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Honors Freshman English (Pre AP)
Ninth grade is the portal into young adulthood, and the entrance into high school means that AP courses
and college are just a collection of months down the road. The freshman year of high school
encompasses a period of increased mental growth that students will need in order to grasp the concepts
in Honors Freshman English (Pre AP).
Ninth graders in the Honors program are entering a critical intellectual phase of their lives, a time of
moving from comprehension and application to analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and the higher levels of
Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Students learning will shift
 from concrete to abstract thinking
 from emphasis on content to skill-based learning
 from reading a work just for what it says to how the author says it
 from surveying a lot of material to examining fewer works in greater depth
Ninth grade honors students should begin to assume more responsibility for their reading and writing,
realizing that more time will have to be spent at home learning concepts deeply and widely. The ninth
grade year is the year in which students who have relied on their superior listening and/or memorizing
skills learn that they must work much harder to master new concepts. And this year will offer many new
concepts. This is the year for teachers to reinforce those study skills that students will use for a lifetime.
Essential Honors Study Skills
 the ability to focus and concentrate on a task
 the ability to become more comfortable with frustration in learning new concepts
 the ability to assimilate and accommodate new thought patterns
 the ability to manage concurrent assignments
Honors Freshman English will focus on four areas: close reading, composition, grammar/vocabulary,
and critical thinking.
Close Reading
In Honors Freshman English, students learn to do a special kind of analytical reading called “close
reading.” When readers look at a text this way, they notice detail, images, diction, aspects of point of
view, and the way sentences are constructed by the writer. When a close reader notes these devices in
the text and examines their emotional impact, they can often be clues to layers of meaning that lie below
the surface of the work. This awareness of how a work is written will be the biggest difference between
an honors course and a general ninth grade English class.
Regardless of the text, honors students move toward the highest level of reading as they learn to
examine more closely the works they read.
 At the first level, students find meaning directly in the text.
 At the second level, students interpret what is in the text.
 At the third level, students move out of the text and connect to a universal meaning. Here they
move from the “what?” of the text to the “so what?” At this level, they connect literature with the
outside world and with universal themes.
Composition
Writing more complex and more sophisticated sentences, paragraphs, and essays is a natural outgrowth
of studying the way professional writers use rhetorical devices and syntax to create meaning. The goal,
after all, is not merely to admire great writing but for students to produce it themselves, whatever form it
takes. Students who have taken Honors Freshman English will no doubt write more elegant letters (and
emails) and more concise memos and reports later in life, even if they never write another essay after
college. Honors students should come to class with plenty of paper and be ready to write on a daily
basis.
Composition goals
 to develop fluency
 to develop creativity
 to develop advanced critical thinking
 to use increasingly more complex sentence structure
 to develop an awareness of the effect the writer’s rhetorical choices have on the reader
Grammar/Vocabulary
Throughout each semester, students use weekly grammar and vocabulary units to
 review the parts of speech
 discover the importance of sentence structure
 look for patterns displayed in writing through parallelism
 notice complex syntax strategies and learning that these deliberate choices on the part of author
create a certain effect on the reader
 understand increasingly more sophisticated syntactical patters as they learn about phrases and
clauses
 continue developing an advanced academic vocabulary
Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
An underlying skill throughout the entire course will be critical thinking and problem solving; however,
these skills are not confined to the English classroom. Practice and strategies in critical thinking is
essential for success in other classes.
Grading
With the exception of objective test questions, everything else students do in their English classes is
subjective. Therefore, every assignment will be analyzed carefully to decide exactly what skills students
should demonstrate and how it will be assessed. Rubrics will be used often in this class. Different from a
scoring guide that assigns point values to various elements on a final product, a rubric describes the
various levels of achievement possible on the assignment. Please understand that achieving a “100”
rarely occurs in an honors classroom.
Grading Percentages
Honors Freshman English is a year-long course. For this reason, grades will not start over at the end of
the quarter. At the end of each semester, there will be a comprehensive final exam that will account for
15% of the semester grade. The following percentages will be used to determine semester grades:
Writing – 45% (steps in the writing process, final papers)
Tests/Quizzes – 35% (reading quizzes, vocabulary tests)
Assignments or homework – 20% (at home practice, vocabulary assignments)
These fundamental skills—close reading, composition, grammar/vocabulary, and critical thinking—are
essential if students wish to become strong readers, writers, and thinkers. High school students entering
an Honors Freshman English class enter a new world entirely—not just the unfamiliar high school
campus but a world of increased awareness of language. These are students who will learn the
techniques for examining a text and making sense of it on different levels. These are students who will
be well-prepared at the end of the year for the last step before AP English courses—Honors Sophomore
English or Block.
Communication and Technology
Our students are 21st century learners. This means that they must be proficient in and comfortable will
various types of technology. As the year progresses, students will be introduced to and required to
demonstrate competency with the following technologies:
 Digital Collaboration
 Canvas
 Google Docs/Presentation
 Remind
 Google Drive
 Online discussions
 Prezi
 Word Processing
 Glogster
 Email Composition
Bonnie Drain
bdrain@mpsaz.org
480-308-5722
Jessica Chupp
jmchupp@mpsaz.org
480-472-7132
Meg Howell-Haymaker
mmhowellhaymaker@mpsaz.org
480-472-7010
I have read and understand the guidelines for Honors Freshman English (Pre AP)
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