Junior English
FALL SEMESTER
For Students in Grade 11 - (Required)
Prerequisites: English 141 (H) requires a B- or higher in English 121 (H) or teacher recommendation; English 142 (CP) requires completion of a Sophomore English course.
Junior English (CP & Honors): Junior English expands students’ ability to use written expression for their expository, critical, and narrative essays. Students read from a variety of genres using a critical lens to analyze literature in class discussions and for assignments outside of the classroom. Students participate in curriculum-centered activities that engage them in critical thinking, and technology serves as a tool in this course to forward projects, presentations, and writing assignments. The literature component of the junior year features all major genres, centered on Justice and Judgment. Among the texts are The Color Purple, Macbeth, The Scarlet Letter, Things Fall Apart, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and other works of fiction and nonfiction.
Twice Told Tales (CP & Honors): Twice-Told Tales endeavors to re-conceive, to reconsider, through history, psychology and literature, the human condition. Students will employ literature as a case study by using literature to analyze transcendent dilemmas within the human condition and specific obstacles due to cultural circumstances. The course integrates two teachers and forty-five students in the same classroom and takes place in two consecutive blocks. The class is co-taught by an English and Social Studies teacher and students receive a total of 5 credits: English (2.5) and Social Studies (2.5).
SPRING SEMESTER
For Students in Grade 11 - (Required)
In the spring semester, all juniors choose from two writing courses: Rhetoric and Advanced Language (Honors), and Writing Workshop (CP).
Rhetoric and Advanced Language (Honors) focuses on effective and persuasive writing and speaking; the students of Rhetoric learn the methods and patterns of clear organization, the function of detail, and the rhetorical quality of words and sentences. Students learn to use grammar and punctuation as an element of style; they examine professional essays for the function of voice, and develop their own writing voice through imitation and creation. Students also practice synthesizing critical information with documents-based essay writing. Students engage in the art of public speaking through activities such as writing and giving speeches or through the basic forensics of formal debate.
WRITING WORKSHOP (CP) is a course designed to reinforce previously taught writing skills with moderate to significant teacher support. The course, which meets in the Writing Lab, concentrates on the process and techniques of effective writing. Units include exercises and writing assignments on diction, the audience, point of view, sentence strategy, grammar, paragraphing, and essay writing. Students keep individual journals for daily writing exercises. In addition to the primary focus of the course, writing units may include: interviewing, biography, letter writing, and speech writing.
PLACEMENT
Placement in Junior English for both current and incoming CCHS students is based on grades and teacher recommendation.
If a students is new to CCHS, the department also strongly recommends that he or she complete the following self-evaluation assessments: