Honors Freshmen English
Mrs. Welder - [email protected]
English office hours: 2, 5, 6; Literacy Center: 7
Key outcomes for students:
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Apply critical reading strategies to comprehend meaning from a variety of literary works and other texts.
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With attention to usage, punctuation, and style, students will write with ample support for a variety of purposes
and audiences.
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In a variety of formats, students will orally articulate ideas.
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Students will apply active listening strategies to comprehend meaning in a variety of situations.

Students will ethically acquire, evaluate, and employ diverse resources to communicate information and ideas for
a variety of purposes.

Apply vocabulary skills to comprehend selections.
Major skills to be focused upon with each major unit:
Annotation:
Identify main ideas, character, theme, foreshadowing, vocabulary, personal connections, defining characteristics of a
genre, and writing style.
Writing:
You will be assigned one major essay per quarter. You will also be given several smaller writing assignments and timed
writes. The purposes of these timed writes are to practice organizing information quickly, to keep you on the reading
schedule.
Timed writes will be from 20-45 minutes in length every four weeks or so.
Major focus will be on organization, unity, and coherence of written ideas, research strategies and library resources,
parenthetical documentation (according to M.L.A. standards), integration of quotations, development of sophisticated
transitional sentences.
Reading:
As a class, you will read several novels, short stories, non-fiction stories and poetry. You will be expected to participate
in discussions about the literature and write about the literature objectively and subjectively. Focus will be on improving
analytical reading strategies: connecting, inferencing, reading beyond literal level and distinguishing between summary
and analysis.
Public speaking:
Major focus will be on familiarization and demonstration of: eye contact, vocal variety, utilization of visual aids,
verbal/transitional cues, gestures, poise, structure
Vocabulary:
You will study Greek and Latin roots, prefixes, and suffixes in addition to vocabulary words taken from the novels we
study. You will have a vocabulary quiz almost every other week.
Grammar/usage:
Throughout the year you will review and/or be introduced to: parts of speech, combining sentences (coordinating and
subordinating conjunctions, correcting fragment and run-on sentences, phrases, colons, semicolons, commas, choosing the
correct word, antecedent agreement, who/whom, lay/lie, sit/set, raise/rise, homophones
Independent Reading:
You will read one independently chosen novel per quarter. The goals of this are to broaden cultural literacy and become a
better reader.
First Semester
I. Summer reading/short stories/processing reading
A. Sources:
1. The Bass, the River and Sheila Mant – W.D. Wetherell
2. The Scarlet Ibis – James Hurst
3. A Kind of Murder- Hugh Pentecost
4. Initiation-Sylvia Plath
5. “What True Education Should Do” – Sydney Harris
6. poems by Nikki Giovanni and Robert Frost
B. Essay = Summer essay rewrite
C. Analogy of education mini - speech
Beginning with this unit and continuing throughout the year we will have a special focus on:
 Writing: paragraphing (topic sentence, evidence, analysis), attention getter, thesis statement, transition,
M.L.A. research skills and embedding quotes
 Grammar: 8 parts of speech, subjects, predicates, clauses, phrases, sentence types, commas, colons,
semicolons, apostrophes, parallelism
 Vocabulary: Greek and Latin roots, prefixes and suffixes; commonly misused words/homophones
II. Mythology
A. Sources:
1. World myths - Edith Hamilton and Donna Rosenberg (chapters on Gods and
Goddesses, Titans and Mortals, Hero’s Journey, Perseus, and Rites of Passage
2. The Odyssey – Homer
B. Essay = Comparison contrast research essay on past or modern hero
C. Researched creation myth power point presentation
Second Semester
III. Romanticism
A. Authors and sources
1. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Blake, Keats and several of their poems
2. Kubla Khan and Rime of the Ancient Mariner – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
3. Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
B. Essay = Formal outline and researched argument essay
C. Choral poem reading
IV. The Renaissance
A. Authors and sources
1. Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare
2. Various poets and their poems, Shakespearean sonnets
B. Essay = Literary analysis essay
C. Soliloquy reading or Romeo and Juliet performance
V. Independent reading project
A. Author/source = Novel to be determined by student
B. Major essay = Narrative essay
C. Oral presentation of independent study topics related to novel
VI. Coming full circle: Education and Learning
A. “The Allegory of the Cave” – Plato
B. Excerpt from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance -Pirsig
Let’s talk rules:
Be on time. Be respectful. Be honest. Be inquisitive. Be a contributor. Be a good role model.
Late policy:
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Day to day homework =
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Major essays and projects =
If you are absent, you should…