Syllabus

ENGLISH IV SYLLABUS

Welcome to ‘English IV: Studies in World Literature’ with some newer texts mixed in along the way, depending on the section, either SciFi or Sports Lit. Reading works in a genre or subgenre can enhance our reading of the core classics. Sometimes we can profitably pair or compare two works that, at first, don’t seem to go together, but combining them yields more light on each text. In some instances, students might find that putting two works together that don’t seem to have much in common will be a thinking and learning experience, not unlike some college experiences.

All Senior English courses prepare seniors for college study with writing, reading, and research components. Students are encouraged to construct their own knowledge by discussing texts, considering social and cultural values, exercising their imaginations, and investigating a certain genre of literature. An intensive review of composition skills continues throughout both semesters with particular attention to thesis development, clarity of expression, logic, incorporating outside sources, and effective procedures for revision. Classes are discussion- and writing-based courses in which students read extensively and write analytically creating multiple drafts with revision leading to college-level essays. At the same time we are preparing students for college courses, we re-connect students with the love of reading that may have been pushed aside by demanding academics during the high school years; we do this by mixing in contemporary genre texts and having students read independently as well by choosing free reading books.

Please carefully read over the following policies to help you understand and meet the expectations of this senior English course.  If you have questions, be sure to ask in class, after class, or in my office. 

  TEXTS (we will choose some works from among these classic texts and mix in other more contemporary texts)

Hamlet William Shakespeare

The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka  

The Stranger Albert Camus (translator: Matthew Ward)

No Exit Jean Paul Sartre http://archive.org/stream/NoExit/NoExit_djvu.txt

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce

Also we will draw from numerous online or photocopied documents (e.g., Freud, Darwin, Marx, criticism, poetry, etc.)

Students will be encouraged to choose at least one book to read on their own or in small groups.

Also, for F period, we will choose some books from this list as well:

Dune Frank Herbert

Ender’s Game Orson Scott Card

Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip Dick

I, Robot Isaac Asimov

Stranger in a Strange Land Robert Heinlein

·         HOMEWORK

Make sure to follow the assignment sheets and complete ALL homework that is assigned. Also, check the instructor’s blog for other important information. When you have a reading assignment, you are ALWAYS expected to ANNOTATE the text and to take notes. I may check these annotations at any time. I may not see or check all homework assignments or journal entries, but completing them helps you prepare for tests, quizzes, and essays and, overall, for college. Online homework is also required: posting to our class blog, posting to your own blog, and commenting on other students’ blogs. All blog posts must be completed by 7:00 a.m. the day they are due or receive no credit (or at the discretion of the instructor, partial credit). Blogs done late due to illness or poor access to internet will not be credited late, but, at the discretion of the instructor, may be left blank in the gradebook (i.e., no credit, but no penalty).

Students who are absent must take full responsibility in contacting the instructor to schedule make-ups, otherwise, at the discretion of the instructor, beyond the allowed deadline, the score will revert to 59% or be left blank in the gradebook. The Student Handbook states “A student has the number of school days he or she was absent to turn in missed work or take quizzes or tests.” Late essays are the single biggest cause of very low grades in English and it always better to submit an essay a day late rather than not at all.

ATTENDANCE & CLASROOM BEHAVIOR

I call your attention to these important sections of the Buckley Parent/Student handbook.

Notify me ahead of time of College visits: “Buckley students may take up to 5 school days for college visits. . . if the college counselor and dean of students approve the visit and all teachers sign off that they have been informed.” (Handbook). “An unexcused absence results in a grade of F/59% for that day’s work.” Excessive absences can result in a need to retake the course: “[A]bsences that exceed 20% of scheduled class meetings during a semester may result in a student receiving no credit for that class.”

“Plagiarism can be deliberate or accidental. In either case it is unacceptable.” Tutors, parents, and peers may not substantially write or revise a student’s essay, which must always be the student’s own writing, words, and work; assistance in writing or revising from a tutor or Writing Lab tutor should consist of guidance and questions rather than wholesale writing of portions of the essay. Remember, one act of plagiarism in the senior year can result in having to notify all colleges that one has been disciplined for academic dishonesty. The temporary relief a student imagines from not having to write his or her own essay is permanently outweighed by college admissions offices questioning the honesty of the applicant. Do your own writing.

GRADING

       All out of class essays will be uploaded to Turnitin.com to discourage plagiarism. Instructor comments will either be made on the printed out essay or online at the Turnitin site for students to study, along with the grade, and then students will create a page on their blogs called “What I’m Working On” and there they will list summaries of the main comments on essays, including grammar, MLA, composition feedback, and argument, content, and ideas. This running log should help the student and instructor keep in mind long term and detailed goals for student writing. The overall goal of the course is to have students ready by year’s end to write college-level three- to five-page essays with good structure, conventions, and content, especially emphasizing college-level (not high-school level) thinking and ideas. The other key goal is to have students ready for the rigors of college reading, both in difficulty of concepts and volume.  Main essays will be graded on an A-F scale (with pluses and minuses), which translates into set percentage grades. A+ 100, A 95, A- 92, B+ 88, B 85, B- 82, C+ 78, C 75, C- 72, D+ 68, D 65, D- 62, F 59 (or a zero in the case of plagiarism or inappropriate help).

 Blogs, short writing, and homework may be ungraded or merely given a check mark (for completion, usually worth one to three points) or no check mark (not completed or unsatisfactory, worth zero points). Other work may be graded on a “check plus” usually assigning a small number of points. A check is worth 8/10 of a point, a check plus is worth 9.5/10, a check minus is worth 7/10, and a check minus-minus is worth 6/10 of a point. If two points are assigned to such writings, multiply these fractions by the number of points. Do not assume that adequate work deserves the highest points, but instead a check. Only the most thoughtful blog posts, writing, and homework will earn above that.

To avoid average or low grades, the most important things to remember are to 1.) Turn assignments in on time (as grade penalties in the past have lowered student grades to the point of making English a weakness on the transcript), 2.) Never plagiarize, even if feeling desperate due to a deadline (seniors who plagiarize may be suspended and have to report to colleges an incident of academic dishonesty), 3.) Keep up with the reading, the blogging, and the coursework, 4.) Bring ideas to your writing, not just mechanical sentences and lists (ideas are expected next year in college), and 5.) Participate actively in class at least once a day (for participation points and to practice discussion and thinking aloud, which is one of the skills needed in college).

KEEP UP WITH THE READING

The reading load in English is at times demanding. While I may assign particular pages for each night, students will generally be expected to pace themselves (in college you will be told to finish a text by a specific date rather than assigned a section to read each night).  This requires you to take responsibility for keeping up with the text.  You should read ahead whenever you have the time, as it will be very difficult to catch up at the last minute. This class requires close, careful reading of the texts, and you should ALWAYS annotate and take notes.  This will make it much easier for you when it comes to papers, exams, etc.  Reading poems always requires multiple readings, annotation, and reflection. Do not sacrifice keeping up with the reading, even if you have an essay due or Calculus homework due. Your ability to discuss in class is dependent on your timely reading. Don’t fall behind.

·         Students must bring their texts to class. Also, bring notebooks, writing implements (second semester seniors without pens end up borrowing from more responsible students), copies of assignments, poems, and homework. Type all out-of-class essays.

·         ASK QUESTIONS and PARTICIPATE during class. Ask questions through email. (At times I check my email during the evenings and on the weekend, but not always.)

·         Save everything.  You are responsible to keep all materials pertaining to this class.  This includes notes, quizzes, graded assignments, and photocopied texts. Get a separate notebook/folder for keeping your English material.  You also must save all your work on disk and hard drive—all year long.

·         Use redundant backups for all your essays and writing: back up files often on a flash drive, your own laptop, the Buckley server, by emailing drafts of essays to yourself, and/or creating a Dropbox.com account online to save documents. Claiming to have lost the only electronic copy of an essay you have been working on is not a valid excuse: back up documents.

·         You must have a working printer at home. Do not rely on going to the library before class to print your writing; papers are due at the start of class. Never count on emailing essays to the school to print them out. Often the email doesn’t work or the library is closed or you are too busy. No such reason will excuse lateness. Also, have a spare ink cartridge. Essays are due at the beginning of class, or by the deadline set on Turnitin.com.

·         If you are absent for any reason, you must find out about and make up all work (including in-class assignments, journal topics, etc.) within one school day. All homework is posted on the class blog. The student (not the instructor) is responsible for making sure that missed work, quizzes, and tests are quickly made up.

PROHBITIONS

·         Cheating/Plagiarism: Plagiarism is not tolerated, and will result in severe penalties.  Passing off an internet paper as one’s own is not only dishonest, it prevents the instructor from helping one to improve one’s writing.  Assistance from tutors, parents, or other students should not include wholesale writing, only an asking of questions to help the author then compose his or her own sentences.  When in doubt, give a citation and talk to the instructor. Unintentional: Even unintentional plagiarism counts as plagiarism, both in high school and in college. Learn how to document sources, write down and print out every internet site you visit, and how to cite all such sources. Generally, surfing the internet for ideas before you choose a topic will lead to such unintentional plagiarism, which can earn you a zero for that essay. Plagiarized work will receive a zero (not an F), and will result in disciplinary action.  Consult the MLA handbook or the Buckley Citation Guide (available through the Buckley Library website) if you have any questions about citing sources correctly. 

·         Late work: Late work will be marked down 1/3 grade per day late (e.g. A- to B+ to B, etc.). If you find yourself in this position, it is always better to complete work late than not to complete it at all.  (60% is much better than 0%.) As well, it is better to turn in a less-than-perfect essay on time than to delay one day, then another, then another, hoping to make the essay perfect. Such perfectionism often leads to low scores as well as papers not much better than the original draft.

·         Tardiness/Absence: Attendance and punctuality are essential in this class, as each student’s presence is necessary for the class to work as a unit.  Both tardiness and attendance are considered part of your participation grade, which is a substantial portion of your final grade.  (See the Student Handbook for school policies.) Also, 20% absenteeism may result in the student receiving no credit for taking the course, which could require retaking the course.

Guidelines for help from Tutors, Peers, or Parents

We are all influenced by the people we talk to, the discussions we have in class, the books we read, our conversations at the dinner table with parents, and so forth. Because of this, in every formal English assignment you write you have to specify the sources of information that influenced you, or could have influenced you, as you composed and revised your essay. Be extremely careful to include all printed or Internet sources on a separate page entitled Works Cited at the end of your essay. Be particularly aware of help or influence from any of the following:

*                     A parent or a friend with whom you had a conversation about the essay

*                     A tutor who met with you while writing the essay

*                     A chat room where you discussed your subject and learned something about it

*                     Anything similar to the above

The simplest reason for this attention to detail is that common courtesy requires you to acknowledge and thank those who have assisted you in your work. But it also helps safeguard you from the charge that you have concealed the sources of your information or been dishonest in presenting the ideas of others as your own.

More Guidelines for Parents, Peer Editors, and Tutors:

In addition to peer evaluation sessions held during regularly scheduled class time, we recognize that many students will also want to seek the advice of their friends, their parents, and—in special cases—tutors. The following guidelines are meant to help everyone involved to get the maximum benefit from the process—and to give credit where credit is due. One goal of all suggestions made during the rough draft revision and editing process is to help student writers internalize the standards of good, persuasive writing and be able to apply those skills on future assignments. Thus, anyone helping in this process should be asking questions and making suggestions that are general rather than specific in nature. The following types of assistance force the writer to reflect upon what she is trying to accomplish and should make up the overwhelming majority of all comments:

*                     Is this meant to be your thesis? If so, try to make your claims more precise.

*                     These claims are unclear to me; they need more development and support.

*                     This conclusion just repeats things you’ve already proven. Re-work it so that it answers the question, "So what?"

*                     You keep using weak verbs in this paragraph.

*                     This paragraph doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of your essay—is it really necessary?

*                     Right now your essay is short; try to think of other examples from later in the novel that prove your thesis.

Your instructor may modify these general guidelines for a specific purpose, but unless you know for certain that your English teacher has given your permission to do otherwise, the following kinds of help are not acceptable:

*                     Someone crossing out words or passages and rewriting them for you (instead they should write awk. in the margin)

*                     Someone substituting words that that person might use for your own words (they should circle the problem and write w.c. in the margin)

*                     Someone correcting spelling or punctuation errors for you (they should circle the problem and write sp. or p. in the margin)

*                     Your taking another student’s, parent’s, or tutor’s ideas without giving that person credit in a parenthetises in the essay and on the Works Cited page at the end

When an English instructor reads your final draft, making reference back to any rough drafts you have done, she or he will want to see that you are the guiding intelligence behind the essay and behind any changes being made. She or he may want to sit down with you if some of the changes being made suggest another intelligence is taking too large a role in the writing process. Some of the ways you can help reassure yourself that it is still your essay are to answer the following questions:

*                     Can I explain why I made specific alterations?

*                     Can I explain the rhetorical or grammatical principle behind any changes?

*                     Do I know the meanings of all the words I have used in the essay or in my revision?

*                     If an idea in the essay was initially suggested to me by someone else, have I given that person credit in the essay and on the Works Cited page?

*                     Have I fully discussed any major changes suggested by another person, rather than silently accepted them?

If you can answer yes to these five questions, then you have used any outside help fairly, in a way that is likely to benefit you and make you a better writer in the long run.

·         Respect the Classroom: Students are expected to leave the classroom neat and trash-free, with desks back in rows. Food is not allowed in class, and the only drink allowed in class is water.

·         Cell phones: No phones or other such electronic devices in class.   

·         Sparks Notes: The Buckley School’s English Department has adopted the following policy:

Use of materials including but not limited to Cliffs Notes, Sparks Notes, Monkey Notes and other study aids on literature, in print and on-line, is forbidden on campus and is strongly discouraged at any other time because the English department expects students to read and experience the original texts and form their own ideas.

·         Use of iPads and laptop computers in the classroom

Using an iPad or laptop during class is a privilege not a right. Students are encouraged to use technology but ONLY when the instructor allows it and ONLY in the ways specified by the instructor. Students may ONLY use software programs that help accomplish learning objectives. The Internet may ONLY be used in ways deemed appropriate by the instructor. The camera functions of the iPad are also ONLY to be used with the instructor’s permission.  Absolutely forbidden at all times:  photographing other students or the teacher without permission, use of any messenger software such as iChat, AIM or Yahoo Messenger as well as checking email.  This includes BUCKLEY E-MAIL—unless permission is given. This policy is in effect whenever the iPad or laptop is in the classroom. Failure to follow the classroom policy will result in a reduction of your class participation grade and may include other consequences. There are no warnings; restrictions on the use of iPads or laptop computer may be imposed by the school or the instructor for disregarding these rules.

Goals of Senior English (from the UC website)

In Senior English, high school seniors will prepare themselves to be college freshmen: “to acquire and use knowledge in critical ways; to think, read, write, and speak critically; and to master literacy skills”  for college classes. More important than the specific topics covered are the more general abilities and habits of mind students should acquire through reading, writing, speaking, and other course activities.

1.       Students are well-informed, thoughtful and creative readers, writers, listeners, and thinkers who participate in their own original and creative knowledge production.

2.       Students understand other informed viewpoints and pre-existing knowledge. They have a capacity to question and evaluate their own beliefs; the curiosity and daring to participate in and contribute to intellectual discussions; and the ability to advocate for their own learning needs.

3.       Students comprehend and evaluate complex texts across a range of types and disciplines and can construct effective arguments and convey intricate or multifaceted information.

4.       Students respond to varying demands of audience, task, purpose, genre and discipline by listening, reading, writing and speaking with awareness of self, others and context, and adapting their communication to audience, task, purpose, genre and discipline.

5.       Students value evidence. Students can analyze a range of informational and literary texts, ask provocative questions and generate hypotheses based on form and content of factual evidence, see other points of view and effectively cite specific evidence when offering an oral or written interpretation of a text.

6.       Students use technology and digital media strategically and capably to enhance their reading, writing, speaking, listening and language use.

7.       Students demonstrate independence by exhibiting curiosity and experimenting with new ideas.

Create your own BLOG: Create your own blog at https://www.blogger.com/start
You must use your Buckley email (name@buckley.org) not your gmail to create your blogspot account. First, you will need to register your Buckley email as a registered Google account. Then you can create your Google account. So for this process, pretend you don’t already have a gmail or Google user account, sign out of google, click “Create Blog” and use your Buckley email address @buckleyla.org to create one.
--Choose a name for your blog. (This will be your permanent blogging address).

Examples:  Stephanati.blogspot.com Sydamentary.blogspot.com

·         BrandX.blogspot.com  Spenceritis.blogspot.com Liviandlearn.blogspot.com

I encourage you to use your first name, perhaps modified, but for internet safety reasons, don't use your last name, the name of the school, or front facing photos of any students.
--Choose a template design.
--Create a heading title. (Greets readers and stays at the top) 

--Add a photo from Google images (not a photo of you or other students)
--Preview then Publish your blog.
--ADD INSTRUCTOR AS AUTHOR: Go to Dashboard, click Settings, click Permissions, Add authors, type in jforman@buckley.org and save.
--Add photo from Google images and download pictures to myPictures in myDocs. Plan to use a lot of photos on your blog this summer, either downloaded from Google images.

--NOTE: Even when you have the instructor’s permission to take photos, when taking photos, you MUST observe Buckley policies! No pictures of instructor or of students.

--When creating blogs, click the photo image (next to link) and browse to MyPictures and add.

• Begin your blog, post an introduction to yourself, and type your writings on your blog.
• Remember: if you occasionally do not have access to a computer or the internet, you may complete your homework on paper and keep it in your notebook. Later, you may take a photo of your homework and post it to your blog so it is all in one place.
• Be sure to follow the main class blog by submitting your email on the blog to become a follower on the main class blog.
• Create pages with tabs across the top.
• Label one page “Feedback”
• Label another page “Quotes”
• Label another page “Reading”
• You can also add a gadget on the right hand side and call it reading.

I have read and understand the above policies. I understand the restrictions of the use of devices in the classroom and agree to abide by the class rules. I also give my permission for audiotaping, photography, or videotaping in the classroom for educational purposes and for essays to be shared for educational purposes. I also give my permission for the instructor to have co-administrative privileges on blogs, websites, and other electronic forums.

______________  _______________________________     ____________________

           Student                      Parent                                                    date