Course Description:

Welcome to Freshman English!  The daily work of this class is designed to help you explore concepts and ideas in literature and to further develop the necessary skills to clearly and effectively communicate your own ideas in writing.  This course will include a variety of instructional strategies and techniques including focused reading and writing activities, large and small group discussions, peer and teacher reviews, lectures, student presentations, videos, and others as appropriate.   Units in this class include the following:

Semester One:

• Understanding parts of speech and crafting more effective sentences

• Building literary and contextual vocabulary

• Mastering written paragraphs - descriptive, expository, summary

• Studying a novel - Animal Farm, by George Orwell

• Writing a literary analysis paper

• Writing and presenting an informative speech

• Career exploration

• Library orientation

• Independent Reading

Semester Two:

• Studying a play- The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare

• Studying an epic - The Odyssey, by Homer

• Studying short stories  - A variety from the class text, Elements of Literature

• Writing a literary analysis paper

• Building vocabulary

• Independent Reading

Texts/Materials:

• Elements of Literature, Third Course, Holt, Rinehart, & Winston

• Animal Farm, George Orwell

• Other texts, (optional) - TBA

You are also required to have a small composition style notebook for this class, which you should bring daily, along with a pencil, pen and any assigned texts, homework or independent reading books.  You will also be required to provide one Pee Chee type folder with bottom pockets.  This will be stored in class and sent home periodically.

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