Course Overview Honors English IV
Elizabeth Gargis – Fall 2015
Big Idea: Our studies in English IV will center on the literature of Britain and focus on the relationships
of multiple heroes with many faces who have overcome or fallen through adversity. Our units will center
on the following themes throughout the semester:
 Man’s Inhumanity to Man
 The Tragic Hero
 The Power of Language
Materials for the course:
1) Three-ring binder: warm-ups (essential questions/focus activities); classroom notes and
handouts; writing/test materials
2) Highlighters and removable media
3) Textbook: Prentice Hall, The British Tradition and any novels for study
4) Writing journal – for daily journals, reflective pieces, annotations, and your Vocabulary Log
(Checked on Fridays)
Ongoing assignments:
Students will keep an ongoing vocabulary log including class vocabulary and personal vocabulary from
class readings or outside readings.
Students will also keep a daily in-class journal. These will be used as warm-ups to focus students as well
as continuous assessment of their writing abilities.
Students will complete one alternative literary work each nine weeks. This assignment will be
independent; however, there will be checkpoints and literature circles throughout the nine weeks. A
formal schedule, project list, assessment expectations, and reading list will follow.
Students will research and present poets/poems from our periods of study on a weekly basis.
Students will participate in reflective, critical, narrative, and informative writing (process and timed).
Students will complete two project-based assignments each nine weeks.
Unit One: From Darkness to Light (Anglo-Saxon, Medieval, and Renaissance)
**Literary Focus:
Anglo-Saxon Influence – social values and customs, origin of language, oral tradition, and
warrior mentality
“The Seafarer”
Beowulf
Medieval Period – the power of the written word, characterization, feudalism, leadership,
and legend
Chaucer – The Canterbury Tales
Le Morte Darthur
Renaissance Period – Elizabethan Drama, legacy of Shakespeare, power of language, legacy
William Shakespeare – Macbeth, Hamlet
**Themes – Conflict, Leadership, Tragedy, and Language
**Writing standards: Write an argument to support a claim.
Write a personal reflection.
Standards addressed in Unit One:
 Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of the text.
 Determine the theme or central idea of a text and select details that show how it is
conveyed in the text.
 Analyze multiple interpretations of a story, drama, or
poem.
 Read with purpose. Engage in the reading.
 Come to class discussion prepared.
 Demonstrate and apply standards of English language and usage.
Unit Two: The Renaissance (Poetry)/Celebrating Humanity
**Historical Influence – Letters, political documents
Legacy of the crown – Queen Elizabeth’s “Speech Before Her Troops”
Sir Thomas More excerpt from Utopia
**Literary Focus – Renaissance poetry, metaphysical poetry, carpe diem poetry
Spenserian/Petrarchan sonnets
Meter, stanza, and form
John Donne
“Death, Be Not Proud”
“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”
Diction and Tone
Carpe Diem Poets “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”
“To His Coy Mistress”
**Themes – Love and loss, Carpe Diem, War and Peace
Unit Three – Loss of innocence
**Literary Focus – Literary epic, purpose, and style
**Themes – Conflict, Faith, Loss, Power of Language
The Fall of Satan
from Paradise Lost,”The Fall of Satan”
from The Inferno of Dante, “Canto 34
“The Fall of Satan”
**Writing Standards: Develop the topic thoroughly by selecting the most significant and relevant
facts, extended definitions, concrete details, quotations, or other information and examples appropriate to
the audience’s knowledge of the topic.
Standards addressed in Units Two and Three:
 Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of the text.
 Determine the theme or central idea of a text and select details that show how it is
conveyed in the text.
 Analyze multiple interpretations of a story, drama, or poem.
 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including
figurative and connotative meanings.
 Analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including words with
multiple meanings or language that is particularly fresh, engaging, or beautiful.
 Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is
particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power,
persuasiveness or beauty of the text.
 Demonstrate and apply standards of English language and usage.
Nine Week Assessment - Review Literary Periods
** Timed Writing on Piece/Period of Choice
**Alternative Literary Assessment due last day of nine weeks!!
Unit Four: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Literature (Restoration Period)
**Literary Focus: Satire, mock epic, rhetoric, imagery, understatement, hyperbole, irony
Elements of Satire
Jonathan Swift
“A Modest Proposal”
Alexander Pope
from The Rape of the Lock
from An Essay on Man
Unit Four: British Romantics and Realists (Victorian Period)
**Literary Focus:
Romantic Period
Poets: William Blake
“The Tyger” and “The Lamb”
“The Chimney Sweeper”
William Wordsworth
“Composed Upon Westminster Bridge”
“The World is Too Much with Us”
Lord Byron: “She Walks in Beauty”
Percy Bysshe Shelley: “Ozymandias,” “Ode to the West Wind”
Novel Study: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
Introduce the gothic novel
Analyzing author’s purpose, audience, point of view
Victorian Period
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“Tears, Idle Tears,” “The Lady of Shallot”
Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“My Last Duchess,” “Sonnet 43”
**Themes – Loss of innocence, man’s inhumanity to man, passion versus responsibility, reform, realism
**Writing Standards: Introduce a topic; organize complex ideas, concepts, and information.
Develop the topic thoroughly by selecting the most significant and relevant facts.
Establish and maintain a formal style and objective tone.
Standards addressed in Unit Four:
 Analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to develop and relate elements
of a story or drama.
 Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text.
 Respond thoughtfully to diverse perspectives; synthesize comments, claims, and evidence
made on all sides of an issue.
 Present information, findings, and supporting evidence, conveying a clear and distinct
perspective, such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning, alternative or opposing
perspectives are addressed, and the organization, development, substance, and style are
appropriate to purpose, audience, and a range of formal and informal tasks.
 Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts,
to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when
reading or listening.
Unit Five – Modern and Post-Modern literature and the Research Process!!
**Literary Focus:
T.S. Eliot
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
Yeats
“The Second Coming”
Auden
“The Unknown Citizen”
Dylan Thomas
“Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”
Joseph Conrad – Heart of Darkness
**Research Focus: To argue, inform, investigate, and correlate society to literature
Students will argue the social implications and/or historical context of one author and one work
(or collection) of a specific period in our study of British literature. Students will form an opinion,
read critically, decipher relevance, organize around a specific argument, incorporate MLA citation
format, and utilize effective language and style in writing.
**Writing Standards:
Gather relevant information from multiple authoritative print and digital sources, using advanced
searches effectively; assess the strengths and limitations of each source in terms of the task, purpose, and
audience; integrate information into the text selectively to maintain the flow of ideas, avoiding plagiarism
and overreliance on any one source and following a standard format for citation.
Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.
Standards addressed in Unit Five:
 Analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to develop and relate elements
of a story or drama.
 Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text.
 Respond thoughtfully to diverse perspectives; synthesize comments, claims, and evidence
made on all sides of an issue.
 Present information, findings, and supporting evidence, conveying a clear and distinct
perspective, such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning, alternative or opposing
perspectives are addressed.
 Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts,
to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when
reading or listening.
**Final Review for NC Final Exam at the end of the semester!! (Schedule to follow)