Advanced Placement
English Literature and Composition
Course Design
Indian Hill High
School
Rebecca
McFarlan
Consultant
ID: 1216
Rebecca McFarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
July
7-11, 1216
2008
Consultant:
Kansas City, MO
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Course Design
Rebecca C. McFarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
Requisite AP English Skills
From PSAT/NMSQT Skills List
Writing Skills
W1 Being precise and clear
How to improve: Learn to recognize sentence elements that are ambiguous and confusing. In your
writing, choose words carefully and connect them for clear meaning.
W2 Following conventions in writing
How to improve: Review the chapters in a grammar book that cover grammatical conventions, such as
word choice, use of noun and prepositional phrases, and sentence construction. Work with your teacher
to become more familiar with the conventions of Standard Written English.
W3 Recognizing logical connections within sentences and passages
How to improve: Use the writing process to help you revise your draft essays. Work with classmates and
teachers to clarify meaning in your writing.
W4 Using verbs correctly
How to improve: Make sure that you can identify the subject and verb of a sentence. Make sure you
understand subject and verb agreement.
W5 Recognizing improper pronoun use
How to improve: Learn to understand the distinction between informal, spoken pronoun usage and
standard written pronoun usage. Review the way you use pronouns in your own writing. Ask your teacher
to help you identify and correct pronoun errors in your own writing.
W6 Understanding the structure of sentences with unfamiliar vocabulary
How to improve: Read material that contains unfamiliar vocabulary. Look for context clues to help you
guess at the meaning of unfamiliar words as you read.
W7 Understanding complicated sentence structures
How to improve: Refer to a grammar book to identify various sentence patterns and their effective use.
Vary the sentence patterns in your own writing.
W8 Understanding the structure of long sentences
How to improve: As you read, break long sentences into smaller units of meaning.
W9 Understanding the structure of sentences with abstract ideas
How to improve: Read newspapers, magazines, and books that deal with subjects such as politics,
economics, history, or philosophy.
W10 Understanding the structure of sentences that relate to science or math
How to improve: Focus on how something is said as well as on what is said. Write about the things you
are learning in math and science classes. Read articles in the science section of newspapers and
magazines so that you will feel more comfortable with scientific or math content.
W11 Understanding the structure of sentences that relate to the arts
How to improve: Focus on how something is said as well as on what is said. Read articles in newspapers
and magazines about the arts so that you will feel more comfortable with these subjects.
Critical Reading Skills
CR1 Understanding main ideas in a reading passage
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Course Design
Rebecca C. McFarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
How to improve: Read the passage carefully and try to determine the author’s overall message. Practice
making distinctions between the main idea and supporting details.
CR2 Understanding tone
How to improve: When reading, consider how an author’s choice of words helps define his or her
attitudes. Pay attention to the way in which tone conveys meaning in conversation and in the media.
CR3 Comparing and contrasting ideas presented in two passages
How to improve: Read editorials that take opposing views on an issue. Look for differences and
similarities in tone, point of view, and main idea.
CR4 Understanding the use of examples
How to improve: Authors often include examples in their writing to communicate and support their ideas.
Read different kinds of argumentative writing (editorials, criticism, personal essays) and pay attention to
the way examples are used. State the point of the examples in your own words. Use examples in your
own writing.
CR5 Recognizing the purpose of various writing strategies
How to improve: Writers use a variety of tools to achieve their effects. While you read, look for such things
as specific examples, quotations, striking images, and emotionally loaded words. Think about the
connotations of specific words and why the author might have decided to use them.
CR6 Applying ideas presented in a reading passage
How to improve: When you read, try to determine the author’s ideas and assumptions and then think
about how they might apply to new situations.
CR7 Determining an author’s purpose or perspective
How to improve: Authors write for a variety of purposes, such as to inform, to explain, or to convince.
When you read, try to determine why the author wrote what he or she wrote.
CR8 Making connections between information in different parts of a passage
How to improve: Work on figuring out the relationship between the material presented in one part of a
reading passage and material presented in another part. Ask yourself, for example, how facts presented
in the beginning of a magazine article relate to the conclusion.
CR9 Distinguishing conflicting viewpoints
How to improve: When reading, practice summarizing main ideas and noting sentences that mark
transition points. earn to understand methods of persuasion and argumentation. Expand your reading to
include argumentative writing, such as political commentary, philosophy, and criticism.
CR10 Being thorough
How to improve: Don’t just pick the first answer choice you see that looks tempting. Be sure to evaluate
all the choices before you select your answer, just as you would read an entire paragraph rather than
assume its meaning based only on the first sentence.
CR11 Understanding difficult vocabulary
How to improve: Broaden your reading to include newspapers and magazines, as well as fiction and
nonfiction from before the 1900s. Include reading material that is a bit outside your comfort zone. Improve
your knowledge of word roots to help determine the meaning of unfamiliar words.
CR12 Understanding how negative words, suffixes, and prefixes affect sentences
How to improve: When reading, pay attention to the ways in which negative words (like “not” and “never”),
prefixes (like “un” and “im”), and suffixes (like “less”) affect the meaning of words and sentences.
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Course Design
Rebecca C. McFarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
CR13 Understanding complex sentences
How to improve: Ask your English teacher to recommend books that are a bit more challenging than
those you’re used to reading. Practice breaking down the sentences into their component parts to
improve your comprehension. Learn how dependent clauses and verb phrases function in sentences.
CR14 Recognizing connections between ideas in a sentence
How to improve: Learn how connecting words (such as relative pronouns and conjunctions) establish the
relationship between different parts of a sentence.
CR15 Recognizing words that signal contrasting ideas in a sentence
How to improve: Learn how certain words (such as “although,” “but,” “however,” and “while”) are used to
signal a contrast between one part of a sentence and another.
CR16 Recognizing a definition when it is presented in a sentence
How to improve: Learn how such elements as appositives, subordination, and punctuation are used to
define words in a sentence.
CR17 Understanding sentences that deal with abstract ideas
How to improve: Broaden your reading to include newspaper editorials, political essays, and philosophical
writings.
CR18 Understanding and using a word in an unusual context
How to improve: Work on using word definitions when choosing an answer. Try not to be confused by an
unusual meaning of a term.
CR19 Comprehending long sentences
How to improve: Practice reducing long sentences into small, understandable parts.
CR20 Choosing a correct answer based on the meaning of the entire sentence
How to improve: Make sure your answer choice fits the logic of the sentence as a whole. Don’t choose an
answer just because it sounds good when inserted in the blank.
CR21 Understanding sentences that deal with scientific ideas
How to improve: Read magazine articles about scientific subjects to improve your comfort level in this
area.
http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/counselors/psat/07_Score_Report_Plus
Skills_List.pdf. Accessed 03/10/2008.
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Course Design
Rebecca C. McFarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
Language Skills
Literature Skills
1. Satire
1. Satire
2.
3.
4.
Irony
Vocabulary
Grammar
2.
3.
4.
Irony
Vocabulary
Grammar
5.
Author’s Purpose/
5.
Theme
6.
Syntax and Meaning
6.
Syntax and Meaning
7.
Tone
7.
Tone
8.
Occasion
8.
Setting
9.
Organization/Rhetorical Mode
9.
Plot Structure
10. Speaker/Credibility
10. Point of View/Credibility
11. Thesis Statement/Claim
11. Thesis Statement and Evidence
12. How to Mark the Text
12. How to Mark the Text
13. Figurative Language
13. Symbol and other figurative language
14. Selection of details and evidence
14. Characterization
15. Synthesis of sources
15. Diction
16. Ethos, Logos, Pathos
16. Historical and Cultural Context
17. Warrants
18. Diction
19. Audience
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Course Design
Rebecca C. McFarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
Myths to Dispel








We should only teach “hard works”
o Works of realism such as Death as a Salesmen and Doll’s House are equally
important.
o Students need to read a variety of styles
We only have time for academic writing (literary analysis)
o Creative writing engages students in thinking about literature
o Creative writing assignments transfer to voice in academic writing
Good AP teachers teach a certain number of texts
o The class demographics and ability levels should guide the pace
I have to teach every symbol and nuance in every work
o Students have to make their own meaning on the exam
o Students who try to replicate a teacher’s lesson plan on the AP exam, do not score
highly
o The Socratic seminar and variations of it should be the basis of an AP English
class.
Students need to know every literary device on the list given me by the former AP
teacher
o Memorizing lists is of little value on the exam
o Teachers should give students practice in applying literary devices to help them
unlock their own meanings.
Students need a certain PSAT score and GPA to do well in AP classes.
I can only teach non fiction in the AP Language course and fiction in the AP Literature
class.
o Poetry provides an excellent means to analyze nuances of diction and intricate
syntactical patterns.
o Nonfiction provides real world connections to imaginative literature
o Ideally, a vertically aligned PreAP curriculum will ensure that students are
exposed to both fiction and nonfiction each year.
If I have open enrollment in an AP class, I will have to water down the course.
o Perhaps the development committees have expanded the boundaries of the canon,
but they have not excluded any of the more traditional authors from the exam.
o Students will still need to make meaning of Pre-1900’s literature on
approximately fifty percent of both English exams and have the added ability to
analyze modern texts that present them with new challenges.
o An analysis of free response questions and sample student responses form the past
30 years will confirm that consistent rigor expected from students in both their
ability to analyze works and that a nine essay from 1980 is no more elegant than
one from 2005.
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Course Design
Rebecca C. McFarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
Skills Students Need:
o Vocabulary (dictionary words and literary terms)
o Word attack
o Meaning in context
o Application of literary terms and concepts
o Understanding of various language registers, standard and vernacular
o Make meaning of texts
o Incorporate in their own writing
o Ask questions to make meaning of texts and improve writing
o Synthesize abstract and complex ideas
o Write with confidence
o Control voice and tone
o Organize thought in a logical format
o Use apt references to support opinions
o Construct interesting ideas that goes beyond the obvious
o Literary and Close Reading Skills
o Can draw credible inferences about theme and tone
o Can look at the text on the syntactical and diction levels to construct meaning
o Can analyze texts written in various time periods, genres. and styles with
equal facility (one component the differentiates an AP class from an honors
class).
Strategies:
o Graphic organizers help students unravel complex texts and ideas
o They should guide students beyond the obvious
 Characterization – go beyond physical appearance to the psychological
and root causes of behaviors
 Offer multiple options for prewriting so students can find what works for
them
 Help students learn to organize/outline thoughts
 Diagramming can help left brain learners see syntactical
relationships/Color coding is good for right brained learners
o Give students an AP rubric, evaluate an essay as a class, move to small group evaluation,
and then to individual analysis of his/her own work.
o Read Alouds
o Students need to hear words spoken
o The teacher can assess reading abilities
o Teach annotation of texts – questions and responses
o Dialectic notebook
o Summarize
o Notes in text
o Socratic seminar and variations
o Add an after class evaluation so students can synthesize what they heard
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Course Design
Rebecca C. McFarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
o
o
o
o
o
o Jig Saw
o Fish Bowl
Give students choices as often as possible (novels, projects)
Rewrite opportunities for essays
o Must conference with teacher
o Must rewrite with an acceptable time period
Peer Editing
o Give goals and tasks
o Peer Reviewer handouts that hold reviewer accountable
Performance activities based on literature, such as plays and videos, help students
internalize literary concepts and themes as well as solidifying their know of the text.
o A fine line exists between fluff and purposeful learning activities
o When assigning projects, the teacher should have crystal clear learning objectives
in mind and make those objectives clear to the students.
Teach students how to ask the right and interesting questions
o Levels of questions (fact, inferential, global connections)
o Challenging the text
 How does the text validate my experiences and view of the world?
 How does this text inform or contradict other texts?
 How does this text reflect the world at large?
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Course Design
Rebecca C. McFarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
AP Syllabus for the AP Course Audit
AP Literature and Composition:
Prerequisite: American Literature either at the AP or College Prep Junior Level
Course Description:
Our district’s English curriculum at the high school level is divided into two levels,
college preparatory and advanced/advanced placement. Advanced levels at the 9th and 10th grade
feed into Advanced Placement at the 11th and 12th grades. Both college preparatory and
advanced level English classes are designed to prepare students for college level work. Students
may and are encouraged to move between the two levels as needed. AP Senior English,
therefore, is a course open to all students who want to meet the challenge of a college level
English course. Typically our graduating class size is between 180 and 200 students. This year
our senior class is unusually large at 212. Ninety-four are enrolled in the class and all will take
the Literature and Composition Exam in May. Of the 94 current AP senior students, 88 of them
took AP Junior English along with the AP Language and Composition exam. Six others moved
up from our college preparatory level because they wanted an additional challenge. Students
who wish to move from the college preparatory level, must read Beloved by Toni Morison and
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, which were additional works read by AP juniors, and
complete essay assessments. They also take a sample AP multiple choice test. It is our desire to
have an open access policy, but at the same time make certain students know the rigor of our
Advanced Placement curriculum. Our ultimate goal is to produce perceptive readers, cogent
writers, and critical thinkers.
The district curriculum follows a fairly traditional curricular format of genre study at the
th
9 and 10th grade levels, American literature at the 11th grade, and British/World masterpieces at
the 12th grade. That said, we have the flexibility to add literature that does not strictly follow the
American or British format. For instance, our juniors read Night by Elie Wiessel and seniors
study works such as A Doll House, Things Fall Apart, and Grendel. Students entering the 12th
grade AP Literature course will have completed a year of American literature during their junior
year. American literature is, therefore, a prerequisite. Students are responsible to read a major
work every two to three weeks. Related shorter works and poetry are incorporated with each
longer novel/play. All works are studied from both a macroscopic/thematic and
microscopic/language levels. While the AP Literature Exam focuses on imaginative works,
we also include works of nonfiction. Students read essays from many of the authors they
study such as Ibsen, Conrad and Achebe. Through this study of nonfiction the literature course
continues the works of the junior AP Language course, using these models to teach rhetorical
principles. Students will continue to study rhetoric to enhance both their reading and
writing skills. In a effort to move students beyond Formalism, which has become rote for many,
other schools of literary criticism are introduced.
As a department, we value writing as an opportunity to learn. By the time students are
enrolled in AP Senior English, they are well trained in the writing process and in writing for
multiple audiences in varied modes. Each year, whether in college prep or in AP English,
students write, revise and edit personal narratives, literary analyses,
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Course Design
Rebecca C. McFarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
argumentative/persuasive essays, reader response essays, and a research paper. They are
also given multiple creative and timed writing assignments. Senior AP students write two five to
seven page literary analyses per quarter in addition to personal and creative writing assignments.
They average an in-class timed writing assessment every other week. During third quarter
students write a 10 to 12 page research paper focusing on the works of one author. They may
also choose to write a literary topic paper. Some examples of topic papers are: “Chaos Theory
in Modern Literature,” “Gender Bias in Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Beckett,” and “New Historicism
and the Evolution of the Mystery.” At all grade levels, teachers require peer evaluation and
teacher conferences as part of the writing process. AP Senior English students are given an
additional revision opportunity. If they are not happy with their final grade on a paper,
they may conference with me and do an additional rewrite. In sum, students are given
regular opportunities to practice the writing process for multiple audiences and purposes.
A Socratic seminar format comprises the majority of class discussions, but students also engage
in small group discussions as well of online chats about works they have read.
Art, music, and technology augment writing and reading components of the class. Art and music
supplement students’ understanding of historical eras and cultures. Students and teacher often
integrate technology into presentations and lessons which focus on art, music and other
interdisciplinary connections. Included are schedules by quarter rather than by units. While
theme, as well as historical/cultural influences, is emphasized with each work, the course is not
designed thematically nor chronologically. Rather works are chosen to expose students to a wide
range of literature encompassing older as well as more modern works, all major genres, and
varied stylistic responses to universal and topical concerns. Writing assignments are devised
to require students to draw thematic connections among works studied, consider
historical/cultural influences, and show an understanding of genre.
Unit Name or Timeframe: Summer Reading
Content and/or Skills Taught: Analytical Reading and Writing, Drama Characteristics,
Appreciation and Understanding of the Craft of Poetry, Satire (Brave New World), Tragedy
(Othello, The Tempest) Intertextual Relationships, Characterization, Plot Structure, Setting,
Theme, and Tone, Personal Narrative
Major Assignments and/or Assessments (if needed to demonstrate that a curricular requirement
is being met):
Unit Name or Timeframe: Quarter 1 (9 weeks) – We are on a modified block schedule. Classes
meet for 50 minutes on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. On Wednesday and Thursday we meet
with half of classes each day for a 90 minute period.
Content and/or Skills Taught: Critical reading of drama, poetry, nonfiction, and novels;
Composition of personal and literary analyses; Applying literary theory (feminism, Marxism,
Psychoanalytical, New Historicism, and Deconstructionism); Sustained literary allusion
(Beowulf/Grendel); History of the English Language; Analysis of satire (“A Modest Proposal”
and Brave New World). Concepts associated with Aristotle’s theory of tragedy. Historical and
cultural background early English literature, the Renaissance, and 20th century modernism.
Major Works Studied:
Othello
Brave New World
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Course Design
Rebecca C. McFarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
The Tempest
Beowulf (excerpt)
Grendel
Consolations of Philosophy
“The Metamorphosis
11
Course Design
Rebecca C. McFarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
Shorter Works Studied:
“Shooting an Elephant” – George Orwell
“A Modest Proposal” – Jonathan Swift
Various Literary Criticism
Poetry by Browning, Tennyson, Eliot, Yeats, Wilber, Blake, Beard, Wilbur, Roethke, Sagoff,
Shakespeare, Donne, Marvel, Pope
English: Literature and Composition 1st Quarter, 2007
Assignments are due on the day listed. If you are absent for any reason, you are expected to
continue with the reading assignments. You are responsible for accessing missed handouts and
assignments through Blackboard.
This schedule will be updated on Blackboard as needed.
August 23 (Th)
Introductions and Expectations
August 24 (F)
Reading Check The Tempest; Summer Writing Assignments Due
August 27 (M)
August 28 (T)
August 29/30 (W/Th)
August 31(F)
Seminar – Othello
Seminar – The Tempest; HW: Read handouts on tragedy
Seminar – Brave New World, Othello, and The Tempest;
Background notes on Aristotle’s theory of tragedy/Performance of
Student Monologues based on The Tempest
Seminar – Poetry from summer reading; HW: MWDS* on each
novel/play from summer work due on Tuesday. Read and annotate
“The Lamb” and “The Tyger.”
September 3 (M)
September 4 (T)
Labor Day
Lecture Blake and Archetypes; Discuss Blake’s “The Lamb” and
“The Tyger”/Archetypes/ handouts; MWDS from summer reading
due
September 5/6(W/Th)
Shakespeare and Blake Group Work/Analysis of Diction, Syntax
and Devices of Poetry (WAL)***
September 7(F)
I.C.E.** #1 (This is a timed writing assignment that will evaluated and
feedback given by both teachers and peers. Prior to writing students will have examined models
of timed writings on other prompts. Students will use a rubric that I have added to the end of this
syllabus to both review peer samples and their own essay. They will then set goals for
improvement based on the skills most need whether that be developing: a wide-ranging
vocabulary used appropriately and effectively, a variety of sentence structures, including
appropriate use of subordination and coordination, logical organization, enhanced by specific
techniques to increase coherence, such as repetition, transitions, and emphasis, a balance of
generalization and specific, illustrative detail, an effective use of rhetoric, including controlling
tone, establishing and maintaining voice, and achieving appropriate emphasis through diction
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Course Design
Rebecca C. McFarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
and sentence structure. Together, the teacher and student will monitor and evaluate progress
toward these mutually agreed upon goals.
September 10 (M)
September 11 (T)
September 12/13 (W/Th)
September 14 (F)
September 17(M)
September 18 (T)
September 19/20 (W/Th)
September 21(F)
September 24 (M)
September 25 (T)
September 26/27 (W/Th)
September 28(F)
College Essays – Bring rough draft to school
“Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell (PH)****/Levels of
Questions/Rhetorical Strategies
College Essay Work Day /AP Multiple Choice #1/Review I.C.E.
(See September 7)
Review Elements of Satire/ HW: Read and Annotate “A Modest
Proposal” (handout)
Review Multiple Choice; Reading Check and Discussion of “A
Modest Proposal”; HW: Read and Annotate Satiric Poetry
(handout)
Seminar: Satiric Poetry (Shakespeare/Donne/Marvel/ Pope)
Satire Group Project/ Conferences on College Essays
College Essays Due (Out of Class Essay #1) See Summer
Reading. Students are to bring a college essay begun during their
junior year on the first day of class. The teacher will have been
conferencing with them individually from August 23 to this date
when the final is due. Students also have the option of meeting
after school for both teacher and peer feedback sessions. They will
still have revision and conference opportunities after the paper is
graded; Satire Group Presentations
Finish Satire Presentations; Lecture Beowulf , Old English, and
Grendel; Review Epic Properties
Introduction of Literary Constructs (Marxism, Feminism,
Psychoanalytical, New Historicism and Deconstructionism)/HW:
Read Introductory Article (in Bedford Hamlet book) on Assigned
Literary Construct
Group Work: Discuss Assigned Literary Construct Article with
Group Members; Apply to a Work of Literature Studied this Year;
HW: Work on Group Presentation through Blackboard
Special Person’s Day 8:30 – 11:15
October 1 (M)
Literary Construct Group Presentations; HW: Read and Annotate
Beowulf , “The Myth of Sisyphus,” and Related Poems for Block
Day (handout)
and Related Poems for Block Day (handout)
October 2 (T)
Literary Construct Group Presentations, cont.
October 3/4 (W/Th)
Seminar and Group Work Beowulf, “The Myth of Sisyphus,” and
Related Poems (Sagoff, Wilber, Roethke, and Beard) College
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Course Design
Rebecca C. McFarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
October 5(F)
Essays Returned(Rewrites due Oct. 12) See September 21 for
further explanation.
Beowulf/Grendel Reading Check (MWDS #4)
Students should have completed one teacher conference (This conference centers on
writing feedback and is held during their study halls, before or after school.)
October 8 (M)
October 9 (T)
October 10/11(W/Th)
October 12 (F)
Beowulf/Grendel Seminar
AP Multiple Choice#2; Group Work Beowulf/Grendel
Finish Group Work Beowulf/Grendel;Review Multiple Choice #2
Present Poetic Parodies of Beowulf/Grendel
-October 15 (M)
Writer’s Workshop: Bring Draft of Out of Class Essay #2 - 5 to 7
pages on Beowulf/Grendel. Choose a literary construct for your
focus. Final Draft Due October 16 in Blackboard by 6:00 PM
(Writers workshop entails both teacher and peer feedback)
Introduction to Major Philosophers and Philosophical Constructs;
HW: Read Assigned Chapters in Consolations of Philosophy
Group Work on Assigned Philosophers in Consolations of
Philosophy; HW: Finish Consolations of Philosophy.
No School
October 16 (T)
October 17/18 (W/Th)
October 19(F)
October 22 (M)
October 23 (T)
October 24/25 (W/Th)
October 26 (F)
No School
Reading Check and Seminar on Consolations of Philosophy; HW:
Read and Annotate “The Metamorphosis” (handout)
Seminar on “The Metamorphosis”; Group Work: Application of
Literary Constructs and Philosophy to “The Metamorphosis”
I.C.E. # 2 (See September 7)
*MWDS = Major Works Data Sheet
**I.C.E. = In Class Essay
***Writing About Literature = WAL
****Prentice Hall Anthology = PH
Unit Name or Timeframe: Quarter 2 (9 weeks)
Content and/or Skills Taught:
This quarter we focus heavily on drama, the Renaissance and Victorian Ages, poetry, and
continue our study of satire, comedy and tragedy. With Kipling, Conrad, and Achebe we look at
imperialism. We continue to study how literary devices and rhetorical strategies impact meaning
in texts. Students continue to apply literary constructs and philosophy to their reading and
writing assignments. More emphasis is given to literary criticism in preparation for the Literary
Specialist research paper.
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Course Design
Rebecca C. McFarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
Literary Specialist (10-12 Page Literary Research Paper Introduced (Assignment Follows 2nd
Quarter Schedule)
Composition: Timed Writing, Creative Writing, Out-of Class Essay
Major Works Studied:
Hamlet
A Doll House
The Importance of Being Earnest
Heart of Darkness
Things Fall Apart
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The Exam and Course Design
Rebecca Mcfarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
Shorter Works:
Various Articles of Literary Criticism
19th Century Poets: R. Browning, E. Browning, Tennyson, Arnold, Kipling, Rossetti, Hopkins, Hardy,
Houseman
English: Literature and Composition Quarter 2, 2007
Assignments are due on the day listed. If you are absent for any reason, you are expected to continue with the
reading assignments. You are responsible for accessing missed handouts and assignments through Blackboard.
This schedule will be updated on Blackboard as needed.
October 29 (M)
October 30 (T)
Lecture on Renaissance, Hamlet, and Sonnets; Sonnet Activity
Sonnet Group work (Analyze a Shakespearean Sonnet and Write a Parody)/Out of
Class Essay #2 Returned (Rewrite due November 6) (See October 15)
Oct./Nov. 31/1 (W/Th)
November 2 (F)
Sonnet Parodies Presented/Hamlet Group work(Close Reading of the Soliloquies)
Hamlet Reading Check/ MWDS #5 /HW: Read assigned critical article in
Bedford text
November 5 (M)
November 6/7 (T/W)
November 8(Th)
November 9(F)
I.C.E #2 Returned (See September 7); Seminar on Hamlet and Critical Articles
Group Work Hamlet by Acts
Hamlet Group Presentations
Parent Conferences.
November 12/13 (M/T)
November 14 (W)
November 15(Th)
November 16 (F)
I.C.E. #3 (See September 7)(Hamlet) / Lecture: Comedy vs. Tragedy
Analyze Current Comedies and Tragedies
Multiple Choice #3; Lecture: Ibsen and Wilde: Two Faces of the 19th Century
A Doll House and The Importance of Being Earnest impromptus
November 19-20(M/T)
November 21-23 (W/Th/F)
Senior Trip
Thanksgiving
November 26 (M)
I.C.E. #3 Returned(See September 7)/ Reading Check A Doll House and The
Importance of Being Earnest/ MWDS’s #6 and #7 Due
Seminar: A Doll House and The Importance of Being Earnest/
HW: Write Précis of Assigned Literary Criticism
Ibsen/Wilde: Group Work – Write a Creative One Act Play (an example of
creative/nonacademic writing assignment)Incorporating Characters from DH and
Importance
Introduce Literary Specialist (a major writing assignment that requires instruction
throughout the assignment. The rubrics are attached. – Media Center
November 27 (T)
November 28/29(W/Th)
November 30 (F)
December 3 (M)
December 4 (T)
Ibsen/Wilde Enactments
Ibsen/Wilde Enactments
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The Exam and Course Design
December 5/6(W/Th)
December 7 (F)
Rebecca Mcfarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
Introduction to Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart /Kipling and Yeats
(Group Work)
Writer’s Workshop Out-of Class Paper #3:(See Oct. 15) 5-7 Page Paper
Comparing and Contrasting Two of the Three Playwrights Studied 2nd Quarter
(Ibsen, Wilde, Shakespeare). Must Include Literary Criticism and Philosophical
References for Support. First Draft due December 12/13; Final Draft Due
December 17.
Students should have completed a 2nd quarter teacher conference. (This conference centers
on writing feedback and is held during their study halls, before or after school.)
December 10 (M)
December 11 (T)
December 12/13 (W/Th)
December 14 (F)
December 17(M)
December 18 (T)
December 19/20W/Th)
December 21 (F)
January 7 (M)
January 8 (T)
January 9/10 (W/Th)
January 11 (F)
January 14 (M)
January 15 (T)
January 17-19 (W,Th,F)
Victorian Poetry
Victorian Poetry /Literary Specialist Work Day/Author or Topic Due
I.C.E. #4 (See September 7) (Poetry), AP Multiple Choice #4 and Test on Poetic
Devices
Heart of Darkness Reading Check/MWDS #8/HW: Read one of the Assigned
Critical Articles in Heart of Darkness Text as Preparation for Seminar
Heart of Darkness: Seminar/HW: Comparative essay due (Shakespeare and Ibsen
and/or Wilde) Out of Class Essay #3 in Blackboard/Turn It In by 6:00 PM:(See
Oct. 15)
Heart of Darkness: Literary Construct Group Work/I.C.E. #4 Returned (See
September 7)/ HW: Read excerpts from Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein;
Choose One of the Two Novels, due February 20.
Heart of Darkness: Literary Construct Group Work/Sign Up for Novel of Choice:
Wuthering Heights OR Frankenstein
Heart of Darkness: Literary Construct Group Work Presentations
Things Fall Apart Reading Check/MWDS #9/Out of Class Essay #3 Returned
(Rewrites due January 14). :(See Oct. 15)
Seminar: Things Fall Apart/ HW: Analyze Assigned Chapters
Multiple Choice Portion of Exam
Things Fall Apart Group Work by Assigned Chapters; Present by Groups on
Monday and Tuesday
Things Fall Apart Chapter Presentations (Rewrites Out of Class Essay #3 due in
BB by 6:00)
Things Fall Apart Chapter Presentations/HW: Read and Annotate Rhetorical
Strategies, “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” and
Write an Extended definition of Racism. Due January 22nd
Exams
Unit Name or Timeframe: Quarter 3 (9 weeks)
Content and/or Skills Taught:
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The Exam and Course Design
Rebecca Mcfarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
We will return to satire and the ideas associated with the Neoclassical period. Pride and Prejudice will be the
cornerstone of this unit and will provide a springboard to the Romantic era. We continue to study how literary
devices and rhetorical strategies impact meaning in texts. Students continue to apply literary constructs and
philosophy to their reading and writing assignments. The bulk of the Literary Specialist paper is done during
this quarter.
Literary Specialist (10-12 Page Literary Research Paper Completed
Composition: Timed Writing, Creative Writing, Out-of Class Essay
Major Works Studied:Apocalypse Now
Pride and prejudice
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Wuthering Heights or Frankenstein
Shorter Works:
Various Articles of Literary Criticism and Political Cartoons
Poetry: Eliot, Yeats, MacLeish, Sexton, Auden, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, Keats, Milton, Blake,
Excerpts from Dante if time permits
English: Literature and Composition Quarter 3, 2008
Assignments are due on the day listed. If you are absent for any reason, you are expected to continue with the
reading assignments. You are responsible for accessing missed handouts and assignments through Blackboard.
This schedule will be updated on Blackboard as needed.
January 21 (M)
MLK Day
January 22 (T)
Discuss Critical Articles/Practice Thesis Writing /
January 23/24 (W/Th)
January 25 (F)
January (M)
January 29 (T)
January 30/31 (W/Th)
February 1 (F)
February 4 (M)
February 5(T)
Prepare Debates: Conrad and Achebe: Racists?/Literary Specialist Preliminary
Works Cited Page/Notes and Tentative Thesis Statement Due/ Introductory
activities for Pride and Prejudice due February 6/7
Debates
Review Exam/Identify Writing and Multiple Choice Reading Goals for 2nd
semester/Begin Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now/ HW: Read Assigned Critical Article on Heart of Darkness and
Apocalypse Now, due February 4
Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now
Discuss Apocalypse Now and Critical Articles/Literary Specialist Works Cited
and Notes Due
18th and 19th Century Satiric Cartoons/Northrup Frye and Satire/ AP Multiple
Choice #5/ Peer Edit 1st Draft of Out of Class Paper #4; 5-7 Page
Comparative Paper on Two of the following: Heart of Darkness, Things Fall
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The Exam and Course Design
Rebecca Mcfarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
Apart, Apocalypse Now; Literary Construct that Compliments Thesis and at
Least One Critical Article; Final Draft due February 11 by 6:00 in Blackboard
February 8 (F)
Pride and Prejudice Group Work: Structure, Style, and Satire
Students should have completed a 3rd quarter teacher conference. (This conference centers on
writing feedback and is held during their study halls, before or after school.)
February 11 (M)
February 12 (T)
February 13/14(W/Th)
February 15 (F)
February 18 (M)
February 19 (T)
February 20/21 (W/Th)
February 22 (F)
February 25(M)
February 26 (T)
February 27/28(W/Th)
February 29 (F)
March 3 (M)
March 4 (T)
March 5/6 (W/Th)
March 7 (F)
I.C.E. #5 Pride and Prejudice /Out of Class Essay #4 due in BB by 6:00. (See
September 7 and Oct. 15)
Introduction to Romanticism and Romantic Poets/Choose Favorite for
Group Presentation/H.W: Read Paradise Lost Excerpt and Complete Setting and
Character Activities
Discuss Paradise Lost/ Read “Romantic Reactions to Milton’s Satan”
and Excerpts of Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell (handouts)/
Teacher Inservice - No School
Presidents’ Day – No School
Introduce A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man/AP Multiple Choice #6/Literary
Specialist Outline Due/Rewrites of Out of Class Essay #4 due in BB by 6:00;
:(See Oct. 15)
Wuthering Heights OR Frankenstein Reading Check and Seminar/MWDS
11/HW: Read Assigned Critical Articles in Bedford Texts
Discuss Critical Articles and Begin Group Work
Group Work - Wuthering Heights OR Frankenstein
Group Work- Wuthering Heights OR Frankenstein
I.C.E. # 6 (See September 7)
- Wuthering Heights OR Frankenstein/Wordsworth Student Led Lesson
Senior Health Day – No Classes
Coleridge Student Led Lesson/First Draft of Literary Specialist Due for Peer
Editing. Must be a Complete Draft.
P.B. Shelley Student Led Lesson/Out of Class Essay #4 Returned/Rewrite due
March 11. :(See Oct. 15)
Byron and Keats Student Led Lessons
Romantic Poetry Test
March 12-13 (W,Th)
March 14 (F)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – Reading Check
Seminar - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man/Rewrite Out of Class Essay #4
Due in BB by 6:00 PM. :(See Oct. 15)
Group Work – Structural Analysis of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Group Work – Structural Analysis of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
March 17 (M)
Introduce Life of Pi/ Dedalus/Icarus Poetry/Final Draft of Literary Specialist due.
March 10 (M)
March 11 (T)
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The Exam and Course Design
Rebecca Mcfarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
March 18 (T)
March 19/20(W/Th)
March 21 (F)
Modern and Post Modern Poetry
Modern and Post Modern Poetry
Student Found Poetry
Unit Name or Timeframe: Quarter 4 (6 Weeks)
Content and/or Skills Taught:
Students will apply what they have leaned about genre conventions to postmodern works. They will also study
metaphysical poetry from the 17th century and look for its influences in later works. We continue to study how
literary devices and rhetorical strategies impact meaning in texts. Students continue to apply literary constructs
and philosophy to their reading and writing assignments. More emphasis is given to preparation for the AP
exam than in previous quarters.
Major Assignments and/or Assessments (if needed to demonstrate that a curricular requirement is being met):
Composition: Timed Writing, Creative Writing, Out-of Class Essay
Major Works Studied:
Life of Pi
Waiting for Godot
Poetry: Ferlinghetti, MacLeish, Sexton, Donne, Marvel, Herbert, Herrick,
English: Literature and Composition (Fairly Firm Draft)
Quarter 4, 2007
Assignments are due on the day listed. If you are absent for any reason, you are expected to continue with the reading assignments. You are
responsible for accessing missed handouts and assignments through Blackboard.
This schedule will be updated on Blackboard as needed.
March 31 (M)
April 1 (T)
April 3/4(W/Th)
April 5 (F)
End of Spring Break - No School
Introduction to Metaphysical Poetry
Metaphysical Poetry – Group Work
Metaphysical Poetry – Group Presentations
April 8 (M)
April 9 (T)
April 10/11 (W/Th)
April 12 (F)
Metaphysical Poetry – Group Presentations
A.P. Multiple Choice and I.C.E. #7. (See September 7)
Life of Pi Reading Check and Seminar/MWDS 12/H.W. Review Philosophy Unit from 1 st Quarter and Apply
Various Philosophies to Pi Patel’s Story
Life of Pi: Philosophy Group Project
April 14 (M)
April 15 (T)
April 16-17 (W/Th)
April 18 (F)
April 19 (S)
Life of Pi: Philosophy Group Project
Life of Pi: Philosophy Group Presentation
Life of Pi: Philosophy Group Presentation/Introduction to Waiting for Godot
AP Multiple Choice #8
Practice AP Exam – Extra Credit
April 21 (M)
April 22 (T)
April 23/24 (W/Th)
Waiting for Godot Reading Check – :(See September 7)
Seminar: Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot Skits/ Peer Edit 1st Draft of Out of Class Essay #5: 5-7 Pages, Topic of Choice Covering
One or More Works Studied 3rd or 4th Quarter. Final due in BB April 29 by 6PM. :(See Oct. 15)
Godot Skits
April 25 (F)
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The Exam and Course Design
Rebecca Mcfarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
April 28 (M)
April 29 (T)
April/May 30/1 (W/Th)
May 2 (F)
Godot Skits/Out of Class Essay #5 due in BB by 6:00 PM
AP Practice/Review Poetry
AP Practice/Review Poetry
AP Practice/Review Prose
May 5 (M)
May 6 (T)
May 7 (W)
May 8 (Th)
May 9 (F)
AP Practice/Review Novels/Plays
AP Practice/Review Novels/Plays
AP Practice/Review Novels/Plays
AP Literature Exam AM
Review Exam/Course Feedback
May 12 (M)
May 13 (T)
May 14/15(W/Th)
May 16 (F)
Speeches/Portfolio
Speeches/Portfolio
Speeches/Portfolio
Speeches/Portfolio
May 19 (M)
Senior Projects Begin
Textbooks Provided by the District:
Literature: Timeless Voices, Timeless Themes: The British Tradition. Upper Saddle, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000.
All novels/plays are purchased by students.
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The Exam and Course Design
Rebecca Mcfarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
AP English Language and Composition
Syllabus
As per school district requirements, each eleventh grade student must complete a yearlong American literature
sequence, and so though this course is designed to fulfill the AP English Language and Composition course’s
requirements that students “write effectively and confidently in their college courses across the curriculum and
in their professional and personal lives,” it does double duty as an intensive study of the American literary
tradition. We accomplish this two-fold goal by focusing our reading and study of and our writing about
American writers on their rhetoric, style, and semantic language choices. We also require students to compose
in personal, expository, and persuasive genres. We read both fiction and nonfiction writing to facilitate these
goals -- the former comprises novels, short stories, poetry, and drama; the latter comprises essays, nature
writing, autobiographies/memoirs, letters, journalism, and political writings.
The central texts of the course include the following:
Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by F. Douglass
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man by James W. Johnson
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
Night by Elie Wiesel
Sadlier-Oxford Vocabulary (Level H)
The Prentice Hall American Literature textbook (inclusive of readings by: Mary Rowlandson, Jonathan
Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Olaudah Equiano, Phyllis Wheatley, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, Edgar Allan
Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson,
Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot, e.e. cummings, W.H. Auden, and Allan Ginsberg)
Students will be expected to write on a daily basis, both in a classroom setting through expository and
interpretive assignments and in frequent formal essays that require the student to both analyze and interpret and
to synthesize secondary materials such as literary criticism, historical essays, and social science research.
Students will write a full-length essay -- ranging from two to four pages -- on each book-length text we read, as
well as a longer independent research paper, an autobiographical narrative for use in the college application
process, and other essay assignments. Students will be expected to conference with the teacher on their first
and/or second drafts of each formal essay and to revise based on my revision suggestions and those of his or her
peers.
The student’s grade will be calculated based on this formula:
Essays 40%: Essays are assigned both as part of our study of book-length texts and as periodic assessments of
reading comprehension, textual interpretation, and classroom discussion.
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The Exam and Course Design
Rebecca Mcfarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
Quizzes 20%: Students will take approximately fifteen vocabulary quizzes throughout the year and a variety of
based on language topics and formal tropes we cover (e.g., logical fallacies, sentence types, active/passive
voice, etc.). Pop reading quizzes may also be given as need warrants.
Homework 20%: Homework grades are given for in-class writing assignments and informal take-home writing
prompts.
Tests 20%: Though infrequent, tests are sometimes given in order to assess comprehension of large amounts of
material comprising a number of short texts (e.g., American Romanticism)
SEMESTER 1
Unit 1: Reading for Ambivalence
Over the summer vacation, we require students to read A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Secret Life of Bees, and
Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam. When we begin class in late August, we begin with an
introduction of the concept of ambivalence, the guiding motif or structural/linguistic feature that will connect
everything we do in this course. With the exception of some political treatises (like Thomas Paine’s), the best
writing -- both fiction and nonfiction -- can always be found to contain a certain degree of ambivalence, room
for the reader to interpret, question, and formulate a response. Likewise, the best student writing will always
contain a measure of ambivalence, allowing for alternative meanings, approaches, interpretations, and opinions.
This unit is designed to introduce young writers to the notion that reading and writing are not positivistic
pursuits, in which one interpretation, approach, or opinion is the correct one to the exclusion of others, but
rather to see reading and writing as interpretive experiences in which the reader/writer can develop, alter, or
revise his or her reading or writing over time or based on a dialogue with the text and with others. A closelylinked concept in this unit is to introduce students to the idea of writing ambivalently in their own critical essays
-- understanding the difference between using expressions like “This may suggest that...” rather than “This
clearly proves...”
We will look at several sections from the two novels and the collection of letters and write several in-class
expository pieces that explore the ambivalence toward Vietnam felt by actual soldiers fighting the war and by
fictional characters on the home front. We will analyze characters’ ambivalence toward self, family, country,
and ideology. Each student will then compose a full-length formal essay (drawing from these several
expository pieces) that builds a reading of ambivalence in both fictional and non-fictional texts. How do writers
express ambivalence? How does the language that writers use express ambivalence indirectly? How do we
infer ambivalence when writers do not overtly claim it? How do we leave room in our writing about other
people’s language for alternate explanations and interpretations of that language?
Unit 2: American Evangelicalism
In this unit, we begin our reading of the early American tradition, starting with the autobiographical narrative of
Mary Rowlandson, an Englishwoman help captive by the Algonquin Indians during King Philip’s War in 1675.
In our reading of this piece, we focus on Rowlandson’s representations of both the Native Americans and her
own people, based on what she writes and on what she omits or implies. Through a reading of her religious
rhetoric, students see rhetorical strategies at work that later American writers will employ to demonize the other
and justify colonization and slavery as well as rhetorical strategies that serve as foundational in the American
self-concept. Students also read secondary critical material from Jill Lepore’s Bancroft Prize-winning The
Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity. Students read Lepore’s section one,
“Language,” in order to garner a contemporary historian’s readings of how language creates both power and
reality. Students write their own analyses of Rowlandson’s language and discuss how its direct and indirect
representations of English and native American function as well as what implications those representations
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The Exam and Course Design
Rebecca Mcfarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
allow for. Students will also examine period visual representations of colonists and native Americans to draw
out visual representational strategies employed to represent self and other.
Students will then trace this American evangelicalism in the religious writings of Jonathan Edwards, and
examine the tradition of the American jeremiad, a concept that will connect much of pre-World War One
American writing. Students read short excerpts from contemporary literary critic Sacvan Bercovitch’s Puritan
Origins of the American Self against Jonathan Edwards to identify aspects of the religious rhetoric of
complacency and reform that will hold a prominent place in American writing until the Progressive era of the
1910s. We will also examine Edwards’s use of rhetorical fallacies such as the false dilemma, the slippery slope,
and the non sequitur. To supplement the fallacies Edwards employs, we will also study fallacies such as
begging the question, post hoc ergo propter hoc, and argument by authority.
Unit 3: Revolution and Slavery
In this unit, students read a variety of narratives relating to slavery and the colonial revolution against British
rule. We begin with the “Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano,” a narrative of the Middle Passage from
Africa to the Americas. As a model of Enlightenment rationality and Age of Revolution political rhetoric,
Equiano provides an exemplary model for the synthesis of social and political rhetoric in the eighteenth century.
Students will examine ambivalent aspects of Equiano’s style that serve both to provide both an unbiased
account of the slave trade and to issue an impassioned and evangelical appeal for its destruction. Students will
write expository analyses on how Equiano’s style is able to accomplish both seemingly disparate tasks.
We continue with a study of American revolutionary rhetoric in the writings of Thomas Paine and Patrick
Henry. In Paine’s “Crisis,” students trace the continuation of Puritan evangelicalism in the guise of secular
polemic. Students further trace Paine’s refining of Jonathan Edwards’s highly effective use of logical fallacies.
Students read brief excerpts from legal-literary critic Robert Ferguson’s The American Enlightenment,
specifically Chapter 4, “Writing the Revolution.” Students also read Patrick Henry’s “Speech to the Virginia
Convention” and compare Henry’s and Paine’s rhetoric based on a popular versus an educated audience.
Students write a formal essay analysis of rhetorical techniques in Equiano, Paine, and Henry, applying what
they have learned of the techniques of each to current American political controversies of terror, war,
evangelism, and “civilization.”
The final piece in this unit is a reading of Frederick Douglass’s full-length narrative of life in bondage. The
guiding theme in this section of the unit is Douglass’s construction of his manhood based on both eighteenthand nineteenth-century notions of masculinity. Students read a chapter from E. Anthony Rotundo’s American
Manhood, 1790-1970 and from David Leverenz’s Manhood and the American Renaissance and write a formal
essay analysis of Douglass’s application of both Enlightenment and Romantic notions of manhood. This
continues students’ work synthesizing current historical-critical work with centuries-old literary texts to
formulate historical-informed interpretive readings, rather than anachronistic interpretations that assume that
nineteenth-century writers believed everything about manhood and womanhood that we believe.
Unit 4: American Romanticism
In this unit, students begin with the nature writing of Henry David Thoreau and the philosophical essays of
Ralph Waldo Emerson. In Walden, we discuss Thoreau’s personal ambivalence about nature and civilization
and his use of extended metaphors as rhetorical devices. In the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, primarily
“Nature,” “Self-Reliance,” and “The American Scholar,” students read Emerson’s Romantic rhetoric of the
individual off that of his protégée Thoreau, to determine both influence and adaptation. Emerson’s own
lyricism and use of extended metaphor as rhetorical devices of ethos and pathos provide a structural guide to
our study of him, as well as an in-depth look at nineteenth-century syntax (including inversion, the periodic
sentence, the loose sentence, the periodic interruptive sentence, and the combination sentence).
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The Exam and Course Design
Rebecca Mcfarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
Students then read selections from the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville,
to represent the American Gothic-Romantic tradition. We focus our study on the literary tropes of the Gothic
(setting, tone, mood) and the themes of the Romantic (primarily individualism, irrationality, and symbolism).
Students will complete several expository writing assignments, including imitative pieces, argumentative pieces
that place works in a generic Romantic schema, and interpretive pieces that exercise the student’s argumentative
writing skills.
Finally, students read selections from Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman to begin studying the nineteenthcentury American poetic tradition. Our reading will focus on the structural and semantic devices of each poet -for Dickinson, unorthodox punctuation, stanza structure, diction, and rhyme/meter; for Whitman, free verse, the
catalogue, erotic imagery, and his rhetorical positioning as speaker. Students will complete short expository
writing assignment that argue the semantic significance of Dickinson’s and Whitman’s language choices -- what
difference it makes, for example, that Whitman lists dozens of items in a catalogue, or that Dickinson uses the
dash rather than the comma or period.
Unit 5: Realism and Naturalism
Our primary texts in this unit are Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and James Weldon Johnson’s
memoir, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man (1912), a tale of racial passing in late nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century America. Our primary goal in reading Huckleberry Finn is to engage with the public
world of discourse and controversy that surrounds Twain’s novel. While studying and writing about the novel
from the point of view of narrative voice, satire, social critique, irony, and nineteenth-century tropes of regional
dialect (e.g. standard formal through colloquial through non-standard), we will also examine the controversy of
Twain’s racial representations through literary criticism, public polemic, the newspaper editorial, and personal
memoir. Huckleberry Finn provides such a rich variety of secondary materials of all persuasions that it
provides students with an optimal case study in textual debate and interpretation as well as an object lesson in
the “extra-literary” life of a text. The major paper for this book is a persuasive/argumentative piece in which
each student synthesizes a number of different critical sources with a close reading of his or her own to weigh in
on the question of Twain’s racial representations. The question students are posed with is not “Is Twain’s book
racist?” This question merely creates two mutually exclusive categories that limit inquiry and channel
responses into two pre-ordained camps. Rather, students are asked to interpret the semantics of Twain’s racial
representations in order to draw out some of the ambiguities and ambivalences in the text. This paper is
designed with the new AP Language and Composition synthesis essay in mind.
Our primary goal in reading Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man -- in addition to learning the
tropes of both the Realist and Naturalist periods (a focus on money, social codes, dialect, and on violence,
instinct, genetics, and Darwinian evolution, respectively) is to study how a writer creates both tone and style
through diction, imagery, and narrative positioning (i.e. point of view, narrative stance, etc.). Students will
study and be quizzed on an extensive list of tone and style vocabulary words (e.g. wistful, acerbic, plaintive,
clinical, recursive, journalistic, etc.) and they will compose their next major formal essay on the multiple (and
often conflicting and ambivalent) tones and styles in which Johnson operates. To facilitate this tonal and
stylistic reading, students will read at least two pieces of literary criticism regarding Johnson’s memoir:
Kenneth Warren’s “Troubled Black Humanity in Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man” and Eric Sundquist’s
“Word Shadows and Alternating Sounds: Folklore, Dialect, and Vernacular.”
SEMESTER 2
Unit 6: Modernism
In this unit, we will study the major components of the Modernist tradition, focusing especially on the tradition
of experimental language employed by Modernist authors and the semantic implications of that language. We
begin with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. After completing several informal expository pieces on
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The Exam and Course Design
Rebecca Mcfarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
Fitzgerald’s narrative strategies (such as Nick’s conflicting views of Tom, Gatsby, Daisy, and Jordan; Nick’s
ambivalent morality; and Nick’s retrospective narration), students will begin their next major essay, an
annotated bibliography of recent criticism on the novel. Essays include: “The Idea of Order at West Egg,”
“Money, Love, and Aspiration,” “Fire and Freshness: A Matter of Style in The Great Gatsby.” Through this
essay, students will continue to develop techniques of reading for central ideas, revising a summary down only
to its most necessary parts, and relating secondary materials critically to a primary text. Students will be
expected to evaluate the arguments of each critic as well as summarizing them.
In a unit on Modernist poets, we will read selections by T.S. Eliot, e.e. cummings, W.H. Auden, and Allan
Ginsberg. As above, with Gatsby, our reading of these poets will focus on the experimental linguistic and
semantic choices of each poet: Eliot’s use of esoteric linguistic, allusive, and religious traditions; e.e.
cummings’s use of non-traditional spelling, syntax, neologism, and punctuation; Auden’s use of the same; and
Ginsberg’s use of profanity, explicit sexual imagery, and free-form and unrevised material. Students will
compose both imitative writing exercises and informal expository pieces that ask for interpretations of the
writer’s linguistic and semantic choices.
Our study of Modernism continues with a reading of Toni Morrison’s novel Song of Solomon. In this unit,
students complete a major paper in which they compose an interview with Toni Morrison based on how
Morrison has answered questions in a previous real-life interview published in the Paris Review in 1993, in her
own reflections on Song of Solomon in the foreword to the novel, and in one of a variety of critical articles from
which they can choose. In this assignment, students write in a new genre that utilizes two new types of nonfiction writing (the interview and the author’s own self-criticism) as well as literary criticism. The interview
will focus on Morrison’s practice as a Modernist. Students ask, for example, how Morrison applies
experimentation to the language in her novel, or how her use of biblical imagery or symbol creates a series of
themes or thematic characterizations.
Finally, in our third major text of this unit, students read Truman Capote’s journalistic “non-fiction novel” In
Cold Blood. Our study of this text focuses on the journalist’s representation of true-life events and his
manipulation of those events into “literary” journalism. In order to view the text from multiple angles, we
screen the 1967 black-and-white film In Cold Blood as well as the 2005 film Capote, and read newspaper and
magazine reviews of Capote’s novel and the film from the mid-1960s. In this way, students develop a sense of
the rhetorical strategies of the new journalism and the ambivalences of creating “literary” writing from fact.
Students compose several informal expository and argumentative pieces that trace Capote’s imaginative
reportage through characterization, setting, tone, style, and literary/rhetorical devices such as irony and pathos.
How, for example, does creating monologues and dialogues that he could not possibly have possessed accurate
information regarding affect Capote’s narrative credibility and the novel’s genre status?
In the major paper for In Cold Blood, students read contemporary criminologist Elliott Currie’s review of
current research in family violence and economic/social deprivation in his book Confronting Crime (1985) and
read that research off what Capote reports of psychiatrists’ and criminologists’ views of the Clutter family
murders. In this paper, students examine contemporary social science writing and read its findings (mostly
unavailable to Capote et. al. in 1965) against the psychiatric case of murderers Smith and Hickock. This essay
helps students continue to develop argumentative skills and to apply genres such as social science research to
literary texts. Students continue to develop their abilities to write ambivalently -- about what may influence
delinquency and what may have been argued in the case of Smith and Hickock had contemporary information
been known. This paper also helps to develop students’ understanding of the Modernist writers’ interest in
Freudian psychology.
Unit 6: Postmodernism and Popular Culture
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In this unit, students read Tim O’Brien’s war memoir/novel The Things They Carried. We approach the text
from the perspective of language: how language does or does not adequately represent horrific experience; how
language (in the form of narrative) creates reality or re-creates memory; how language creates an author as well
as being used by the author to create a text. O’Brien’s metafictional war memoir serves these purposed
admirably, and students will write a number of informal expository pieces examining his writing about the
soldiers’ language (e.g., slang, euphemism, bravado, storytelling) and what that writing says about his own
practice of writing and authorship.
In lieu of a major paper on The Things They Carried, students will compose an independent research paper on
American popular culture and cultural influence. Students design topics of their own and after formulating
research questions conduct guided research to formulate a sustained argument for how one event, individual, or
phenomena within popular culture has influenced American culture at large. Utilizing the library’s collection
and its on-line research database resources, students compose an extended paper of six to seven pages citing
secondary research and using the MLA citation format they have been practicing since the beginning of the
school year. This paper builds on the research skills students have been practicing all year and continues to
develop their synthesis skills with the new AP synthesis essay question in mind.
Unit 7: Memoir and Personal Narrative
In the final unit of the second semester, students read Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir Night. We will study
this work, again, from the perspective of language and its ability or inability to represent experiences of
enormity. Short expository pieces will examine Wiesel’s language and his narrative technique (tone, narrative
voice, style, rhetoric). How does Wiesel relate the unthinkable? How does he represent his own feelings or the
actions of others “truthfully” when language can never truly represent such things? How does Wiesel represent
himself in ways that defy his own’ language’s ability to encompass such contradictions? The major paper for
this final unit is a personal narrative that will develop the student’s ability to write about his or her own
experience with insight and linguistic sophistication. By developing techniques of description, dialogue, and
self- and peer-editing students will produce a personal narrative of two to three pages to be used (ideally) in the
college application process.
During the second semester, students will also be given periodic in-class impromptu essay assignments using
essay questions from the AP Language and Composition tests of previous years (available on-line). Students
will also be given periodic assessments using sample AP Language and Composition reading selections and
multiple-choice questions.
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Summer Reading and Writing Assignments
2008 – 2009 Senior AP English
Othello by William Shakespeare
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Poetry by Robert Browning, T.S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, and Eavan Boland
Welcome to Senior AP English. This year’s summer reading covers the years 1590 to 2001 which reflects the
range of literature covered on the AP Literature Exam. During the coming year you will continue developing
reading skills that will enable you to unlock meaning in both older and modern poetry and prose. To that end I
have chosen works that will sharpen your reading skills, provide intellectual stimulation, and add to your everincreasing cultural awareness. All of that, of course, means “fun!”
Poetry: Since poetry comprises roughly one-third of the AP exam, you need to be comfortable analyzing it. For
poetry responses you will use blogs or journals. If you do not want to use a blog, you can create a poetry journal. The
response requirements for both are the same:

Responding to the poems: Read each of the following poems and enter a response to them. The responses
should show an understanding of themes and offer personal responses. After you respond to each poem
individually, choose two that share themes and post a compare/contrast entry.
o Required Poems:
 Any two poems by Eavan Bolan – Because she is alive and well, her poems on the internet come
and go and are heavily copyrighted. Therefore, you are free to choose whatever you find and
like. Be sure to post the title and website where you found the poem.
 “My Last Duchess” and “Fra Lippo Lippi” by Robert Browning
 “The Hollow Men” and “The Journey of the Magi” by T.S. Eliot
 “Sailing to Byzantium” and “A Prayer for My Daughter” by W. B. Yeats
 Responding to classmates’ postings/entries:
o Respond to at least two entries from your IHHS classmates. Your grade will be based on quality of
responses to the poems as well as to your classmates. Of course, the more involved you are with the text,
the better your grade. General and quick responses are fine, but they will not help your grade.
o Bloggers: If you create a blog, post your blog address on my blog: http://apenglishihhs.wordpress.com
Password: ihhsbraves. Please include the password if you create one. You will be able to get your
classmates’ blog addresses at this site. Word Press is a good blogging host if you are looking for one. If
you have difficulty setting up your blog, e-mail me.
o Journalers: You will need to pass your entries to a friend for responses and will need to find another
journaler for your responses.
 Connecting to the longer works
o As you finish each of the three longer required readings, write an entry that connects one of the poems to
the novel or play.
Summer Assignment for The Life of Pi, Othello, and Brave New World: It will be important that you engage in
close reading and textual annotation to do well on reading checks during the first week of school. You will be asked
questions that require knowledge of plot details, character motivations, conflicts, themes, and tone. Spark Notes and
other such “study aids” won’t be of much help. For each of these longer works, choose one of the AP prompts that
follow. Write a polished 3-4 page word processed essay in response to the prompt for EACH work. In sum, you will
write three essays.

In a literary work, a minor character, often known as a foil, possesses traits that emphasize, by contrast
or comparison, the distinctive characteristics and qualities of the main character. For example, the ideas
or behavior of the minor character might be used to highlight the weaknesses or strengths of the main
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Rebecca Mcfarlan
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character. Choose a novel or play from the summer assignment in which a minor character serves as a
foil to a main character. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the relation between the minor
character and the major character illuminates the meaning of the work. Do not merely summarize the
plot.
In many works of literature, past events can affect, positively or negatively, the present actions,
attitudes, or values of a character. Choose a novel or play from the summer assignment in which a
character must contend with some aspect of the past, either personal or societal. Then write an essay in
which you show how the character’s relationship to the past contributes to the meaning of the work as a
whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.
Many writers use a country setting to establish values within a work of literature. For example, the
country may be a place of virtue and peace or one of primitivism and ignorance. Choose a novel or play
from the summer assignment in which such a setting plays a significant role. Then write an essay in
which you analyze how the country setting functions in the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize
the plot.
In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899), protagonist Edna Pontellier is said to possess “that outward
existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.” In a novel or play from the summer
assignment, identify a character who conforms outwardly while questioning inwardly. Then write an
essay in which you analyze how this tension between outward conformity and inward questioning
contributes to the meaning of the work. Avoid mere plot summary.
According to critic Northrop Frye, “Tragic heroes are so much the highest points in their human landscape that
they seem the inevitable conductors of the power about them, great trees more likely to be struck by lightning
than a clump of grass. Conductors may of course be instruments as well as victims of the divine lightning.”
Select a novel or play from the summer assignment in which a tragic figure functions as an instrument of the
suffering of others. Then write an essay in which you explain how the suffering brought upon others by that
figure contributes to the tragic vision of the work as a whole.
College Essays: Bring a copy of your college essay to class on the first day of school. You may bring the one you completed at
the end of your junior year or another one written over the summer. We will work on polishing at least one college essay for a
grade. If the copy you bring is ready to go, you will be officially finished with that assignment; however, you will have the
opportunity to work on as many essays as you need for your college application process.
I very much look forward to getting to know you next year. Have a wonderful summer, and I’ll see you in August.
Mrs. McFarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
(513) 272-4583
2008 SUMMER READING REQUIREMENTS
Grades 9 – 12
The Indian Hill 9-12 English Department requires that each student in the high school read one to two novels
during summer break. Students enrolled in Advanced or AP English classes may be required to read additional
works. Students in all classes should bring the assigned book(s) to class on the first day of school.
College Prep Freshman English
The Bean Trees – Barbara Kingsolver
Writing Prompt: Word-process your response to the following questions (minimum 7-9 sentences for each
response). Use at least one direct quote from the novel to answer each question; include page numbers.
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1.
2.
3.
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Rebecca Mcfarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
The Bean Trees deals with the theme of being an outsider. In what ways are various characters
outsiders? What does this suggest about what it takes to be an insider? How does feeling like an outsider
affect one's life?
How and why do the characters change, especially Lou Ann, Taylor, and Turtle?
In many ways, the novel is "the education of Taylor Greer." What does she learn about human suffering?
About love?
The author has said of The Bean Trees: “I always think of a first novel as something like this big old
purse you’ve been carrying around your whole life, throwing in ideas, characters, and all the things that
have ever struck you as terribly important. One day, for whatever reason, you just have to dump that big
purse out and there lies this pile of junk. You start picking through it, and assembling it into what you
hope will be a statement of your life’s great themes. That’s how it was for me. It probably wasn’t until
midway through the writing that I had a grasp of the central question: What are the many ways,
sometimes hidden and underground ways, that people help themselves and each other survive hard
times?” What are some of the ways that Kingsolver’s characters manage to get through hard times? If
you were to write a book that contained some of your life’s great themes, what questions or concerns
might you address?
Advanced Freshman English
Tuesdays With Morrie – Mitch Albom
Feed - MT Anderson
Writing Prompt for Tuesdays With Morrie: Word-process your response to the following questions
(minimum 7-9 sentences for each response):
1. Discuss one of the significant lessons Albom learns from his Tuesdays spent with Morrie. (Consider the
following as well as others: love, family, money, life, death).
2. Discuss the seasonal symbolism evidenced throughout the novel and note how it parallels with Morrie’s
illness/death.
3. What do you think most influenced Morrie to become the person he became? In answering this
question, discuss Morrie’s background, philosophical ideologies, where these ideologies originated, etc.
4. Select one aphorism Morrie shares with Mitch; discuss its meaning and relate this to your own life.
5. How does Mitch Albom change as a result of his renewed friendship with his old professor?
6. “Love each other or die” (Albom 163). Explain this quote and discuss its meaning to the world at large.
How and why is this seemingly simplistic statement so profound to humanity today?
Feed Discussion Questions
Directions: Answer all questions listed. All answers must be typed, double-spaced, and written in complete
sentences. No hand-written answers will be accepted.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Give two examples of the author’s use of satire in the book. What is Anderson satirizing in the novel?
What effect does the author achieve through teenspeak? There is ubiquitous use of foul language and meaningless clichés and
words such as like and thing. Why?
How is this novel a typical love story? How does the love story depart from the formula?
Feed is a futuristic novel (a cautionary tale). But where in the novel do you see examples of current society?
What is (are) the major theme(s) of this book? Explain.
The attacks of 9-11 occurred right after Anderson finished the first two sections of the book. How might these attacks have
influenced the rest of the novel?
How does Violet’s father’s speech differ from the dialogue of the other characters? What does this convey about his
character?
Explore the range of persuasive devices used by the feed. Identify similarities with contemporary advertising and media
broadcasting. Find specific examples.
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9.
What are the possible negative effects of relying too much on technology? In our society, are there vital skills or creative
processes that have already been lost, or will be lost as a result?
10. How old must a reader be to appreciate and understand this book fully?
College Prep Sophomore English
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie
Students will be given an assessment during the first week of school.
Sophomore Advanced English
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
Of Mice and Men- John Steinbeck
Students will be given a reading check over Roger Ackroyd on the first day of school.
Writing Prompt for Of Mice and Men:
John Steinbeck has said, “The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man’s proven capacity for
greatness of heart and spirit—for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion, and love. In the endless war
against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and emulation. I hold that the writer
who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication or any membership in
literature.”
Step 1: Think about the dream in the novella, Of Mice and Men. And think about its characters. Think about
how, in the process of characters reaching for their dreams, they were shaped by the dream itself. Think about
whether or not the dream will ever come to be and why that is.
Step 2: Write a one page reader response. Using your own life experiences and your thoughts from step 1,
respond to the above quote. In what ways does Steinbeck show us (or not show us) humans’ “capacity for
greatness of heart and spirit” – “flags of hope and emulation”? Yes, this may be written in first person.
College Prep Junior English
This Boy's Life- Tobias Wolf
Students will be given an assessment during the first week of school over This Boy’s Life.
AND
Read one of the following and respond to the prompt below:
The Martian Chronicles – Ray Bradbury
The Joy Luck Club – Amy Tan
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents – Julia Alvarez
Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
Double Indemnity – James Cain
On the first day of school, you are responsible to turn in a one and a half to two page response paper to the
book of your choice using the appropriate prompt below. Use at least five short quotations from the book to
support your argument. Your paper should be double spaced and use 12 pt. Times New Roman font.
1. The Martian Chronicles: In talking about the colonization of Mars, how does Ray Bradbury criticize
the culture of Earth or America?
2. The Joy Luck Club: What conflicts do Amy Tan’s characters encounter between a newer American
culture and an older Chinese culture?
3. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents: What conflicts do the Garcia girls face in transitioning from
Dominican culture to American culture?
4. Slaughterhouse Five: Why does Kurt Vonnegut mix a “factual” plot about World War II with an
unbelievable science fiction plot about aliens? What point is he making?
5. Double Indemnity: How does James M. Cain describe Walter Huff’s psychology? What are his motives
for murder? Is he a rational or an irrational man?
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AP Junior English
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test– Tom Wolfe
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
On the Road – Jack Kerouac
Writing Assignment:
NOTE: The following essay prompts refer to all three texts; students must incorporate ALL THREE texts into
their essays.
Choose ONE of the following prompts to respond to in a 4-5 page, typed, double-spaced, 12 pt. Times New
Roman font essay. Essay must include a minimum of FIFTEEN quotations with properly formatted citations
(FIVE from each text).
You must also provide a Works Cited, MLA formatted.
DIRECTIONS: Do not summarize either book. Begin with a compelling illustration to introduce your essay;
conclude the first paragraph with a clear thesis statement.
1. Each of the books is categorized as part of the 1950s-60s countercultural movement. How might we
justify the label "countercultural" for each of the three books? Are they countercultural in different
ways? Based on these three books what does the term "countercultural" mean?
2. Drugs -- medical as well as illegal -- play a significant role in each of the three texts. How does each
author use drugs as a way to create a meaningful theme in the book?
3. Critic Roland Barthes has said, “Literature is the question minus the answer.” Considering Barthes’
observation, write an essay in which you analyze a central question each work raises and the extent to
which it offers any answers. Explain how the authors’ treatment of these questions affects your
understanding of each work as a whole.
4. Journeys -- especially unresolved journeys -- occupy a central part of each of the three books. How does
each author use the motif of the journey to create a meaningful theme in the book?
College Prep Senior English
The Kite Runner - Kahled Hosseini
Writing Prompt: Choose one of the following options after reading your assigned summer reading text:
1. Text to text—Identify a critical theme, situation, or moment within the text that reminded you of
another piece of writing or text that you have read. Explain it carefully, making sure to reveal points in
comparison & contrast. Your writing needs to be at least 500 words long & should include both properly
blended & cited quotations to support your response.
2. Text to yourself— Identify a critical theme, situation, or moment within the text that caused you to
remember and/or re-examine an event or aspect of your own life, behavior, or relationships. Explain it
carefully, making sure to reveal points in comparison & contrast. Your writing needs to be at least 500
words long & should include both properly blended & cited quotations to support your response.
3. Text to world—Identify a critical theme, situation, or moment within the text that caused you to
remember and/or re-examine a current or past world crisis or event or aspect of all our lives. Explain it
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carefully, making sure to reveal points in comparison & contrast. Your writing needs to be at least 500
words long & should include both properly blended & cited quotations to support your response.
4. Quoted Moment—Identify a passage of words within the text you felt were important for their thematic
emphasis, their character significance, their raising other unanswered questions, or for answering many
issues and questions. Explain, reflect, & evaluate the importance of these quotes. Explain them so the
reader understands the background of the quoted materials, what led up to the situation, the significance
and your feelings about them. Your writing needs to be at least 500 words long & should include both
properly blended & cited quotations to support your response.
ALL SENIORS: Bring to class a copy of a college application essay. You may bring the one you completed
at the end of your junior year or another one written over the summer.
AP Senior English
A separate reading list was given to incoming 12th grade AP English students. Copies are available in the high
school guidance office and on the high school website (http://www.ih.k12.oh.us/hs).
Should you misplace this handout, you can find it on the "for Students/Parents" page of the High School
Website or by going directly to the following link:
http://www.ih.k12.oh.us/hs/eng/summer.htm
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AP Senior English
Literary Specialist Assignment Sheet
Name____________________________
Goal: Students will read multiple literary pieces written by an academically respected author (American
authors are limited to those not studied in detail junior year) and become a literary specialist by analyzing
the pieces through one of the critical lenses/perspectives we have discussed in class. (Successful
completion of the Literary Specialist paper is a requirement for course credit.)
General guidelines for becoming a literary specialist:
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

Select an author or topic for project.
Submit the name/topic for approval.
Topics must be academically based. No current events.
Authors must be respected among literary circles.
American authors are limited to those not studied in detail junior year.
Learn all about your author/topic that you can.
 Read biographies about your author, but remember biography is secondary to the works and ideas of the writer(s).
 Read the author’s works or books on your topic.
 Seek the opinions of others; interview scholars and professors.
 Form your OWN opinions and put them in writing.
 Learn about the time period in which your author lives(d).
 Read literary criticism about your author and his/her works.
 Add anything else you can think of - there are no limits.
 For every article, book, etc. that you read, record a written response in a notebook or on note cards.
 Include facts, summaries, observations, speculations, and
reflections.
 Write regularly.
 DO NOT PROCRASTINATE; this is a semester project.
Project Expectations:
 Meet all deadlines.
 Complete a 10-12 page paper using a critical lens that we have studied.
 Paper should center on the works of the author, not his/her life.
 Paper should center on a clear and interesting thesis and maintain a balance among your opinions, critical opinions, and
textual support.
 Use MLA format (Writer’s Inc. books are invaluable).
Grades:
 The final paper will comprise 35% of your third quarter grade. Papers will not be graded if note checks and rough drafts are
missing.

Notes and Rough Draft will be counted in the quarter in which they are graded.
Important Dates:
 December 11th, 2008 - Author/Topic Due.
 January 23rd, 2008 - Preliminary Works Cited Page/Notes and Tentative Thesis statement due
 February 4th, 2008 - Note Check and Annotated Works Cited. (One or two books should have been completed at this point—
notes should come from three critical sources.)
 February 19th, 2008 - Note Check. Outline due or other organizational plan. Outline may be topic or sentence, but must
reflect a conscious organization pattern that centers on your thesis. It should also contain critical resources
 March 3rd, 2008 - First Draft of paper due for Peer Editing. Must be a complete draft.
 March 17th, 2008- Final Draft of paper due. No postponements. Submit to Turn It In through Blackboard.
Satisfactory Completion of the Literary Specialist Project is a requirement for Course Credit.
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Elements of an Effective AP Unit Design
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Hooks
Genre (Focuses on One Genre, but uses others as supplement).
Historical and Cultural Influences
Macroscopic Analysis
 Theme
 Character
 Setting
 Plot Structure
Microscopic
 Diction
 Tone
 Devices (Literary Terms and Concepts)
 Syntax/grammar
Writing
 Formal Analysis
 Creative Writing
 In Class Essays
 Close Reading
Connections
 To Real World
 To Other Literature
Activities
 Large Group
o Teacher Notes
o Seminar
o Presentations
 Small Group
o Literary Circles
o Presentations
o Macroscopic Analysis
o Microscopic Analysis
o Peer Editing
o Prewriting
 Individual
o Writing
o Tests
o Quizzes
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Terms for Literary Analysis
Drama – Many of the following terms are applicable to both fiction and drama.
act
comic relief
monologue
antagonist
conflict
prologue
aside
crisis
protagonist
catastrophe
denouement
rising action
catharsis
dues ex machina
scene
character
epilogue
soliloquy
dynamic
exposition
tragedy
flat
falling action
tragic flaw
round
farce
villain
static
foil
stock
hamartia
climax
hero
comedy
hubris
Elements of Style
atmosphere
denotation
diction
inversion
paradox
pun
satire
tone
Fiction
anecdote
flashback
narrative voice
subplot
colloquial
dialect
epigram
irony
dramtic
situation
verbal
voice
connotation
dialogue
invective
mood
proverb
sarcasm
slang
idiomatic
anticlimax
incident
point of view
first person
objective
subjective
innocent eye
omiscient
limited
third person
unlimited
character (see drama)
motivation
stream of consciousness
theme
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Figures of Speech
allusion
hyperbole
onomatopoeia
symbol
metonomy
apostrophe
litotes
personification
synecdoche
euphemism
metaphor
simile
understatement
Form (Rhetorical Devices and Strategies)
allegory
anecdote
discourse
essay
argumentation
formal
description
humorous
exposition
informal
narration
parable
verse
frame narrative
diary
fable
genre
novel
novella
prose
analogy
Poetry
alliteration
assonance
blank verse
cacophony
cadence
caesura
connotation
pentameter
couplet
refrain
dramatic monologue
end-stopped line
epic
foot
free verse
sestet
tercet
image
imagery
en medias res
lyric
measure
meter
ode
controlling image
quatrain
dissonance
rhyme
end
external
feminine
internal
masculine
heroic couplet
sonnet
English/Shakespearean
Italian/Petrarchan
stanza
stress
trochee
consonance
persona
dirge
repetition
elegy
enjambment
euphony
scansion
iamb
octave
onomatopoeia
Syntax
antithesis
coherence
ellipsis
balanced sentence
complex sentence
inverted sentence
parallel form
compound-complex
loose sentence
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Lesson or Unit Design
Title:
Big idea(s):
Essential questions:
Prerequisite skills to reinforce:
Literature and writing assignments to use:
Pre-, ongoing, and final assessments:
Direct Instruction Methods:
Guided Practice:
Authentic Practice:
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AP English: Literature and Composition
Absalom, Absalom!, 1976, 2000,2007
Adam Bede 2006
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1980, l982, l985, 1991, 1992,
1994, 1995, 1996, 1999, 2005,2006, 2008
Age of Innocence, 1997, 2202, 2005,2008
Agnes of God, 2000
Alias Grace, 2000,2004,2008
All the King’s Men, 2000, 2003,2004,2007,2008
All My Sons, l985, 1990
All the Pretty Horses 1996, 2006,2008
America is in the Heart 1995
The American 2005,2007
American Tragedy, l982, 1995,2003
Anna Karenina, 1980, 1991, 1999, 2002,2003,2006,2008
Another Country 1995
Antigone, 1979, 1980, 1990, 1994, 1999,2003
Antony and Cleopatra, 1980, 1991
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, 1994
As I Lay Dying, 1978, l989, 1990, 1994, 2001,2006,2009
As You Like It, 1992, 2005,2006
Atonement 2007
The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man 2002, 2005
Awakening, l987, l988, 1991, 1992, 1995, 1997, 1999
2002,2007,2009
Bear, The, 1994,2006
Beloved, 1990, 1999, 2001,2003,2007,2009
Benito Cereno, l989
Billy Budd, 1979, l981, l982, l983, l985, 1999, 2005,2008
Birthday Party, l989, 1997
Black Boy 2006
Bleak House, 1994, 2000,2009
Bless Me, Ultima 1996, 1997,2005,2006
The Blind Assassin 2007
Bluest Eye, The 1995
Bonesetter’s Daughter, The 2006,2007
Brave New World, l989, 2005
Brighton Rock, 1979
Brothers Karamazov, 1990 ,2008
Candide, 1980,1986, l987, 1991, 1996,2004
Caretaker , l985
Catch-22, l982, l985, l987, 1989, 1994, 2001, 2005
2008
Catcher in the Rye, 2001
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, 2000
Cat's Eye, 1994,2009
Centaur, l981
Ceremony, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2001,2006
Cherry Orchard, The 1971, 1977, 2006,2007,2009
Civil Disobedience, 1976
Cold Mountain 2008
Color Purple, 1991, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1997,2005
2008,2009
Coming Through Slaughter, 2001
Crime and Punishment, 1976, 1979, 1980, l982, l988,
1996, 1999, 2000, 2001,2002,2003,2004,2009
Crossing, The 2009
Crucible, 1971, l983, l987,2005,2009
Cry, the Beloved Country, l985, l987, 1991, 1995, 1996
2007
Daisy Miller, 1997
Dancing at Lughnasa, 2001
David Copperfield, 1978, l983,2006
Dead, The, 1997
Death of a Salesman, l986, l988, 1994,2003,2004
2005,2007
Death of Ivan Ilyich, l986
Delta Wedding, 1997
Desire Under the Elms, l981
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
The Diviners 1995
Doctor Faustus, 1979, l986, 1999,2004
Doll's House, 1971, l983, l987, l988, 1995,2005,2009
Dollmaker, 1991
Don Quixote, 1992, 2001,2004,2006,2008
East of Eden 2006
Emma, 1996,2008
Enemy of the People, 1976, 1980, l987, 1999, 2001,2007
Equus, 1992, 1999, 2000, 2001,2008,2009
Ethan Frome, 1980, l985,2003,2005,2006,2007
Eumenides, The 1996
Fall, l981
Farewell To Arms, 1991, 1999,2009
Father, The 2001
Fathers and Sons, 1990
Faust 2002,2003
Federalist, 1996
Fences 2002, 2003,2009
Fifth Business, 2000,2007
Fixer, The 2007
For Whom the Bell Tolls 2003, 2006
Frankenstein, l989, 2000,2003,2006,2008
Gathering of Old Men, 2000
A Gesture Life 2004, 2005
Ghosts, 2000, 2004
Glass Menagerie, 1971, 1990, 1994, 1997, 1999, 2002,
2008,2009
Go Tell it on the Mountain, l988, 1990,2005
Going After Cacciato, 2001
Golden Bowl, The 2009
Good Soldier, The, 2000
Grapes of Wrath, l981, l985, l987, 1995,2006,2009
Great Expectations, 1979, 1980, l988, l989, 1992, 1995
1996, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004,2007
Great Gatsby , l982, l983, l988, 1991, 1997, 2002,2004,2007
Gulliver's Travels, l987, l989, 2001,2004
Hairy Ape, l989, 2009
Hamlet, l988, 1994, 1997, 1999, 2000
Hard Times, l987, 1990
Heart of Darkness, 1971, 1976, 1991, 1994, 1996, 1999,
2000, 2001,2002,2004
Hedda Gabler, 1979, 1992, 2000,2002,2003
Henry IV, 1980, 199,2008
Henry V 2002
Homecoming, 1978, 1990
House of Mirth, The 2007
House Made of Dawn 1995,2006
House of the Seven Gables, l989
Iliad, 1980
39
The Exam and Course Design
Rebecca Mcfarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
In the Lake of the Woods, 2000
Invisible Man, 1977, 1978, l982, l983, l985, l987, l988, l989,
1991, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 2001,2004,2005, 2008,2009
J. B., l981, 1994
Jane Eyre, 1978, 1979, 1980, l988, 1991, 1994, 1995,
1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2007
Jasmine, 1999
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, 2000,2004
Joseph Andrews, 1991
Joy Luck Club, 1997
Jude the Obscure, 1971, 1976, 1980, l985, l987, 1991,
1995,2009
Julius Caesar , l982, 1997
Jungle, l987
King Lear, 1977, 1978, l982, 1989, 1990, 1996, 2001,
2003, 2004,2005,2006,2008
Kite Runner, The 2007,2008,2009
Lady Windemere’s Fan 2009
A Lesson Before Dying, 1999
Letters from an American Farmer, 1976
Light in August, 1971, 1979, l981, l982, l983, l985, 1995,
1999, 2003
Little Foxes, l985, 1990
Long Day's Journey into Night, 1990, 2003,2007
Lord Jim, 1977, 1978, l982, l986, 2000. 2003,2007
Lord of the Flies, l985, 1992
Love Medicine 1995
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, l985
Lysistrata, l987
Macbeth, l983, 1999, 2003
Madam Bovary, 1980, l985, 1995,2005,2006,2009
Main Street, l987
Major Barbara, 1979, 1996,2004
Man and Superman, 1981
Mansfield Park, 1991,2006
Mayor of Casterbridge, 1994, 1999, 2000, 2002
Medea, l982, 1992, 1995, 2001,2003
Member of the Wedding, 1997
Memory Keeper’s Daughter, The 2009
Merchant of Venice, l985, 1991, 1995,2002
Metamorphosis, 1978, l989
Middlemarch 1995,2004,2005,2007
Midsummer's Night's Dream, 1991,2006
Mill on the Floss, 1990, 1992, 1995
Misanthrope, 1992,2008
Miss Lonelyhearts, l989
Moby Dick, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, l989, 1994,
1996, 2001,2003,2004, 2007,2009
Moll Flanders, 1976, 1977, l986, l987
Monkey Bridge, 2000
Moor’s Last Sigh, The 2007
Mother Courage, l985, l987
Mrs. Dalloway, 1994 , 1997,2005,2007
Mrs. Warren's Profession , l987, 1990, 1995,2002
Much Ado About Nothing, 1997
Murder in the Cathedral, 1976, 1980, l985, 1995
My Last Duchess, l985
Native Son, 1979, l982, l983, l985, l987, 1995, 2001
Native Speaker, 1999,2007
Nineteen Eighty-Four, l987, 1994,2005
No-No Boy 1995
No Exit, l986
Notes from the Underground, l989
O Pioneers 2006
Obasan, 1994, 1995,2004,2005,2006,2007
Odyssey, l986
Oedipus Rex, 1977, 2000, 2003,2004
Of Mice and Men 2001
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich 2005
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 2001
One Hundred Years of Solitude, l989
Optimist's Daughter, 1994
Oresteia, 1990
Orlando 2004
Othello, 1979, l985, l988, 1992, 1995
Our Town, l986, 1997,2009
Out of Africa 2006
Pale Fire, 2001
Pamela , l986
Paradise Lost, 1985, l986
Passage to India, 1971, 1977, 1978, l988, 1991, 1992, 2007
Pere Goriot 2002
Persuasion, 1990, 2005,2007
Phedre, 1992, 2003
Piano Lesson, The 1996, 1999,2007,2008
Picture of Dorian Gray 2002
The Plague 2002,2009
Poccho 2002
Pnin, 1997
Portrait of a Lady, 1992, 1996,2005
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1976, 1977,1980, l981,
1986, 1988, 1996, 1999, 2004,2005,2009
The Power and Glory 1995
Praisesong for the Widow, 1996
Prayer for Owen Meany, A 2009
Pride and Prejudice, l983, l988, 1992, 1997,2008
Pygmalion, 1992,2008
Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, 1990
Ragtime 2003,2007
Raisin in the Sun, l987, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1994, 1996
1999, 2009
Rape of the Lock, l981
Redburn, l987
Remains of the Day, The, 2000
Reservation Blues, 2008, 2009
Richard III, 1979
Romeo and Juliet, 1990, 1992, 1997
Room of One's Own, 1976
Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are Dead, l981, 1994
2004,2005
Saint Joan 1995
Sandbox, 1971
Scarlet Letter, 1971, 1977, 1978, l983, l988, 1991, 1999
2002,2004,2005,2006
Sent for You Yesterday 2003
Separate Peace, l982,2007
Shipping News, 1997
Silas Marner 2002
Sister Carrie, l987,2002,2004
Slaughterhouse Five, 1991
Snow 2009
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The Exam and Course Design
Rebecca Mcfarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
Snow Falling on Cedars, 2000
Song of Solomon, l981, l988, 1996, 2000
Sons and Lovers, 1977, 1990
Sound and the Fury, l986. 1997, 2001,2004,2008
Stone Angel, The 1996
Stranger, 1979, l982, l986
Streetcar Named Desire, 1991, 1992, 2001,2007,2008, 2009
Sula, 1992, 1997,2002,2004,2008
Sun Also Rises, l985, 1991, 1995,2004,2005
Surfacing 2005
Tale of Two Cities, l982, 1991,2008
Tartuffe, l987
Tempest, 1971, 1978, 1996,2007
Tess of the D'Urbervilles, l982, 1991, 2003,2006,2007
Their Eyes were Watching God, l988, 1990, 1991, 1996,
2004,2005,2006,2007,2008
Things Fall Apart, 1991, 1997,2003,2004,2009
Thousand Acres, A 2006
To the Lighthouse, 1977, l986, l988
Tom Jones, 1990 , 2000,2006,2008
Trial, l989, 2000
Trifles, 2000
Tristram Shandy, l986
Turn of the Screw, 1992, 1994, 2000,2002,2004
Twelfth Night, l985, 1994, 1996
Typical American 2002,2005
Uncle Tom's Cabin, l987
Vicar of Wakefield, A 2006
Victory, l983
Volpone, l983
Waiting for Godot, 1977, l985, l986, l989, 1994, 2001, 2009
Warden, The 1996
Washington Square, 1990
Waste Land , l981
Watch on the Rhine, l987
Watch that ends the Night, 1992
Way of the World, 1971
Way We Live Now, The 2006
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, l988, 1994, 2000,2004,2007
Wide Sargasso Sea, l989, 1992
Wild Duck, 1978
Winter's Tale, 1986, l989,2006
Winter in the Blood 1995
Wise Blood, l982, l989, 1995,2009
Woman Warrior, 1991
Women of Brewster Place, The 2009
Wuthering Heights, 1971, 1977, 1978, 1979, l982, l983,
l986, l989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1996, 1997, 1999,
2001,2006,2007,2008
Zoo Story, l982, 2001
Zoot Suit, 1995
In 1993, the test did not list specific works, but instead authors. Authors listed are below:
Aristophanes
Margaret Atwood
Jane Austen
Samuel Beckett
Lord Byron
Geoffrey Chaucer
Charles Dickens
T. S. Eliot
William Faulkner
Henry Fielding
Zora Neale Hurston
Aldous Huxley
Henry James
Ben Jonson
Franz Kafka
Margaret Laurence
Bobbie Ann Mason
Moliere
Vladimir Nabokov
Gloria Naylor
Walker Percy
Harold Pinter
Alexander Pope
Barbara Pym
Mordecai Richler
William Shakespeare
George Bernard Shaw
Tom Stoppard
Jonathan Swift
Anthony Trollope
Mark Twain
Voltaire
Evelyn Waugh
Oscar Wilde
No specific works nor authors were listed in 1998.
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The Exam and Course Design
Rebecca Mcfarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
Name___________________
AP English: Literature and Composition
Major Works Data Sheet
Biographical information about the author:
Title:___________________________
Author:_________________________
Date of Publication:_______________
Genre: __________________________
Historical information about the period of publication:
Characteristics of the genre: (Poetry – Play – Novel – Nonfiction)
Plot Summary and Structure Analysis: Consider the causal relationships, settings, and point of
views. You may use the traditional Freytag’s triangle as a starting point (exposition, inciting force,
rising action, climax, falling action, denouement). Then decide how the draw a graphic
representation of the structure and its impact on other literary elements.
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The Exam and Course Design
Rebecca Mcfarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
Major Works Data Sheet Page 2
Describe the author’s style:
Examples that demonstrates the style
(ASR):
Memorable Quotations
Quotations and Speaker
Speaker and page #:
Quotation:
Significance (Code to Themes and Old AP Questions)
Speaker and page #:
Quotation:
Speaker and page #:
Quotation:
Speaker and page #:
Quotation:
Speaker and page #:
Quotation:
:
Speaker and page #:
Quotation:
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The Exam and Course Design
Rebecca Mcfarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
Major Works Data Sheet
Page 3
Characters
Name
Role in the story
Significance
44
Adjectives
The Exam and Course Design
Rebecca Mcfarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
Major Works Data Sheet
Page 4
Setting
Significance of the opening scene
Location:
Significance:
Location:
Significance:
Significance of the ending/closing scene
Symbols
Symbol:
Significance:
Symbol:
Old AP Questions
Significance
1. Year:
Thesis
Symbol:
2. Year:
Thesis:
Significance
Possible Themes
1. Thematic Topic:
Thematic Statement (complete sentence):
2. Thematic Topic:
Thematic Statement (complete sentence):
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The Exam and Course Design
Rebecca Mcfarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
AP English
Course Evaluation
Consider the following works. From the works you read, choose two to keep and two to
axe. Explain your rationale. Consider educational value both long term and immediate, the
intensity of class discussion, benefit for the AP test, and the enjoyment it provided.
Pride and Prejudice
Hamlet
The Portrait of an Artist
Things Fall Apart
Life of Pi
Consolations of Philosophy
Grendel
Doll’s House
Earnest
Heart of Darkness
Waiting for Godot
Frankenstein
Wuthering Heights
The Importance of Being
Othello
Brave New World
Works for Literary Specialist (titles) ____________

Explain the two highest and the two lowest choices:

What activities best prepared you for the AP test? Consider readings, writings, class
discussions, literary specialist, novel reviews, group projects, presentations, lectures, and
seminars. Explain your responses.

What would have better prepared you for the AP test? Did you feel confident with the
material? Explain your responses. What was your weakest skill for the exam? How could
we have tackled it more effectively?
Multiple Choice:
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The Exam and Course Design
Rebecca Mcfarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
Poetry Essay:
Prose Essay:
Open Essay (novel or play of choice):

How would you change the summer reading project to better prepare students for the AP
exam?

What part(s) of the year did you enjoy the least? The most? Why?

Offer advice to next year’s AP students and to me.
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The Exam and Course Design
Rebecca Mcfarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
Resources:
Novel/Play Units and Course Materials
http://www.centerforlearning.org
http://mla.org Approaches for Teaching World Literature
www.npr.org
http://www5.unitedstreaming.com Ready Made Lesson Plans (must be a member, but can get a
30 day free trial)
http://www.webenglishteacher.com
http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/ (this is the website I used to create the crossword
puzzle for the Blake poems).
http://www.appliedpractice.com/ - Excellent lesson ideas and multiple choice
Historical and Cultural Resources
http://www.victorianweb.org/
http://www.4president.tv/
Poetry
http://www.favoritepoem.org/
www.loc.gov/poetry/180
Literary Criticism and Terms
Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents
Author: Deborah Appleman – Published through NCTE
A Practical Glossary. Author: Brian Moon - Published through NCTE
Has easy to understand examples of literary theory for students
Popular Culture and Philosophy Series. William Irwin (Editor). Open Court Publishing Company
Has several titles ranging from the Simpsons to Harry Potter
http://www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/engl/theory/
William Blake
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/blakeinteractive/index.html
http://www.blakearchive.org/
http://www.motco.com/blake%2Dpoet%2Dsket/
http://www.gailgastfield.com/Blake.html (amazing)
http://www.pitt.edu/~ulin/Paradise/Blake1808.htm
Grammar Websites
http://cctc.commnet.edu/grammar
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar
http://drgrammar.org (has lots of sources – especially on etymology)
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The Exam and Course Design
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mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
Frankenstein Websites
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/frankenstein/frankhome
http://www.watershedonline.ca/literature/frankenstein
Rhetoric Websites:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/index.htm
http://www.uky.edu/ArtsSciences/Classics/rhetoric.html
http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm
http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/listaplanguma.html#cat6
Jamaica Kincaid:
http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Kincaid.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5292754
http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/fiction/Girls/story.asp
Research:
www.questia.com
Vocabulary:
www.apstrategies.com
http://flocabulary.com
www.freerice.com
www.saddlieroxford.com
http://www.amscopub.com
http://www.worldskills.org/
http://www.lexfiles.com/14-words.html
vocab rock (CD) – can be downloaded to students’ MP3 players
http://visual.merriam-webster.com/ (visual dictionary)
http://www.wordle.net/ - This will help students identify theme and main idea
Quiz Makers
www.quizmaker.com
www.quizlet.com
Flash Fiction edited by James Thomas, Denise Thomas, Tom Hazuka
Norton Publishing
1992
0-393-03361-9
A good source of short pieces of fiction that can be used to teach discrete skills.
Technology Integration
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/04/visual-dictionary-from-merriam-webster.html
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The Exam and Course Design
Rebecca Mcfarlan
mcfarlan@ih.k12.oh.us
http://springfieldebooks.wikispaces.com/ (list of sites for free e-books)
Satire/Comedy
www.mcsweeneys.net
www.comedycentral.com
Capitol Steps
At this Web site, current and former Congressional staffers use songs to provide a humorous look at political
events and personalities.
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
A smart and funny "fake news" broadcast that satirizes current events through interviews, features, and
Stewart's analysis. This program is taped Monday through Thursday and airs on Comedy Central.
Doonesbury
Find the daily Doonesbury comic strip online, as well as portraits and biographies of the characters featured
in Doonesbury to assist new readers.
NOW with Bill Moyers: Who's Laughing Now? American Political Satire
This feature details the history of satire in U.S. politics. Links to satire examples from the 1700's to the
present are also provided.
The Onion
Online newspaper featuring satirical articles related to the current events of the day and people in the news.
Political Cartoons
A Web site containing political cartoons from well-known cartoonists around the world.
Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update"
This "fake news" broadcast segment delivers headlines with a humorous twist. The Web site includes
transcripts from 1998 to the present.
The White House
This online newspaper features satirical articles related to the President of the United States and other
Washington leaders and their political agendas, policies, and procedures.
http://www.pbs.org/now/classroom/satire.html
50