English III Honors
Pacing Guide
Stanly County Schools
Suggested Time Per Unit:
Three Weeks
Competency
Goal 1
The learner will demonstrate increasing insight and reflection to print and non-print text
through personal expression.
Competency
Goal 2
The learner will inform an audience by using a variety of media to research and explain
insights into language and culture.
Competency
Goal 3
The learner will examine argumentation and develop informed opinions.
Competency
Goal 4
The learner will critically analyze text to gain meaning, develop thematic connections, and
synthesize ideas.
Competency
Goal 5
The learner will interpret and evaluate representative texts to deepen understanding of
literature of the United States.
Competency
Goal 6
The learner will apply conventions of grammar and language usage.
Taken from http://www.dpi.state.nc.us/curriculum/
*All competency goals and objectives are met in each three week unit*
Unit One: The Colonial Period (1600-1750)
Essential Questions:
• What is the American dream?
• How does past experience help to create current identity?
• What ideals of the Colonial Period have shaped America throughout history?
Skills/Concepts:
• Grammar: evaluation, daily warm-ups, parts of speech
• Writing: journals, personal narrative
• Vocabulary: from selected texts, Words of the Week
• Literary Terms: plot curve, poetry terms, drama terms, as applicable to selected texts
Text References:
• Oral Tradition/Narratives
• Walum Olum (Native American creation myth)
• William Bradford (“Of Plymouth Plantation”)
• John Winthrop
• Cotton Mather
• Anne Bradstreet (selected poems)
• Ulaudah Equiano (slave narrative)
• Arthur Miller (The Crucible)
Activities:
• Different endings
• Pictographs
• Letter to the author
• Character Portraits
• Comparison to personal experience
• Are you a latter day Puritan? Self-reflective critical inquiry
• Researching the Salem Witch Trials (paper, presentation, or project)
• Connections to McCarthyism or current events (September 11th/Duke Lacrosse)
Honors Supplemental Activities:
• Outside research paper (literary response, reader response, historical criticism)
• Hawthorne short stories or Scarlet Letter activities
• Connection of themes to other literary works; American dream; perseverance; authority;
hysteria/chaos; individuality; appearance; reality.
Unit Two: Revolutionary Age/Age of Reason/Enlightenment (1750-1800)
Essential Questions:
• How have others chosen to use social context to define themselves in relation to the
world around them?
• How can technology and available resources be used to demonstrate insight into the
evolution of American language and culture?
• How have the ideals of the American dream evolved since the beginning of America?
• What is the relationship between written texts and the social, political, and cultural
environments in which they were produced?
• How does one use sophisticated argumentation techniques to take on multiple
perspectives of a single issue?
Skills/Concepts:
• Grammar: punctuation, confused words, daily warm-ups
• Writing: journals, speeches, text rewrites
• Vocabulary: from selected texts, Words of the Week
• Literary Terms: plot curve, poetry terms, drama terms, as applicable to selected texts
Text References:
• Nathaniel Hawthorne (Scarlet Letter)
• Thomas Jefferson
• Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard’s Almanac/Autobiography)
• Alexander Hamilton
• James Madison
• Thomas Paine (Common Sense) (Speech writing)
• Patrick Henry
• Phyllis Wheatley (Selected poems)
• Declaration of Independence
Activities:
• Speech writing
• Letter to the editor/stating your position
• Correlation between current issue and period standards
• Wear your Scarlet Letter
Honors Supplemental Activities:
• Student Almanacs/aphorisms
• Text rewrite from original text
• Adolescent literature books (sharing same themes)/Speak Laurie Halse Anderson
• Connection of themes to other literary works; American dream; persecution; personal
values; social class; individuality vs. the common good.
Unit Three: Romantic Period/Transcendentalism/American Renaissance (1800-1865)
Essential Questions:
• How does one recognize and create a distinctive voice and style?
• How does the test reflect the author’s identity, and what connections can be made
between yourself and the author’s experiences and views?
• How does past experience create current identity?
• How does the thinking of this time period evolve given the precepts of the previous era?
Skills/Concepts:
• Grammar: combining sentences, sentence fragments, comma splices, confused words,
daily warm-ups
• Writing: poetry responses/explications/analysis, journals
• Vocabulary: from selected texts, Words of the Week
• Literary Terms: author’s style, symbolism, poetry terms, poetic techniques, as applicable
to selected texts
Text References:
• Nathaniel Hawthorne (Scarlet Letter)
• James Fenimore Cooper
• Harriet Jacobs
• Slave narratives
• Oliver W. Holmes (“Old Ironsides”)
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Henry David Thoreau
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• Edgar Allan Poe (“Raven” & selected short stories)
• Herman Mellville (Moby Dick)
• Washington Irving
• Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom’s Cabin)
• John Greenleaf Whittier
• Walt Whitman (selected poems)
• “Dark” Romantics
• Chief Joseph
Activities:
• Mirror writing (analyzing the author’s style and creating a similar product)
• Compare/contrast two authors
• Create deeper level questions that reflect the ideologies of the time period/author
• Correlation between current issues and period standards
Honors Supplemental Activities:
• Compare quotes from all selected texts and find common themes
• Connection of themes to other literary works; American dream; prejudice; social
injustice; personal values; social class; individuality vs. the common good.
Unit Four: Realistic Period/Naturalistic Period/Civil War Period (1865-1914)
Essential Questions:
• How does one recognize and create a distinctive voice and style?
• How do cultural details distinguish English literary time periods?
• How do events of the time period influence writing?
• In what ways can one reflect his/her individuality?
• How does one use sophisticated argumentation techniques to take on multiple
perspectives of a single issue?
Skills/Concepts:
• Grammar: pronoun usage, active/passive voice, word choice, confused words, daily
warm-ups
• Writing: poetry responses/explications/analysis, journals, creative writings
• Vocabulary: from selected texts, Words of the Week
• Literary Terms: satire, vernacular, as applicable to selected texts
Text References:
• Mark Twain (Huck Finn/selected short stories)
• William Dean Howells
• Henry James
• Bret Harte (“Outcasts of Poker Flat”)
• Sarah Orne Jewett
• Stephen Crane
• Ezra Pound
• Frederick Douglass
• Abraham Lincoln
• William Cullen Bryant
• Emily Dickinson (selected poems)
• Frank Norris
• Jack London (“To Build a Fire”)
• Kate Chopin (“Story of an Hour”)
• Charlotte Gilman (The Yellow Wallpaper)
• Theodore Dreiser
• Spirituals
Activities:
• Create a character narrative of main/secondary character from selected text
• Create/compose a tall tale
• Compare and contrast the ideas of slavery as represented through various texts
• Research the Civil War
Honors Supplemental Activities:
• Compose short story using cultural details from the time period
•
•
Compare issues of slavery in this time period to current issues of slavery
Connection of themes to other literary works; American dream; prejudice; social
injustice; personal values; social class; individuality vs. the common good; racism;
stereotyping.
Unit Five: Modern Period/WWI-WWII (1914-1940)
Essential Questions:
• How does technology influence the American culture of this time period?
• What is the relationship between written texts and the social, political, and cultural
environments in which they are produced?
• What is the relationship between the American social history and the variety of literature
and perspectives produced?
• What accounts for the turn in thinking of the time period?
• How does communication and transportation influence society?
• How is power negotiated in the creation of distinctive social classes?
• How did the depression, roaring 20’s, dustbowl, wars, etc. affect the American dream?
Skills/Concepts:
• Grammar: pronoun usage, active/passive voice, word choice, confused words, daily
warm-ups
• Writing: poetry responses/explications/analysis, journals, creative writings, newspapers
• Vocabulary: from selected texts, Words of the Week
• Literary Terms: irony, symbolism, paradox, stereotype, as applicable to selected texts
Text References:
• Edgar Lee Masters (Spoon River Anthology)
• Ezra Pound
• Edwin Arlington Robinson (“Richard Cory”)
• William Carlos Williams (“Red Wheelbarrow”)
• Robert Frost (“Mending Wall” etc.)
• Carl Sandburg (selected poems)
• Wallace Stevens
• Robinson Jeffers
• Marianne Moore
• T.S. Eliot (“Love Song…Prufrock”)
• Edna St. Vincent Millay
• E.E. Cummings (selected poems)
• Amy Lowell
• H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
• Edith Wharton (“Ethan Frome”)
• Sinclair Lewis
• Willa Cather (My Antonia)
• Gertrude Stein
• Sherwood Anderson
• John Dos Passos
• F. Scott Fitzgerald (jazz age/Great Gatsby)
• William Faulkner (As I Lay Dying, selected short stories)
• Ernest Hemingway
• Thomas Wolfe
• John Steinbeck (Of Mice and Men)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Eugene O'Neill
H.L. Mencken
Langston Hughes
Countee Cullen
Jean Toomer
W.E.B. DuBois
James Baldwin
Activities:
• Create a newspaper representing the major events of the story
• Create a T-Shirt that characterizes a main character from the selection
• Compare and contrast the ideas of the 1920’s and the 1930’s
• Analyze the characteristics of the Harlem Renaissance through the eyes of AfricanAmerican poets
• Reflect on how the ideas of the Harlem Renaissance influenced later American time
periods
Honors Supplemental Activities:
• Compare and contrast “Richard Cory” to The Great Gatsby through themes
• Read Out of the Dust and supplemental activities
• Connection of themes to other literary works; American dream; prejudice; social
injustice; personal values; social class; individuality vs. the common good; racism;
stereotyping.
Unit Six: Contemporary Period (1940-Present Day)
Essential Questions:
• How does technology influence the American culture of this time period?
• How does writing influence and represent the varied thinking of the culture?
• What cultural events habitually influence modern-day society?
• What is an American?
• What accounts for the turn in thinking of the time period?
• How do political notions influence varied thinking?
• How is power negotiated in the creation of distinctive social classes?
• Who is able to contribute to the American society?
Skills/Concepts:
• Grammar: practice all underlying concepts
• Writing: poetry responses/explications/analysis, journals, creative writings, newspapers,
reflective pieces, research paper
• Vocabulary: from selected texts, Words of the Week
• Literary Terms: as applicable to selected texts
Text References:
• Tim O’Brien (The Things They Carried)
• Vladimir Nabokov
• Eudora Welty
• Robert Penn Warren
• Bernard Malamud
• Saul Bellow
• Norman Mailer
• John Updike
• Kurt Vonnegut, Jr
• Thomas Pynchon
• John Barth
• E.L. Doctorow
• Marianne Moore
• Theodore Roethke
• Elizabeth Bishop
• Robert Lowell
• Allen Ginsberg (Beat Generation)
• Adrienne Rich
• Sylvia Plath
• Thornton Wilder
• Arthur Miller (Crucible/Death of a Salesman)
• Tennessee Williams (Glass Menagerie
• Edward Albee
• Ralph Ellison
• Zora Neal Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)
• Alice Walker
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
James Baldwin
Richard Wright
Gwendolyn Brooks
LeRoi Jones (Imamu Amiri Baraka)
Toni Morrison
Laurie Halse Anderson
Lois Lowry
Activities:
• Connect contemporary pieces to past units
• Read outside texts that correlate with previous units
• Find the contemporary author that best represents the student’s personal opinions,
viewpoints, etc.
• Write an obituary for the a character in the text
• Taking on the role of a psychiatrist, analyze the conflicts of a character from the text.
• Defend the banning of a certain text
• Creative writing editorial: Why _____________ should not read this book.
• Reflect on how the ideas of the Harlem Renaissance influenced later American time
periods
Honors Supplemental Activities:
• Publish a personal piece of writing in the public arena
• Analyze the effect of writer’s use of perspective
• Write one scene from a book from a different perspective
• Research newspapers/magazines of the decades and how they relate to the texts
• Connection of themes to other literary works; American dream; prejudice; social
injustice; personal values; social class; individuality vs. the common good; racism;
stereotyping.