live) Poets Society In-depth poetry analysis of classic and contemporary poets (covering section I of the exam) Othello Brave New World

Warning *** Warning

5. You being to regard your high school as a disposable item The above disease is not to be confused with schoolophobia, the major symptoms of which are nausea, headaches, and dizzy spells. Schoolophobia is normal and will go away when you submit to one year to intellectual incarceration

General Expectations: As a motivated scholar in this capstone course, I expect you will be an eager participant, a respectful young adult and responsible learner. I expect you will adhere to all policies as outlined in our Student Handbook. All assignments are due at the start of each class period and must be printed prior to entering the classroom. Late or incomplete work is not accepted. If you do not complete assignments you will be given the dreaded holding time at the end of the day to finish the work. If you have a pattern of missing assignments, we will re-evaluate your commitment to the course to see if a lesser challenge would be more educationally appropriate for you. Depending on the essay assignment, I will allow revisions where the highest grade you may receive will be a B+, and it will be averaged with your original grade. SLRHS Academic Integrity Policy: Written work on all course assignments must be done individually. This includes, but is not limited to, homework questions or problems, lab reports, essays, and term papers. In general, it is acceptable to seek help and discuss assignments with your peers, but when you are ready to formulate your written response, this must be done on your own. This is the difference between working together and copying. Copying from another source, such as another students work or information found on the Internet, without citing that source, is plagiarism. Students caught plagiarizing will be dealt with as outlined on page 44 of the Student Handbook under the section Academic Dishonesty. Grading: I use a point system and rubrics for assessing your work. You will be provided with rubrics for major assessments and you will know what is expected of you for each assessment. In general, point values range from reading quizzes, homework, and Socratic Seminars (5-30 points) to shorter essay responses (25-60 points) to critical analyses and projects (50-100 points). Written work should be typed, double-spaced (12 point font) and should follow MLA style. Expect nightly reading with follow-up activities the next class period. I look forward to a productive and intellectually stimulating year. What I expect most of all is sincere effort on the part of each individual reader and writer, careful reading and discussion on the part of the whole class and risk-taking from each contributing member of the class (including yours truly). Please maintain open communication via e-mail ([email protected]) or during office hours (connect with me ahead of time to schedule a mutually convenient time before or after school) and remember I am here to facilitate your learning.

Ms. Ferrara
Room 1302 [email protected]