HUMANE LETTERS
Eagle Ridge Academy
HUMANITIES OVERVIEW
 Required course for all students grades 9-12
 Fulfills the English and History requirements at each grade level
 Focused on utilizing primary sources and literature composed during
different eras to teach History and Language Arts
 Meets for two 50 minute class periods daily
 Frequent shorter writing assignments and a larger research essay
 Primary Methodology in class is Seminar Discussion
• Students sit facing each other, take notes, and practice active listening
• Students build communication skills, articulate arguments, delve deeply
into the text(s) at hand
9 TH GRADE: ANCIENT
WORLD HUMANE LETTERS
 Homeric and Ancient Greece
• Homer The Iliad and The Odyssey , Herodotus , and Thucydides
 Classical Greece
• Greek Drama, Plato, Aristotle, Pre-Socratic Philosophers
 Republican Rome
• Livy, Polybius, Plutarch, Caesar, Lucan, Cicero
 Imperial Rome
• Virgil, Tacitus, Epictetus, Lucretius, Marcus Aurelius, Bible,
Augustine
1 0 T H G R A D E M E D I E VA L T H RO U G H
RENAISSANCE HUMANE LETTERS
 Collapse of Rome and Early Middle Ages
• Boethius , Beowulf , and primary sources
 Medieval Romance and History
• Parzival, Mallory, Bede, Pope Urban II,
Peter Abelard
 Medieval Philosophy and Literature
• Aquinas, Dante, Chaucer
 Humanism
• Erasmus, Machiavelli, More
 Protestant Reformers
•
Wycliffe, Luther, Calvin
 Elizabethan Drama
•
Shakespeare, Marlowe
 Scientific Reformers
•
Copernicus, Brahe, Galileo,
Kepler
CLASSROOM
EXPECTATIONS
 Be Prepared for class: notes/binder, reading comprehension packet,
book, and writing utensil(s)
 Participate in Discussion: see guidelines for Socratic Seminar
 Be Prompt when turning in work: 1 week grace period for 80% max.
 Complete your homework: reading every night, weekend reflection
papers, longer (usually writing) assignments
A DAY IN HUMANITIES 10
 Class begins with Do Now exercise
 Quiz or review quiz (if applicable)
 Review reading (method depends upon text)
 Group Work
 Discussion
THINGS TO NOTE
 Homework repeated three ways:
• Classroom whiteboard
• My course website
• Orally announced in class
 Regular assignments: reading, note checks, reflections
 E-mail updates to parents biweekly
 Grading scale found in syllabus: emphasis on participation & writing
 Rigorous course: assistance available, if requested

1 1 TH G R A D E E N L I G H T E N M E N T
T H RO U G H I N D U S T R I A L I Z AT I O N
HUMANE LETTERS
Scientific Method
•

Literature
•

Shakespeare, Cervantes, Milton, and Austen
Philosophy and Science
•

Bacon, Montaigne, and Galileo
Descartes, Pascal, Newton, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, and Montesquieu
American Colonial and Revolutionary War Sources
•
Columbus, Cabot, Smith, Winthrop, Mather, Henry, Franklin, Adams, Federalist Papers, and many others

U.S. Constitution

French Revolution
•

Poetry
•

Goethe, Shelley, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman
Modern Philosophy
•

Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, and Shelley
Romanticism and Transcendentalism
•

Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution
Kant, Hegel, Mill, Nietzsche
U.S. Civil War Primary Sources
12 TH GRADE MODERN
WORLD HUMANE LETTERS

Early Modern Literature and Poetry
•
Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Wilde, Cather, Yeats, WW1 poets

World War I and World War II primary documents

Modern Science and Literature
•
•

Dystopian and Existential Literature
•

King, Malcolm X, Brown v. Board of Education, and others
Contemporary Literature
•

Kennedy, Johnson, Long , and Vietnam
Civil Rights Movement Primary Sources
•

Williams
Contemporary America
•

Huxley, Camus, Orwell
American Drama
•

Freud, Jung, Einstein, Quantum Physics
Eliot, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Hemingway
Anaya, Morrison, and O’Connor
Contemporary Issues
•
Supreme Court Cases
COMPOSITION
 This course is not required but highly recommended for incoming
students as well as students who would benefit from a more explicit
writing course.
 Main focus: improving students’ ability to write a clear, concise,
cohesive, and effective essay by breaking it down into manageable steps
from topic development to researching and citing sources in MLA format,
with special attention placed on the editing/reviewing portion of writing.
A DAY IN COMPOSITION
 Journal in response to the question or prompt on the board (if
absent, students are responsible to make up that journal entry on their
own)—journals will be checked several times in a semester
 Mechanics review through handouts, group work etc.
 Writing/editing peer review workshops for essay writing
assignments (3 total essays this semester)
 Weekly spelling tests that review commonly misspelled words
SCHEDULE
Week
Q1
8/26 – 8/29
Grammar/Topic
Spelling
9/2 – 9/5
Why study grammar? Expectations for peer
review
Punctuation
Week 1
Definition Essay
9/8 – 9/12
Punctuation/Parts of Speech
Week 2
Definition Essay
9/15 – 9/19
Parts of Speech (quiz)
Week 3
Definition Essay
9/22 – 9/26
Parts and Purposes of a Sentence
Week 4
Persuasive Essay
9/29 – 10/2
Direct and Indirect Objects
Week 5
Persuasive Essay
10/6 – 10/10
Predicate Nominatives and Predicate
Adjectives (quiz)
Week 6
Persuasive Essay
10/13 – 10/17
none
Writing Assignment
Definition Essay
No School – Conferences/Fall Break
10/20 – 10/24
Researching – Finding good sources
Week 7
Persuasive Essay
10/27 – 10/30
Peer Review/Work Time
Week 8
Persuasive Essay
SCHEDULE
Q2 11/3 – 11/7
Phrases
Week 9
Group Presentations
11/10 – 11/14
Phrases (quiz)
Week 10
Research Essay
11/17 – 11/21
Clauses
Week 11
Research Essay
11/24 – 11/25
Clauses/ Types of Sentences (quiz)
none
Research Essay
12/1 – 12/5
Verb Usage and Subject/Verb Agreement
Week 12
Research Essay
12/8 – 12/12
Verb Usage and Subject/Verb Agreement
Week 13
Research Essay
12/15 – 12/19
Peer Review and Work Week
Week 14
Research Essay
12/22 – 1/2
1/5 – 1/9
1/12 – 1/16
No School – Holiday Break
Choosing the right word/Review
Review and Finals
Week 15
none
none
none
COURSE TEXTS
 Grammar for Composition
 Rhetorical Grammar
• Excerpts
 Other:
• Student work samples
• Informational packets and handouts
TIPS FOR SUCCESS
 Prepare by completing homework on time:
• Be mindful of pacing—each essay will be completed over the course
of 3 + weeks
 Be present in class: take notes, ask questions
 Take advantage of resources: me, other teachers, handouts
and notes that we do in class
 Turn in assignments (on time)
RHETORIC
 Rhetoric is a required course. As a formal discipline, it was also developed in
ancient Greece by those who sought to persuade others; especially in the realms
of law and politics. Like logic, rhetoric is seen as indispensable to the formal
training of a well-educated person who is able to engage others on the pressing
matters of the day.
 This course is designed to develop the students’ ability to analyze examples of
persuasion as a result of reading, watching, and listening and to famous speeches,
and demonstrate the results of these examinations via public speech.
 Students also study informal fallacies, and incorporate what they have learned
into their own rhetorical presentations.
SCHEDULE
Date
8/27/13-8/29/13
8/30/13-9/3/13
9/4/13-9/13/13
9/17/13-9/20/13
9/24/13-9/26/13
9/27/13-10/8/13
10/9/13-10/22/13
10/25/13-11/14/13
11/15/13-11/22/13
11/25/13-12/6/13
12/9/13-12/18/13
12/19/13-1/10/14
Materials Covered
What is Rhetoric?
Discovery of Arguments, the 5 cannons of Rhetoric
Fallacies of Reasoning, Advertisements, Slogans
and Commercials, Propaganda, and Campaign
Advertising
Types of Discourse
Logos, Pathos, Ethos
Common Topics, Arrangement of Material, and
External Aids to Invention
Style: Schemes, Tropes, Figures of Speech, and
Imitation
The Art of Debate
The Progymnasmata
Informative Speaking
Impromptu Speaking
Persuasive Speaking
TEXTS UTILIZED
 Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student
 Aristotle’s The Art of Rhetoric
 Example texts and speeches by:
• Homer, Aristotle, Plato, St. Augustine
• Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., JFK, Richard Nixon, Ronald
Reagan, Lyndon B. Johnson
• And others…