English and World Literature

List of 4 items.

• Grade 5

  English 5, “It’s a Family Affair,”  is designed to tap into students’ enthusiasm about reading and writing as well as their own burgeoning literary abilities. Beginning with Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, a beautiful novel grounded in Chinese folklore, students explore stories and poems that reward curiosity, invite reverie, and offer rich experience with the language. They also help students to ask vital questions, including What is the definition of family? How should a person’s character be judged? How can we feel free while sharing responsibilities? What does it mean to rise to the occasion of our lives? How do we know what the rules are? Can it be right to break the rules? How should we organize ourselves? Students engage in discussion and work on writing projects, both creative and analytical. Some of the writing is loosely guided; some of it is scaffolded. Group and individual grammar instruction comes through lessons, practice in a workbook, and directed revision. Vocabulary is culled from the texts. The works studied include Animal Family; Not Nothing; a selection of poems; The People Could Fly; A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears; One Crazy Summer; and The Giver.

• Grade 6

  In Grade 6 English, students read a number of texts that explore the relationship between individuals and their society. Starting with a beautiful version of the Mesopotamian tale The Epic of Gilgamesh, a story that follows the transformation of a leader from oppressor to liberator, and concluding with George Orwell's brilliant allegory Animal Farm, students read literature–novels, poetry, drama–that depicts the experience of young people trying to make sense of themselves and their world. As students engage with questions of leadership, citizenship, and individual freedom, the focus is on the importance of self-expression. Students tell their own stories in personal and creative writing pieces and express their thoughts about the literature in expository paragraphs. The study of vocabulary and grammar forms an integral part of the curriculum, allowing students to articulate their ideas with greater accuracy and specificity.

• Grade 7

  The title of this course is "The World We Inherit, the World We Inhabit, and the World We Imagine." Students read texts that capture their attention, challenge their perspectives, and allow them to investigate what it means to control their own stories. Units are designed around the following texts: Before We Were Free, Piecing Me Together, Lord of the Flies, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and a collection of poetry. Through assigned tasks and projects, guiding questions, and discipline-specific expectations, students will collaboratively deepen their understanding of literature. Students will write analytical paragraphs and creative pieces, using the class texts as models and inspiration. Students will practice writing and speaking with detail and specificity. Grammar and vocabulary work is designed to help students express their increasingly complex thoughts.

• Grade 8

  In this course students study classic coming of age stories that offer different perspectives on growing up. As we read Romeo and Juliet, The House on Mango Street, Go Tell it on the Mountain, and other works of literature, we explore how forces outside the self—society, race, class, gender, culture and family—affect the ways we define ourselves. Students practice expository writing in paragraphs and essays and develop their narrative voice through personal stories. Grammar and vocabulary work help students to express their increasingly complex thoughts in precise, controlled sentences.