Course Syllabus

Use the link for virtual classroom: Google Meet 

 

Literary Studies 11

Day One: Block A

Faculty: Dwight Hillis and Jeremy Sayers

Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.  Aristotle

 I am available during break and lunch hours for tutorials in 219. 

Asynchronous Google Meets will be available for you to drop in between 1:10 and 1:45.

Please contact me at dhillis@stgeorges.bc.ca between 7 am and 7:30 pm if you need to reach me.

If you need to talk to me in person, I can be available from 8:30 am to 8:55 am in 219

This is a paperless classroom.  All daily lesson plans, assignments essays, quizzes, and tests will be posted on the Assignments window and appear on your calendar.  Anything that is listed on the Pages window can be used at any time to assist your work.  

Course Description

            The Grade 11 year provides a crucial transition between junior and senior English studies. Through cross-genre explorations of such themes as the role of the individual in society, understanding of self, and our connection to modern culture as often rooted in myth, students are challenged creatively to discover themselves as individuals with opinions which matter. We stress the importance of the well-supported argument both within oral and written communication. Students assume greater workloads in reading and writing and must develop careful skills of proofreading and revision which are supported by the English Department Editing Skills framework of Grades 8-10, which uses a common vocabulary by which stylistic weaknesses may be addressed.

Core Competencies:

• Communication-The communication competency encompasses the set of abilities that students use to impart and exchange information, experiences and ideas, to explore the world around them, and to understand and effectively engage in the use of digital media.
• Thinking- The thinking competency encompasses the knowledge, skills and processes we associate with intellectual development. It is through their competency as thinkers that students take subject-specific concepts and content and transform them into a new understanding. Thinking competence includes specific thinking skills as well as habits of mind, and metacognitive awareness.
• Personal and Social- Personal and social competency is the set of abilities that relate to students' identity in the world, both as individuals and as members of their community and society. Personal and social competency encompasses the abilities students need to thrive as individuals, to understand and care about themselves and others, and to find and achieve their purposes in the world.

Instructional Aims. Based on the B.C. Ministry of Education curriculum, students will learn through the following experiences:

• Read for enjoyment and to achieve personal goals
• Construct meaningful personal connections between self, text, and world
• Transform ideas and information to create original texts, using various genres forms, structures, and styles
• Use metacognitive strategies to think about our own thinking, strengths, and weaknesses
• Demonstrate an understanding of multimedia, formal speech, discussion, and performance presentation

Learning Outcomes. Based on the B.C. Ministry of Education curriculum, students will learn and be evaluated on the following knowledge and skills:

• Evaluate the relevance (using credibility and significance of purpose) and reliability (using bias, propaganda, and excluded voices) of texts
• Analyze a text based on its purpose (audience and theme), structures (organization), features (diagrams, maps, charts), and literary elements
• Analyze the social and/or cultural values and perspectives that are communicated through the author’s use of language
• Analyze multiple texts to justify a nuanced, unifying theme
• Demonstrate strategic speaking skills (volume, pace, inflection, and emphasis) for the appropriate text
• Demonstrate strategic body language skills (gestures, stance, movements, eye contact) for the appropriate task
• Effectively use rhetoric, literary devices, style (implicit or explicit thesis), and descriptive language to craft a composition appropriate for its purpose
• Create effective, informative written work by using conciseness of language, logical development of ideas, use of transitions, and development of the thesis
• Communicate clear opinion support with specific evidence in a given style
• Use the conventions of Canadian spelling, grammar, and punctuation correctly given the context
• Use diction (connotation, verb choice) and syntax (parallelism, modifiers, sentence types) according to communication style and audience
• Correctly cite sources of information using MLA style for both in-text and Works Cited citations

Literacy

            This course embeds literacy practices within every lesson. You’ll learn critical reading skills to help you critically read, interpret, and analyze prose. You’ll observe how the literary techniques you’ve explored in prior units unfold over the course of longer works and analyze how characters develop and interact over the course of a narrative.  You’ll delve deeper into the roles of character and conflict in fiction and explore how a narrator’s perspective can colour storytelling.

            Students will be asked to demonstrate understanding through comprehension, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation tasks. You’ll develop your interpretation of literature further by examining how contrasts, ambiguous language, and various other techniques can add layers of meaning to a literary work.

You will also be asked to share ideas using oral, written, and visual communication in both formal and informal settings.

Resources:

Class Resources and Book List will all be Online:

Grade 11 Lit

Hamlet                                                                                     William Shakespeare

1984                                                                                         George Orwell

A Clockwork Orange                                                                 Anthony Burgess

Three Day Road                                                                        Joseph Boyden

Medieval Poets

Renaissance Poets

Modern Poets

Indigenous Poets

English Department Course Weighting Descriptors:

Writer’s Craft                                     25%

• Grammar and editing skills: Coordination, Subordination, and Conjunctive Adverbs
• Take-home assignments and/or multi-day assessments, group or individual
• Multiple-literacy representations
• Peer/self-editing
• Metacognitive responses to personal work

In-class Writing                                   25%

• In-class writing: essays, free writes, stand-alone responses
• Timed responses and performance tasks
• Cross-grades

 Reading and Viewing                          25%

• Reading comprehension, interpretation, reflection
• Multiple choice and short answer assessments
• Bloom’s sheets
• Canvas discussions

Oral Language                                    25%

• Presentations
• Harkness, Socratic Arguments, debates, discussion-based assessment
• Student self-assessment of engagement during small/full-class discussions
• Poetry in Voice

Each category and the final June exam is weighted as 25% of your final year mark.