High School English

[Hazens]

I've been working on designing a syllabus for my daughter's 9th grade English and I thought I'd do it for all the 4 years and that has led me to some questions after looking at high school English content standards.

 

We're trying to shoot for AP English either Lit or Comp for 12th grade, so, what are the basic goals for each year of high school English, generally?

 

Are there general, common novels, plays, poetry, short stories that are specifically done in each grade?

 

If I want to design my daughter's high school English courses for each year to prepare her for the AP English in 12th grade, what should I try to achieve for each grade of English?

 

I looked at the AP English requirements/content and I looked at my state English content standards for all 4 years and I looked at some sample syllabus of high school English teachers on the internet and I'm still lost!

 

The way I've been trying to approach this is by picking books, short stories, plays (while screening them first) for literature and coming up with the writing assignments last. So, I guess my determinant is literature in doing all of this, and somehow grammar and writing will be incorporated into that, but I'm having trouble determining what literature pieces to pick for each grade as I don't even know what I'm looking to achieve for each grade in preparation for the AP.

 

 

Help?

[Hunter's Moon]

In PS, I am on the "AP track" so I could give you a list of books I read in English for 9th and 10th grade.

 

9th:

Romeo and Juliet

A Raisin in the Sun

Of Mice and Men

 

We did a lot of poetry. We didn't do much Shakespeare though. Maybe two sonnets. We did modern poetry, and we also had a poetry out loud! contest, it is nationwide but not sure if you have heard of it?

 

http://poetryoutloud.org/

 

We did it this way:

We chose our poem and then learned how to interpret it into movement and have a strong stage prescense. We had to do it in front of our class, and then we had to do it in front of three judges and our class. If you won, you moved on until it became national. You could obviously still do this, in your own modified way.

 

We didn't do many short stories. We mainly focused on composition and how to "properly" do it. He was very strict with compositions. We couldn't use the word "you", you couldn't use contractions, you couldn't state an opinion. You couldn't say, "Let me tell you about it," or "That's my essay" or anything along those lines.

 

So I suppose pre-AP English is mainly poetry interpretation and composition. We did about 3 weeks of Grammar.

 

 

 

10th grade:

"Night"

"Macbeth"

"Julius Caesar"

"Antigone"

"Oedipus the King"

 

A lot of Shakespeare interpretation. We did a great deal of Greek/Roman literature. We are actually finishing up Greek now. We have to make our own Greek Tragedy and act it out, but you have to use a well known story and put it into Greek Tragedy format. I thought this would be a breeze, how wrong I was!! We also did logos, ethos, and pathos but not too in-depth.

 

 

 

In general, 9th focuses on composition and poetry interpretation.

10th is more focused on Greek/Roman Literature and Shakespeare interpretation.

 

HTH