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AP Literature and Composition
Mrs. Karla Hilliard, Room 208
Spring Mills High School, 2015-2016
Course Description
An AP English Literature and Composition course engages students in the
careful reading and critical analysis of imaginative literature. Through the close
reading of selected texts, students deepen their understanding of the ways
writers use language to provide both meaning and pleasure for their readers. As
they read, students consider a work’s structure, style and themes, as well as
such smaller-scale elements as the use of figurative language, imagery,
symbolism and tone (College Board Course Description).
This AP English Literature and Composition course follows the curricular requirements
described in the AP English Course Description.
It is designed to cultivate a diligent work ethic that will yield and reward critical,
analytical, creative, and evaluative thinking. You should leave this course having: an effective
and systematic way of reading literature for a deep and interpretive understanding, the ability to
produce clear, elegant, and creative written responses to literature, and an awareness of the
literary canon and what qualifies literary merit. In other words, you must immerse yourself in
your studies and be self-disciplined, so you’re able, to borrow from Thoreau, “suck out all of the
marrow” of AP Lit.
Almost every single day, we will talk about some vital aspect of literature and writing as
craft. First and foremost we will read literature to enjoy and appreciate it, and then we will
determine how writers establish themes and create effect through devices such as diction, tone,
point of view, syntax, and figurative language.
We will also write about literature every single day. You will write to understand, to
explain, and to evaluate, and to reflect on your own learning and understanding. These writings
build upon one another and the most successful AP students will be able to fuse all of these
approaches to writing to grow as students and reach their potential.
Course Objectives
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Apply reliable close-reading strategies to interpret problematic texts of poetry, prose,
and drama.
Analyze and interpret significant passages, lines, images, symbols, and themes and
how they relate to and inform a text as a whole.
Interpret a work’s historical and social context and significance.
Be an active participant in class by defending and challenging different aspects and
interpretations of a text.
Write clearly and compellingly in a variety of modes.
Control your tone, word choice, sentence structure, voice and style to suit your
needs and your readers’ needs.
Understand your strengths and limitations as a writer.
Have a writing process that works for you.
Have a way of talking about writing and literature that is specific and informed.
Pass the AP Literature and Composition Exam
Reading Assignments
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Reading in an AP course is both wide and deep. This reading necessarily builds
upon and complements the reading done in previous English courses so that by
the time students complete their AP course, they will have read works from
several genres and periods — from the 16th to the 21st century.
The most important aspect of this course is that you read every assignment with
care and on time. You will need to plan time in your schedules for more reading than most
courses require. Poetry requires careful attention and several re-readings, and novels in
particular require planning ahead. This is your official heads-up.
With that said, my guiding principal for this course is depth over breadth. I believe it is
more important to know fewer works deeply than have a shallow understanding of as much as
you, or we, could squeeze into a school year. You must read carefully and deliberately, you
must apply deep reading strategies you learn in class, and you must make this kind of reading
your default setting for AP Lit.
Writing Assignments
Writing is an integral part of the AP English Literature and Composition course
and exam. Writing assignments focus on the critical analysis of literature and
include expository, analytical and argumentative essays. Although critical
analysis makes up the bulk of student writing for the course, well-constructed
creative writing assignments may help students see from the inside how literature
is written. Such experiences sharpen their understanding of what writers have
accomplished and deepen their appreciation of literary artistry. The goal of both
types of writing assignments is to increase students’ ability to explain clearly,
cogently, even elegantly, what they understand about literary works and why they
interpret them as they do.
Critical
You will write several short critical essays, both in and out of class, that explicate poetry
and drama and analyze passages from the close reading of novels. These essays will vary in
style and length. For all critical writing assignments, you are expected to use specific and wellchosen evidence to develop convincing arguments about the text. Specifically, these critical
essays are based on close textual analysis of structure, style (figurative language, imagery,
symbolism, tone) and social and/or historical value.
Creative
You will write short, creative pieces that are modeled from the rhetorical forms and styles
of the literature we’re studying. I will not grade these assignments on aesthetic criteria; rather, I
will assess your knowledge and application of appropriate structures and styles as outlined in
the assignment’s criteria (e.g., imitating a writer’s choice in literary devices to create an effect
and describing how the device works in literature and in your own writing).
These essays are intended to help you mature as a writer, to pay close attention to “writerly” choices, and to practice using language for rhetorical or literary effect.
Models, Workshop, & Teacher Conference
You will read and study models or “mentor texts” to determine how professional writers
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create clear, creative, and convincing analytical essays. Your attention to these writing models
is key to your own success in becoming a mature writer who desires consistent and gradual
improvement.
You will also participate in writing workshops and teacher conference during class. As a
result of workshop, you and your classmates will determine what works, what doesn’t work, and
how one’s writing can be improved. As a result of teacher-conference, you will practice
identifying and articulating strengths and weaknesses in your writing and arguments and apply
strategies discussed in teacher conference to revise writing. The goal of workshop and teacher
conference is revision and stronger writing, not editing and proofreading.
Quizzes and Exams
Short, informal quizzes will be both announced and unannounced. Quizzes will test
reading, concepts, and other applicable content. You should expect regular reading and
vocabulary quizzes.
Exams will be primarily AP public release items, which will require you to apply and
transfer skills learned and practiced in class. You should expect poetry and passage analysis,
selected response items, and timed essays. There will be one formal exam per quarter and
each exam will take two class periods.
There will also be a full AP practice test in the spring. Date is to be announced.
Grading
The very good news is that grades are largely determined by how committed you are
and how hard you’re willing to work.
Grades reflect your continued commitment to do the work to the best of your ability.
“Commitment” includes, but is not limited to: attention to areas of strengths and weaknesses;
ongoing application of close-reading strategies; participation in seminars, workshops, and
conferences, application of feedback and criticism for essay revisions; handing in work on time;
being present in class; and working collaboratively with classmates for a common purpose, and
your most sincere efforts in becoming to being a better reader, writer, and thinker.
Grades are weighted, and the breakdown is as follows:
30%
Daily class-work
e.g., 442s; learning logs; novel notes; notes; group activities;
25%
Writing
Critical essays; creative writing pieces;
25%
Formal assessments
End-unit projects; exams; timed-writings;
20%
Participation
Socratic seminar; writing workshop; teacher conference; group
collaboration
Additionally, please adhere to the following policies:
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Deadlines:
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All work is due at the beginning of class.
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All work is due when specified in class and is subject to change based on what I
think is best for students.
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You are responsible for printing your work. Plan and prepare ahead of time for
printing and copying.
Some assignments I can accept through email; some I cannot.
While I appreciate your efforts, until we’re “paper-free” err on the side of
print-it-out.
Late work:
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Late work will lose 10% of points every day the assignment is late.
Missing work & makeup work:
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You are responsible for understanding your due dates and deadlines in
class. If something isn’t clear, please ask.
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You are responsible checking Engrade, www.hilliardsclass.com, and Remind for
pertinent reminders and deadlines.
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Although there should be little to no missing work for any student in AP Lit, I will
accept it on a case-by-case basis.
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You are responsible for your makeup work when you are absent.
See me for makeup work due dates.
Final Thoughts
This class is not about grades and a rigorous curriculum; it is about learning and
challenging yourself. It is about developing rich and fulfilling habits-of-mind and taking
ownership of your learning. It is about improving the skills that you already have – making them
stronger, deeper, and more refined.
Learning is an organic, interactive process. It does not exist in a vacuum, and it is not
predicated on my filling students with information. It is not about what I know. It is about how
your discovery. I will work my hardest for you. We will learn and explore together, and we will all
be better for it.
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Supplies
As mentioned in your course description, AP Literature and Composition can be an
intellectually transformative course. The curriculum goals are outlined by and this particular
course is approved by the College Board, and it is aligned with entry-level college literature
classes. Students are required to read literature deeply, write intelligently about it, and be an
active participant in class. Remember: I am another rider on the road. My job is to create an
environment of inquiry that allows all students to participate, productively struggle, and thrive.
We will be reading and writing a lot from August to June, and you will have plenty of
opportunities to practice your skills and improve upon them in preparation for the AP exam in
May. In short, AP Literature is about reading great, canonized works and demonstrating how
you understand them, but it’s also about developing critical thinking skills and habits of mind
that, I believe, will serve you students well beyond any exam.
With that said, for our day-to-day, you must have the following supplies:
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Highlighter
Pencils or pens
Composition book
3-ring binder
5 tab dividers organized accordingly:
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Handouts
Vocabulary & Notes
Writing
Novel Notes
Graded work
In addition, I prefer and strongly suggest that you purchase your own copies of texts
for annotations. We will study the following:
In addition to short fiction and poetry, we will cover at a minimum:
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Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
The Stranger by Albert Camus or The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
William Shakespeare (Title TBA)
2 “masterworks” – 1 per semester, from The List (see handout)
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SHORT FICTION
Representative writers:
Chinua Achebe; Sherman Alexie; Isabel Allende; Rudolfo Anaya; Margaret Atwood; Jane
Austen; James Baldwin; Saul Bellow; Charlotte Brontë; Emily Brontë; Raymond Carver; Willa
Cather; John Cheever; Kate Chopin; Sandra Cisneros; Joseph Conrad; Edwidge Danticat;
Daniel Defoe; Anita Desai; Charles Dickens; Fyodor Dostoevsky; George Eliot; Ralph Ellison;
Louise Erdrich; William Faulkner; Henry Fielding; F . Scott Fitzgerald; E . M . Forster; Thomas
Hardy; Nathaniel Hawthorne; Ernest Hemingway; Zora Neale Hurston; Kazuo Ishiguro; Henry
James; Ha Jin; Edward P . Jones; James Joyce; Maxine Hong Kingston; Joy Kogawa; Jhumpa
Lahiri; Margaret Laurence; D . H . Lawrence; Chang-rae Lee; Bernard Malamud; Gabriel García
Márquez; Cormac McCarthy; Ian McEwan; Herman Melville; Toni Morrison; Bharati Mukherjee;
Vladimir Nabokov; Flannery O’Connor; Orhan Pamuk; Katherine Anne Porter; Marilynne
Robinson; Jonathan Swift; Mark Twain; John Updike; Alice Walker; Evelyn Waugh; Eudora
Welty; Edith Wharton; John Edgar Wideman; Virginia Woolf; Richard Wright
POETRY
Representative poets:
W . H . Auden; Elizabeth Bishop; William Blake; Anne Bradstreet; Edward Kamau Brathwaite;
Gwendolyn Brooks; Robert Browning; George Gordon, Lord Byron; Lorna Dee Cervantes;
Geoffrey Chaucer; Lucille Clifton; Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Billy Collins; H . D . (Hilda Doolittle);
Emily Dickinson; John Donne; Rita Dove; Paul Laurence Dunbar; T . S . Eliot; Robert Frost; Joy
Harjo; Seamus Heaney; George Herbert; Garrett Hongo; Gerard Manley Hopkins; Langston
Hughes; Ben Jonson; John Keats; Philip Larkin; Robert Lowell; Andrew Marvell; John Milton;
Marianne Moore; Sylvia Plath; Edgar Allan Poe; Alexander Pope; Adrienne Rich; Anne Sexton;
William Shakespeare; Percy Bysshe Shelley; Leslie Marmon Silko; Cathy Song; Wallace
Stevens; Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Derek Walcott; Walt Whitman; Richard Wilbur; William Carlos
Williams; William Wordsworth; William Butler Yeats
FIRST QUARTER: August 17 – October 19
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8.17-9.25
Week 1: Course Introduction
Summer Reading & AP Lit Warm-Up; Baseline timed writing; Novel Notes; Intro to
Mentor Texts; Writer Groups & Workshop Intro
Weeks 2: Passage Analysis
Timed Writing Review; Vocabulary; Passage analysis and annotation strategies; 5-S
Strategy for Passage Analysis; NEED SHORT STORIES HERE – CARVER & CO
Week 3: Passage Analysis
Short Fiction and passage analysis continued; Short story focus project:
From this list – short, literary, one a day in
class…http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/22/short-story-read_n_4220181.html
Week 4: Short Story Focus
Project continued
Week 5: Short Story Focus “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff;
Project continued; Class presentations
9.28-10.
Weeks 6-9: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Conventions of the novel; Language and craft; Theme development, Metafiction; Reader
Response vs. New Criticism; Narrative of Understanding Capstone essay
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Week 9: Quarter Exam
Thursday – Timed Essay
Friday – Selected Response
SECOND QUARTER: October 20 – December 22
10.20-10.24
Week 1: Exam Review; …Kick off to poetry! (And rhetorical grammar?)
10.27-11.18
Weeks 2-3:
Rhetorical Grammar & Sentence patterns (Text: Understanding English Grammar by
Martha Kolln)
Week 4:
Rhetorical grammar and sentence patterns continued; Syntax analysis;
11.19- 12.19
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Weeks 5-6:
Sentence Patterns Focus
Syntax passage analysis
Weeks 7
Sentence Patterns Focus
Syntax and passage analysis continued; Sentence Patterns focus project
Weeks 8-9: A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
Drama, symbolism, relationships and societal norms
12.22-12.23
Semester Exams – Schedule TBA
THIRD QUARTER: January 4 – March 11
THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD…MILES TO GO…
1.5-1.20
Weeks 1-2: Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Literary criticism; passage analysis; synthesis, and supporting original claim; in-depth
study of literary analysis; Ethan Frome Societal Tragedy essay
1.21-2.27
Weeks 3-8: Major Poets Unit and Independent Read
The Stranger by Albert Camus and/or The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (Existentialist
literature and allegory)
Survey of British poets; Survey of modern poets; poetry vocabulary, response journals,
journal explode essays, and writing workshops
3.2-3.6
Week 9: End-Unit Projects
3.9-3.10
Quarter Exam
Monday – Timed Essay
Tuesday – Selected Response; Vocabulary
FOURTH QUARTER MARCH 12 – MAY 26
3.11-13
Week 1: Test Analysis, Portfolio, Reflections & Revisions
3.16-4.3
Weeks 2-4: Hamlet by William Shakespeare
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Conventions of Shakespeare; handling a problematic text; studying thematic depth;
making a case for literary merit
3.28-4.1 SPRING BREAK – Senior Footprint Project roll out
4.13-4.24
Weeks 5-6: Hamlet Extension & Analysis
Hamlet Capstone Essay
April 23 – ASC Hamlet Field Trip!
4.27-5.5
Weeks 7-9: Putting It All Together
Test Prep, Review, and Go-Get-‘Ems
WEDNESDAY MAY 4, 8:00 AM
AP English Literature and Composition EXAM!
May 23-26 Berkeley County Schools Graduations