LITERARY STUDY: Literary selections are largely from the text, Elements of Literature, first course, published by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.  The various short stories, plays, excerpts, and poems will be both homework and class work. Literary terms and techniques, as they apply to each piece, are explored. Our ultimate goal is to enable students to synthesize such techniques into their own writing.

Shorter Literature, Chronological and by Theme and Genre

          The study of vocabulary, grammar, mechanics, usage and writing technique will be ongoing.  Literary studies will continue throughout the year. Individual short stories and poems, which we do extensively, are grouped by topic and/or theme.  For the most part, the literary selections will come from our literature textbook, Elements of Literature, first course, published by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.  The specific sequence in which the stories are read may vary, and some titles may be replaced or omitted this year.  However, this will give you a rough idea of the short literary works we will study this year.

 September-- Conflicts

“Three Skeleton Key” by George G. Toudouze

·         “Princess” by Nicholasa Mohr

·         “Rikki-tikki-tavi” by Rudyard Kipling

·         “Survive the Savage Sea” by Dougal Robertson

October—Unique Characters

·         “Charles” by Shirley Jackson

·         “The Dog that Bit People” by James Thurber

·         Excerpt from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

·         “Miss Awful” by Arthur Cavanaugh

November— The Elements of a Short Story

·         “After Twenty Years” by O. Henry

·         “Beware of the Dog” by Roald Dahl

·         “A Mother in Manville” by Marjorie Rawlings

·         “Wine on the Desert” by Max Brand

December/January-- The Elements of Poetry

·         Extensive background re. poetic techniques.

·         Study of 28-35 poems.

·         Oral resentation re. poems that students select.

·         Culmination in a portfolio of each student's original poetry.

February and March—Shakespearean Drama

·         Historical background re. Pompey’s and Caesar’s Rome

·         Background re. Shakespeare’s Tragedies and Historical Dramas

·         The rise and fall of Rome

·         Intensive study and interpretive reading of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

·         The reading of Julius Caesar will be done entirely in class.

 First part of April—World Folktales and Fables

·         “Coyote Kills the Giant” (Native American)

·         “Anansi’s Riding Horse” (Jamaican)

·         “The Crane Wife” (Japanese)

·         “Yama, the God of Death” (Indian)

·         3-5 of Aesop’s Fables

Mid April and May—The Myths of Greece and Rome

·         “The Creation Myths”

·         “The Golden Age”

·         “The Titans and the Olympian Gods”

·         “Pandora’s Box”

·         “Deucalion’s Flood”

·         “The Palace of Olympus”

·         “Ceres and Proserpine”

·         “Narcissus”

·         “The First Anemones”

·         “The Mystery of Dionysus”

·         “Phaethon”

·         “Daedalus”

·         “King Midas’s Ears”

·         “Paris and Queen Helen”

·         “The Wooden (Trojan) Horse”

·         “Aeneas”