Syllabus for Senior Honors English
2008-2009
Instructor: Carolyn L. Fortuna
http://www.societyissuesidentity.blogspot.com/
“… (E)ducating students to be critical rather than merely good citizens must recognize the multiple narratives and histories that make pluralistic societies” (Freire & Giroux, 1989).
Course overview
English 12 Honors will respect grammar (examination of the component parts of language --- semantics, pragmatics, and syntax), rhetoric (the art of persuasion through language), and dialectics (questioning and argumentation as a means to interrogate the structures of the society in which we live). Our goals are to become more fully literate and to deepen our understanding of ways that society and culture contribute to identity formation and worldviews. The cultural aspect of literacy asks readers to consider texts in relation to context and to recognize the socially constructed components in all human acts and practices.
Called critical literacy, this education will draw from Freire’s model of critical pedagogy and encourage you to ask questions and dialogue with Ms. Fortuna about what you watch, see, and read. Freire (1992) refers to “critical and liberating dialogue, which presupposes action” (p. 52) as essential to engaged learning, because you respond in authentic ways when engaged in inquiry. Evaluation of sources comprises a significant role in critical literacy education, so you will examine structures and framing of messages.
Course description
This course introduces students to critical literacy, cultural studies, and communication research through classic texts of the western canon. By examining identity, society, and culture as interrelated constructs, we’ll focus on the role of communication, generally, and of mass media and popular culture, specifically, in ways that illuminate Intertextuality. With respect to these materials, students should expect to be able to do the following by the end of the course:
· Name and define key constructs of critical literacy;
· Compare and contrast different theoretical frameworks;
· Define structural features and intents of multimodal texts;
· Explain and appraise central questions in the field of critical literacy.
Language choices have tremendous power to shape a reader’s conceptualization of reading. Texts in this course will include all forms of symbolic expression that create meaning for readers. As a result, texts will transcend print and include visual, digital, and audio sources. This definition of literacy is sometimes referred to as multimodality (Bourdieu, 1977; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001).
Course objectives
· To consider what it means “to read”
· To reconceptualize learning as a long-term, thinking-centered process
· To grow as literate learners
· To familiarize yourself with critical literacy constructs and processes
· To speak, listen, interpret, read, and write as significant means in which to reflect on our own thinking processes
· To develop structures for discussing and analyzing texts
· To learn how to plan, draft, and revise a memoir, critical analyses, public speaking presentations, and research poster
· To prepare and deliver several presentations to the class of varying lengths
· To survey online research databases
· To write with peer-reviewed, scholarly research as support
· To help you write in commonly accepted academic style and MLA formatting
· To help you think more clearly and effectively by:
n Organizing your ideas in a well-structured, succinct, and creative manner
n Designing argument statements
n Realizing that what you write is an extension of you and your ideas
n Understanding that good writing comes from rewriting
n Improving your writing and thinking and rethinking
Critical literacy theory
This class will adopt critical literacy theory that includes the following components:
· Content integration: Topics will include examples and content from variety of cultures.
· Knowledge construction: Implicit cultural assumptions and frames of knowing within a subject area do influence the ways that knowledge is constructed. We’ll interrogate those cultural assumptions and frames of knowing.
· Equity pedagogy: Academic achievement of students from diverse cultural, gender, racial, and socio-economic groups will be one of Ms. Fortuna’s goals.
· Empowerment: Regardless of previous high school English class track, senior honors English will seek to accentuate the success of all students, regardless of previous academic performance. (Banks & Banks, 1993).
Course reading texts
Senior honors English requires that you read and analyze text 30 to 45 minutes every school night. The following texts are required in the curriculum.
2008-2009
Instructor: Carolyn L. Fortuna
http://www.societyissuesidentity.blogspot.com/
“… (E)ducating students to be critical rather than merely good citizens must recognize the multiple narratives and histories that make pluralistic societies” (Freire & Giroux, 1989).
Course overview
English 12 Honors will respect grammar (examination of the component parts of language --- semantics, pragmatics, and syntax), rhetoric (the art of persuasion through language), and dialectics (questioning and argumentation as a means to interrogate the structures of the society in which we live). Our goals are to become more fully literate and to deepen our understanding of ways that society and culture contribute to identity formation and worldviews. The cultural aspect of literacy asks readers to consider texts in relation to context and to recognize the socially constructed components in all human acts and practices.
Called critical literacy, this education will draw from Freire’s model of critical pedagogy and encourage you to ask questions and dialogue with Ms. Fortuna about what you watch, see, and read. Freire (1992) refers to “critical and liberating dialogue, which presupposes action” (p. 52) as essential to engaged learning, because you respond in authentic ways when engaged in inquiry. Evaluation of sources comprises a significant role in critical literacy education, so you will examine structures and framing of messages.
Course description
This course introduces students to critical literacy, cultural studies, and communication research through classic texts of the western canon. By examining identity, society, and culture as interrelated constructs, we’ll focus on the role of communication, generally, and of mass media and popular culture, specifically, in ways that illuminate Intertextuality. With respect to these materials, students should expect to be able to do the following by the end of the course:
· Name and define key constructs of critical literacy;
· Compare and contrast different theoretical frameworks;
· Define structural features and intents of multimodal texts;
· Explain and appraise central questions in the field of critical literacy.
Language choices have tremendous power to shape a reader’s conceptualization of reading. Texts in this course will include all forms of symbolic expression that create meaning for readers. As a result, texts will transcend print and include visual, digital, and audio sources. This definition of literacy is sometimes referred to as multimodality (Bourdieu, 1977; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001).
Course objectives
· To consider what it means “to read”
· To reconceptualize learning as a long-term, thinking-centered process
· To grow as literate learners
· To familiarize yourself with critical literacy constructs and processes
· To speak, listen, interpret, read, and write as significant means in which to reflect on our own thinking processes
· To develop structures for discussing and analyzing texts
· To learn how to plan, draft, and revise a memoir, critical analyses, public speaking presentations, and research poster
· To prepare and deliver several presentations to the class of varying lengths
· To survey online research databases
· To write with peer-reviewed, scholarly research as support
· To help you write in commonly accepted academic style and MLA formatting
· To help you think more clearly and effectively by:
n Organizing your ideas in a well-structured, succinct, and creative manner
n Designing argument statements
n Realizing that what you write is an extension of you and your ideas
n Understanding that good writing comes from rewriting
n Improving your writing and thinking and rethinking
Critical literacy theory
This class will adopt critical literacy theory that includes the following components:
· Content integration: Topics will include examples and content from variety of cultures.
· Knowledge construction: Implicit cultural assumptions and frames of knowing within a subject area do influence the ways that knowledge is constructed. We’ll interrogate those cultural assumptions and frames of knowing.
· Equity pedagogy: Academic achievement of students from diverse cultural, gender, racial, and socio-economic groups will be one of Ms. Fortuna’s goals.
· Empowerment: Regardless of previous high school English class track, senior honors English will seek to accentuate the success of all students, regardless of previous academic performance. (Banks & Banks, 1993).
Course reading texts
Senior honors English requires that you read and analyze text 30 to 45 minutes every school night. The following texts are required in the curriculum.
Your curriculum literature assignments will encompass Chaim Potek’s The Chosen, Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts and A doll’s house, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of darkness and The secret sharer, Edward Albee’s American dream and The zoo story, William Shakespeare’s Othello, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their eyes were watching god, Thornton Wilder’s Our town, and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering heights.
Sharing these texts in American public schools is often called a cultural transmission process (Banks & Banks, 1993), by which a system of signs and symbols pass on knowledge and meanings to each new generation. In keeping with critical literacy pedagogy, each curriculum text will be accompanied by various peer-reviewed, scholarly companion pieces as well as numerous multimodal texts.
Critical literacy pedagogy also asks readers to distance Self from text in order to interrogate motivations.
Five critical questions for critical literacy (Hobbs, 2006)
#1) Who is the author, what is the author’s background, and what is the author’s purpose in composing this message?
#2) What techniques are used to attract and hold the reader’s attention?
#3) What cultural values and points of vie are represented in this text?
#4) How might different people interpret the messages in this text differently?
#5) What is omitted from this text?
Five core concepts of multimodal literacy (Hobbs, 2006)
#1) All messages are designed carefully through language and images.
#2) Texts contain symbol systems with codes and conventions.
#3) Texts have messages that are embedded with cultural values and points of view.
#4) Different people interpret messages in text differently.
#5) Text messages are constructed to obtain objectives like cultural transmission of knowledge, profit, and/ or power.
Curriculum policies
The senior honors English curriculum contains several core writing assignments. Among them are:
· A style and language analysis, based on Othello by Shakespeare
· A characterization as a reflection of culture analysis, based on Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God
· A critique of contemporary society after reading Ibsen and Albee
· A 10-page paper, comprised of discussion of two independent reading texts, one curriculum text, and a literature review with ten (minimum) peer-reviewed scholarly research sources
Unless otherwise stated, all assignments are due at the beginning of class. You should have the assignment printed prior to class and ready to turn in. If you’re late to class, so is your paper.
A composer’s digital portfolio
You will keep throughout the year a record of your progress as a writer, thinker, analyst, learner, visualizer, and composer. Aside from full-length curriculum assignments, your digital portfolio is an open field. Here are a few samples of how your thinking might be captured in digital form.
· 25 minute timed writings
· Sample memoirs
· Visualizations
· Cartoons and captions
· Freewrites and notes taken in response to prompts, discussions, readings, and other texts
· Responses to assignments
· Responses to readers’ comments about your writing
· Lecture notes
· Reading notes
· Self-sponsored writing, including personal writing and reflection
All writing for English class must be saved in digital form. This means that certain student materials are necessary for this class:
· Access to Microsoft Office Word
· Travel drive/ memory stick
· Pens
· Spiral notebook
· Folder
Student rights, responsibilities, policies, and procedures
Please note that all Student Handbook rights, responsibilities, policies, and procedures apply to Ms. Fortuna’s senior honor English classes.
Conferences
You will have abundant opportunities for in-class help with individual conferences. In addition, while we’re working in the library or in one of the computer labs, you and Ms. Fortuna will conference. Ms. Fortuna can also schedule occasional conferences before or after school [by appointment only]. Conferences are intended to individualize your learning experience, to give your personal time to brainstorm ideas with an adult, and to give you practical help. It is highly encouraged that you plan for and take advantage of these conferences.
I also highly encourage you to visit the National Honor Society before and after school sessions that take place in Ms. Lawson’s room, B202. I can honestly say this always leads you to getting a better grade on your multimodal compositions. Please bring written documentation of your visit including NHS response, and you will receive 5 points extra credit.
Grading
Grading is typically as follows:
One day assignments: 5 points
Extended day/ process assignments: 10 points
Quizzes: 20- 25 points
Projects: 50 - 100 points (depending on complexity)
Presentations to the class: 20- 100 points (depending on time requirements)
Research paper: 250 points
Resources
Banks, J., & Banks, C. M. (1993). Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Cultural reproduction and social reproduction. In Karable & A. H. Halsey (Eds.), Power and ideology in education. New York: Oxford University Press.
Freire, P., & Giroux, H. (1989). Pedagogy, popular culture, and public life: An introduction. In H. Giroux & R. Simon (Eds.), Popular culture: Schooling and everyday life. New York: Bergin & Garvey Publishers, Inc.
Hobbs, R. (2006). Reading the Media: Media Literacy in High School English. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Arnold.
Grading is typically as follows:
One day assignments: 5 points
Extended day/ process assignments: 10 points
Quizzes: 20- 25 points
Projects: 50 - 100 points (depending on complexity)
Presentations to the class: 20- 100 points (depending on time requirements)
Research paper: 250 points
Resources
Banks, J., & Banks, C. M. (1993). Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Cultural reproduction and social reproduction. In Karable & A. H. Halsey (Eds.), Power and ideology in education. New York: Oxford University Press.
Freire, P., & Giroux, H. (1989). Pedagogy, popular culture, and public life: An introduction. In H. Giroux & R. Simon (Eds.), Popular culture: Schooling and everyday life. New York: Bergin & Garvey Publishers, Inc.
Hobbs, R. (2006). Reading the Media: Media Literacy in High School English. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Arnold.
