AP Literature and Composition

Mount Olive High School Room: 17

Heath Slade, Instructor
Planning Period: 4th
Email: hslade@cov.k12.ms.us Phone: 6017973939
Introduction:
AP English Literature and Composition is designed to be a college/university level
course, thus the AP designation on a transcript rather than H (Honors) or CCP
(Career/College Prep). This course will provide students with the intellectual challenges
and workload consistent with a typical undergraduate university English
literature/humanities course. In May, students will be encouraged to take the Advanced
Placement English Literature and Composition Exam. A student who achieves a score of
3 or higher on the AP Exam will be granted college credit at most colleges and
universities in the United States.
Essential Concepts:
Literature provides a mirror to help us understand ourselves and others.
Literature deals with universal themes that help us understand truths about the human
condition and the world in which we live.
Writing is a form of communication across the ages.
Course Goals:
To engage in close analytical reading of works of literature
To consider a works structure, style, and themes
To understand how authors use diction, figurative language, syntax, imagery symbolism,
and tone to communicate meaning
To study representative works from various genres and periods
To focus on a few major works in depth in order to understand the works complexities
To write analytical, argumentative essays in which students draw upon textual details to
make and explain judgments about a work's artistry and quality.
To write analytical, argumentative essays in which students draw upon textual details to
make and explain judgments about a work's social, historical and/or cultural values.
Grading Policy:
AP English is a year-long one credit course that includes fifty minute classes. Each
semester grade will be composed of two term grades and a final exam grade that counts
ten percent of the overall semester average. Grades will include the following:

Content based exams on the literature selections

Timed writings and sample objective tests modeled from public release AP exams
Major individual research project
Periodic quizzes on the assigned reading
Various creative response options

Required Materials
Notebook: three-ringed plastic binder with one inch spine
Spiral notebook for journals
Flash Drive
Highlighter, post-it notes (3x3 or 3x5), pen, pencil
3x5 and 4x6 index cards
Separate Writing Folder kept in room (provided by teacher) where major pieces of writing
will be filed

Guidelines for Success

You must arrange your notes and handouts in a very organized and retrievable fashion.
These materials are also very helpful for college-bound honors students. Decide on a
system that works for you and stick to it! You may use a binder with specific sections or
separate folders for each unit.
You will need a notebook to use as a journal for daily warm-ups and nightly homework
assignments. This must be an 8 by 11 notebook that is separate from your binder
because it will be collected and graded at unannounced times. You do not need to skip
lines in your journal, and you may write on the back of the pages, but you must write in
ink. Be sure to date and title each entry. You may complete your nightly journal
assignments on a computer, as long as you keep everything together neatly, and you
have the printed entries in class each day.
Be prepared every day with your required books, notebooks, journals, or handouts
needed for class. When in doubt, check the syllabus or my website.
All formal out of class written work should follow MLA format and be typed.
Late assignments will be penalized one full letter grade for each day they are late.
Because homework is a valuable component to the course work, it is expected to be done
on time.
You must be prepared to make up tests, quizzes, or assignments on your own time. You
may not complete these during class.
I will be more than glad to help you with your assignments and deadlines during the
process if you are struggling; however, I cannot help after the fact, on the due date. It is
your responsibility to be sure your computer, printer, email, and other
technologies are up to date when a deadline arrives. Computer problems are
not legitimate excuses for lateness. Do not leave work on my desk. If I am not
available, give the work to one of the secretaries to place in my mailbox.

If you are absent, it is your responsibility to get the work you have missed. You may pick
it up during my planning period, retrieve it in your missing work folder during class, or
pick it up after school. If you know you are going to be absent from class, see me in
advance, and I will provide the work for you. When possible, I will email the assignments
to you.
For each major work (novels, plays, major poems), you will read at least one critical
essay. In some events, you will be encouraged to search and to retrieve your own critical
literature.

Expect to have reading quizzes, daily vocabulary words, weekly vocabulary quizzes,
unannounced writing assignments, marginal notes, and nightly homework assignments.
AP English will be challenging and include a lot of work, but I hope you find it enjoyable!
The main goals of this course are to broaden your knowledge of literature and your
analytical thinking and writing skills.
Remember these keys to success:
Faithfully keep up with your reading and daily assignments,
Actively think about and react to the literature, and
Consciously work on your writing skills by learning from your mistakes and successes.
Semester One Reading and Writing Schedule
Week 1: The Epic as the Literary Foundation of a Culture
Texts: Excerpts from Beowulf (Anonymous) The Seafarer (Anonymous)
Assessment: Objective/essay test and creative response options
Evaluative Essay 1
Weeks 2-4: Foundations of the Western Tradition
Texts:
The Frame NarrativeExcerpts from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer The
BalladSir Patrick Spens
Bonny Barbara Allan Get Up and Bar the Door

Codes of HonorExcerpts from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Anonymous) Excerpts
from Le Morte dArthur by Sir Thomas Malory
Assessment: Objective/essay test- Evaluative Essay 2 AP timed writings
Weeks 5-6: The Emerging Identity Part I: Renaissance Themes and
The Pastoral Tradition
Texts:
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe The Nymphs Reply to
the Shepherd by Sir Walter Raleigh Selected Elizabethan and Petrarchan Sonnets
Assessment: AP timed writings
Weeks 7-9: The Emerging Identity Part II: Fate and the Tragic Hero
Texts: Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Assessment: Objective/essay test Analytical Essay 1

Creative response options

Weeks 10-11: Truth and Beauty: Man and Nature

Texts: Selected poetry from the following authors: William Blake, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and William Wordsworth
Assessment: AP timed writings - comparative analysis of two or more poems
Evaluative Essay 3
Weeks 12-16: The Emerging Identity Part III:
The Individual in a Changing Society
Texts: Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward
2nd Novel is upcoming
Assessment: Objective/essay test
Analytical Essay 2
Creative response options
Weeks 17-18: Emerging Identity Part IV:
Encounters with Crisis
Texts:
Selected Short StoriesAraby by James Joyce
The Rocking-Horse Winner by D.H. Lawrence The Lagoon by Joseph Conrad
Selected NonfictionFrom A Room of Ones Own by Virginia Woolf Shooting an Elephant by
George Orwell
Assessment: Final examination, comprehensive content-based written examination on
literature from semester one Evaluative Essay 4
Semester Two Reading and Writing Schedule:
Entry Reading Requirement
Before entering the second semester of this course, students must select and read one of the
following works:
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
House Made of Dawn by N Scott Momaday

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
King Lear by William Shakespeare
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
Silas Marner by George Eliot
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence

Students will complete a Written Response Journal/Quote Project for the work they select and
submit the journal on the first day of second semester. The first major unit of the second
semester will culminate in a research paper based on some particular aspect of the chosen work.

Week 1: Literary Criticism and Analysis: Seven Approaches to Literary

Criticism
Texts:
Critical Strategies for Reading. The Bedford Introduction to Literature.
Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2005. Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin Eveline by James Joyce
Assessment: Cooperative group application/presentation of various critical strategies

Weeks 2-4: Independent Literary Research and Critical Analysis

Instruction in location, retrieval, and use of information from various sources as applied to a
writers thesis
Instruction in documentation of primary and secondary source information MLA format
Completion of a literary analysis research paper
Texts: Selected novels (see previously cited entry reading requirements)
Assessment: Student research papers assessed using rubric and student checklist; ongoing
process assessment through note card submissions and draft thesis statement
Week 5-8: Literature and politics
Texts: 1984 George Orwell
Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury
Harrison Bergeron - Kurt
Vonnegut
Various critical analysis essays
Assessment: Objective/essay tests
Analytical Essay 3
Student pairs report on selected essays

Weeks 9-11: Literary Techniques: Connotative Language and Literary Devices

Texts: Selected works from poets Frost, Yeats, Donne, Blake, Plath, Wordsworth, Walcott, Hughes,
Keats, Coleridge, and Shelley

Assessment: Written analysis of literary devices such as allegory, allusion, conceit, irony,
metaphor, paradox, simile, and symbol in the context of selected poems

Weeks 12-13: The Absurdity of Existence

Texts: The Novella--Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville
Assessment: AP timed thematic essays
Analytical Essay 4

Week 14: AP Examination Review

Teacher and student groups report on significant concepts from the literature and discuss ways
to achieve success on the AP examination.
Assessment: Practice objective tests and writing assignments

Weeks 15-18: Post AP Examination Unit: The Novel

Texts: Students will select a classic or modern novel from the AP list of recommended works.
Assessment: Thematic analysis of individual novels
Final Examination - comprehensive content-based on semester two literature

Student Texts:
Arp, Thomas R., ed. Perrines Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense. New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1987.
Chin, Beverly Ann et al. Glencoe Literature: The Readers Choice British Literature. New York:
Glencoe/McGraw Hill, 2000.
Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1995.
Meyer, Michael, ed. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2005.
Perrine, Laurence and Thomas R. Arp. Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry. Orlando:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1963.
Supplemental Resources:
College Board AP Central. http://apcentral.collegeboard.com.
College Board. AP English Course Description. New York: The College Board, 2006.

Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. New York: The Modern Language
Association of America, 2003.
Oliver, Mary. A Poetry Handbook. New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1994.