English III
Course syllabus '99/'00
(all dates and titles are tentative and subject to change without notice or apologies)
Unit 1: Life, Liberty, and the
Pursuit of Happiness - The American Dream
Novel:Follow
the River by James
Alexander Thom (pre revolution - during the time of the French
& Indian War
Declaration
of Independence (as eloquent writing / the importance of style
Choral reading -- Great American
Speeches: Chief
Joseph, Thomas Paine,
Patrick Henry, Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Martin Luther King Jr.
Artists:Albert
Bierstadt, George
Caleb Bingham
Music: Aaron
Copland
Writing focus:
Responding to ideas--vivid vocabulary, strong sentences and the effective
paragraph
Unit 2: Individualism in American
Society Choices! Whose life is this anyway?
Readings: Emerson
"Self-Reliance" and Thoreau
"Walden"
Music: Different
Drum by Linda Ronstadt, Who You Are by Pearl Jam
Poetry: The
Road Not Taken by Robert
Frost
Writing focus:
The Multiparagraph Essay
Unit 3: The Native American and
Genocide (Remembering who was here first)
Film: Dances
with Wolves
Novel: Black
Elk Speaks (selected chapters)
Writing focus:
Point of View, journals, effective paragraphs
Artists: George
Catlin and Karl
Bodmer
Music: Theme music
from the film
Unit 4: Realism and the Frontier
through the short story and poetry
Twain's World:
The
Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark
Twain
Companion author:
Bret
Harte: Luck
of Roaring Camp and Outcasts
of Poker Flat
Jack London: Short stories:To
Build a Fire, One
Thousand Dozen
Women of the West:
the journal as historical documentation
Opal:
Journal of an Understanding Heart adapted by Jane Boulton
Subunit: Immigration
and the American Dream: geting here and making it work
Short Story: Willa Cather: Wagner
Matine
Film: O Pioneers!
from the story by Willa Cather
Poetry: Edgar Lee Masters:Spoon
River Anthology
Writing focus: The Epitaph (capturing the essence of a person's life.)
Music: Sons
of the Pioneers and excerpts from Wagner
Writing focus: poetry as essence
Unit 5: The Junior Project:
(getting ready for the big one) Decade Projects
Research - Locating
Information (exploring for answers to questions vs.
reporting facts)
Conducting the
interview
Writing responsibly/The
research paper format
Time management
The oral presentation
Organization
Presentation technology:
Power Point
Second Semester English III
Unit 6: The Jazz Age
America during the Roaring
Twenties
Novel: The
Great Gatsby by F. Scott
Fitzgerald
Harlem Renaissance: Poetry of Langston Hughes
Music: Jazz
in America and the history of the Blues
Art: modernists,
Edward
Hopper and Georgia
O'Keefe
Writing focus:
characterization
Unit7: The Importance of Place
Novel:
Grapes
of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Short Stories of
California by Gerald Haslam
New England poetry
of Robert
Frost
Country and folk
Music /The Lonesome Road;
songs of the"rugged"individual, Woody
Guthrie
Artists: the regionalists:
Grant
Wood, Thomas Hart
Benton, and John
Steuart Curry
Writing focus:
writing about a place
Unit 8: The Power of People
- (the Great Depression,
the Labor
Movement, and
Civil Rights)
Ordinary people doing the right thing.
Film: Matewan(The
Labor Movement)
Drama: A Raisin
in the Sun by Lorraine
Hansberry
Films (excerpts):
Separate
but Equal,
Mississippi Burning,
A Time to Kill
Artists: William
H. Johnson and Horace
Pippin
Music: Protest
songs of the 30's, 40's 60's,
70's;
Guthrie, Ledbetter,
Seeger
Writing focus:
The Controversial Issue
Novel: The Bean
Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
Unit 9: America in War
Poetry of War and Peace
Small reading groups.
Student choices of the following
Civil War: Cold
Mountain by Charles Frazier
WWI: A Farewell to Arms by
Earnest Hemmingway
WWII: Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt
Vonnegut
Viet Nam: The Things They Carried by Tim
O'Brien
Fallen Angels by Walter
Dean Myers
If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box me up and Ship me home. by Tim O'Brien
Artists: Civil
War: Winslow Homer,
WWII: Norman Rockwell
,
Vietnam: Maya Ying Lin
Writing focus:
Letters home, letters at the
Wall
Music: Canteen
songs of the 40'sto DMZ Rock and Roll
