This survey course explores American Literature through the lens of storytelling: what are the stories from America’s past that help us understand where we are today, and how have they evolved. With each of these units, we will be emphasizing how the stories we tell about America both inform and create American identity. This course will emphasize the nuts and bolts of analytical writing, and will also include two opportunities for students to begin working on personal essay writing. In the fall, we will be focusing on the idea of “origin stories”, both personal and cultural. In the winter term we will be exploring how the narrative of the African American experience has shifted over the past 150 years. In the spring, we will be looking at 21st century stories.  Readings include Kindred, The Things They Carried, The Crucible, Hunger, A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Fences, Passing, as well as poetry, short stories, and supplemental readings.

Students must complete an application process and receive departmental approval.  This yearlong course emphasizes developing writing and reading skills that will be expanded on in junior AP English. The fall term will focus on writing structures and the idea of “origin stories”, both personal and cultural; the winter term will focus on the evolution of African American literary narratives over the past 150 years; and the spring term will focus on contemporary narratives. With each of these units, we will be emphasizing how the stories we tell about America both inform and create American identity. Readings include Kindred, The Things They Carried, The Crucible, Hunger, A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Fences, Passing, as well as poetry, short stories, and supplemental readings.

This course is designed for students who are new to Vermont Academy and whose first language is not English. The goal of the course is for students to develop their English communication and historical thinking skills through papers, projects, and presentations while focusing on acquiring a better understanding of American culture. A good deal of time will be dedicated to defining the concepts of liberty, rights, and freedom as they pertain to what it means to be “American” and how this ideas define the national identity of the United States.

Open to 11th and 12th Grades Students must complete an application process and receive departmental approval.  All students in the course are required to take the AP exam at the end of the year and pay the corresponding test fee. This course will prepare students for the AP Literature exam with emphasis on thesis building, sentence variety and precision, essay writing, critical analysis, and, of course, understanding test strategies.  The course will also take on thematic questions about the vision and idea of America in fiction as well as topics around history, legacy, power, and world-making in works of fiction, drama, and poetry.  The readings for the fall term will include the summer reading Ceremony by Leslie Mormon Silko, paired with the short stories from The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. We will read a selection of poetry and focus on word-level analysis and quote efficiency and literary terms, and then end the term with Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and a selection of Hawthorne Short Stories. In the winter term, we will focus on close reading, beginning with Shakespeare’s play Othello during the interim, and then Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, and August Wilson’s Fences. We will also read poetry from the Harlem Renaissance and a compilation of African American short stories and. In the spring we will read Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gillman, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, and The paired texts of Passing and The Great Gatsby, concluding with the AP exam in May.

English 9: The Quest
No prerequisites
In this year-long course for ninth graders, students will explore archetypes and how they
reoccur in the literature of different cultures throughout the ages. They will examine
mythology, fairy tales, fables, novels, and films to investigate this idea throughout the
course. By studying this premise, students will develop a firm understanding of how
archetypes mirror the human experience. They will also solidify their knowledge of basic
grammar, strengthen their reflective, analytical, and creative writing skills, and expand
their vocabulary. Differentiated instruction is a key element of this heterogeneous class.

This is a year-long credit course which concentrates on teaching English as a secondary language. Students acquire listening and speaking skills and study grammar, vocabulary, reading, and writing. New students will be placed in this course based on teacher recommendation or based on their performance on a placement test given during
orientation. Texts will focus on language acquisition and cultural competency.

Students must complete an application process and receive departmental approval.
Focusing on world literature, this year-long course for seniors is designed to introduce students to a variety of rhetorical styles and to increase students’ repertoire of literary works. Emphasis is placed upon written exercises through which students explore how authors work to convey their meanings, and through which students learn to articulate ideas concisely. Titles may include, but are not limited to: Heart of Darkness, Things Fall Apart; one of Shakespeare’s plays, and Cry, The Beloved Country. Students will also read short stories and poetry from the 17th century to the present.

This course will mimic an introductory college course on film criticism given in English departments throughout our nation’s colleges.  Essentially, students will spend half of their weekly class periods watching a film, and then the other half of the week discussing these films as well as writing about them.  Film Criticism will also include brief instruction and homework assignments about film theory and history. This will give students different disciplines and lenses through which to study and critique the films studied in class.  Finally, films viewed in Film Criticism will span the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from The Birth of a Nation to Brick.

This course will mimic an introductory college course on film criticism given in English departments throughout our nation’s colleges.  Essentially, students will spend half of their weekly class periods watching a film, and then the other half of the week discussing these films as well as writing about them.  Film Criticism will also include brief instruction and homework assignments about film theory and history. This will give students different disciplines and lenses through which to study and critique the films studied in class.  Finally, films viewed in Film Criticism will span the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from The Birth of a Nation to Brick.

This course will mimic an introductory college course on film criticism given in English departments throughout our nation’s colleges.  Essentially, students will spend half of their weekly class periods watching a film, and then the other half of the week discussing these films as well as writing about them.  Film Criticism will also include brief instruction and homework assignments about film theory and history. This will give students different disciplines and lenses through which to study and critique the films studied in class.  Finally, films viewed in Film Criticism will span the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from The Birth of a Nation to Brick.

The first trimester will concentrate on analytical writing and be followed by a choice of two-trimester electives. Choose one of the themes below for 11th grade English.

No prerequisites

Place Based Writing