British Literature/Composition Honors Syllabus
SY 2013-2014
Mrs. Carrie Swiderski
Woodville Tompkins Technical and Career High School
Course Description:
Honors British Literature /Composition is a study of the major literary periods, topics and themes
beginning with the Anglo-Saxon period and ending with the Restorative/Eighteenth Century period.
Students will focus on the major literary forms of the emerging nation, analyze the literary themes and
trends, research and compose several papers, speeches, and presentations using representative forms
of discourse. Students are expected to be active readers as they analyze and interpret textual detail,
establish connections among their observations, and draw logical inferences toward an interpretive
conclusion. The course will also include a writing component that focuses on argumentative,
informational, and explanatory writing about the literature through both discussion and essay format.
A formal, documented research paper is required.
Summary of Standards:
SCCPSS and the State of Georgia now use the Common Core Georgia Performance Standards
Curriculum, a nationalized set of academic standards that require the students to think, read and
write rigorously. The standards can be found at https://www.georgiastandards.org/CommonCore/Common%20Core%20Frameworks/CCGPS_ELA_11-12_Standards(BritLit).pdf
As an Honors course, these standards will be extended and/or enriched by regular class discussions
using the Harkness discussion method, which puts the students in control of the conversation, as
they seek, as a team, to come to consensus on a specific questions or issues. Information about this
methodology can be found at
http://learn.quinnipiac.edu/teaching/gettinghelp/documents/Harkness_Discussion.pdf
Curriculum and Texts:
The major works Honors British Literature/Composition students will read are listed below, along with
their supporting, smaller texts. As a department, we at WTTCHS *strongly* encourage parents to
provide individual copies of the starred texts, as there are not enough copies of the books for each
student. In addition, having a personal copy of the book allows the student to more easily practice
annotation skills required in active reading.
Theme
A Royal Mess: An
Examination of
the Lives,
Scandals, and
Impact of
Britain’s Most
Notorious and
Noteworthy King
and Queens (The
Old English and
Medieval Periods)
Major works
Macbeth by William
Shakespeare
Supplementary Texts
(provided by teachers)
Short Texts:
Grendel
Beowulf
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Poetry
“The Seafarer”
“The Wanderer”
“The Wife’s Lament”
The Canterbury Tales: prologue,
Pardoner’s Tale, Nun Priest’s Tale,
Wife of Bath Tale
Informational Texts:
The Magna Carta
The Martyrdom of Thomas a’ Becket
Writing Focus
Argumentative
British Literature/Composition Honors Syllabus
SY 2013-2014
Theme
Major works
The World as a
Stage/How Art
Imitates Life (The
English
Renaissance
Period)
Shakespeare: The
World as Stage by Bill
Bryson
Macbeth by William
Shakespeare
Good and Evil in
Literature (The
Romantic Period)
*****Frankenstein by
Mary Shelley
The Language of
our Lives (The
Victorian and
Modern Eras)
The Professor and the
Madman by Simon
Winchester
Supplementary Texts
(provided by teachers)
Short Texts:
“All the World’s a Stage” by William
Shakespeare
“A Journal of the Plague Year by
Daniel Defoe
From Utopia by Sir Thomas Moore
Informational Texts
Poetry:
Sonnets
Informational Texts:
“To be or Not to be Shakespeare” by
Doug Stewart
Declaration of Reasonable Doubt by
Derek Jacobi
Poetry selections by:
John Donne – S. T. Coleridge
Robert Herrick – W. Wordsworth
Andrew Marvell - Byron – R. Burns
Short Text:
Milton’s Paradise Lost
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde by Robert Stevenson
Heart of Darkness by Joseph
Conrad
Informational Texts:
Charles I of England
The execution of Charles I of
England
Short Texts by:
Lewis Carroll
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Robert Browning
Thomas Hardy
Emily Bronte
T. S. Eliot
Jane Austen
Rudyard Kipling
William Butler Yeats
Writing Focus
Informative
Explanatory
Informative
Explanatory
Argumentative
Research Paper
Instruction will be extended for this honors course with extended timed writing, double-entry journaling,
analysis of related images, Harkness-style discussions, Socratic Seminars, close reading, annotation and
collaborative annotation.
Contact Information:
Carrie Swiderski, Room 619
Work: (912) 395-6750 Extension 754619
carrie.swiderski@sccpss.com
Tutorial: Thursday, until 4 PM