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In this 16-week self-paced (asynchronous) class, students will do the first half of Introduction to Literature and Composition where we will analyze fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and write poems, a short story, and papers/essays on related topics. If students are taking the class for an academic grade, they should plan on spending several hours a week on the class for the lessons, homework, projects, and reading. 

This class can be used as a core English/Literature/Language Arts/ELA course for 9th or 10th grade (US standards). For non US-students, please contact me and I can send you the standards to see if it will suit your high school/secondary school year 9, 10, or 11 student's needs.  

This class uses the Moving Beyond the Page Language Arts curriculum. As such learners will use literature to learn language arts, develop their critical thinking and creativity skills, and use the 6+1 traits of writing approach (Ideas, Organization, Voice, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency, Conventions, Presentations). A Summary of Skills will be provided when you enroll that tells you which state and national (US) standards that each unit covers for your own planning and any documentation requirements that you need to submit to your local authorities.  

There are NO live meetings for this course. Multiple posts will be made to the classroom which will include: video lessons on the text and language arts/grammar lessons, discussion questions on the reading, homework post which will include the reading and worksheet/writing/creative project assignment, and question/answer posts regarding language arts, vocabulary, and grammar. 

To Kill a Mockingbird Unit - 4 weeks
In this unit, you will read TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee, a critically acclaimed novel that deals with serious social issues such as rape and racial inequality. This coming-of-age story follows young Jean Louise Finch, also known as Scout, as she navigates life with the guidance of her father, Atticus Finch. At the end of the unit, you will watch the movie TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962) and give an oral presentation on the book. 

Short Stories Unit - 4 weeks
In this unit, you will explore popular short stories and the literary devices that authors use to create them. These devices include irony, characterization, symbolism, and point of view. You will also learn how to analyze a short story and its main themes using textual evidence to support your claims. This unit features work by Edgar Allan Poe, Alice Walker, Langston Hughes, and Kurt Vonnegut. For the unit’s final project, you will plan, draft, and revise a short story of your own creation.

Poetry Unit - 4 weeks
In this unit, you will learn about various types of poems and how they are structured from 100 BEST-LOVED POEMS by Dover Thrift. You will explore common elements found in poetry including figurative language, sound and rhythm, rhyme schemes, and voice and tone. You will also read THE CROSSOVER by Kwame Alexander, a novel in verse, about two twin brothers and the game of basketball. You will learn how to recite poetry, and for your final project, you will choose from a series of projects that allow you to explore poetry in a variety of ways.

Nonfiction Unit - 4 weeks
In this unit, you will read a variety of nonfiction writing, including a memoir (I AM MALALA or A LONG WAY GONE). The texts are all by authors who overcame challenging personal experiences to advocate for freedom, peace, and human rights. The works studied include a letter composed by a legendary civil rights leader, an essay written by an American abolitionist, a speech given by a Holocaust survivor, and the account of a teenager forced to become a soldier in his country's civil war and/or the narrative of a young woman fighting to ensure that girls have the right to be educated. For the unit's final project, you will write an informative essay or give an oral presentation about a topic that is important to you. Due to the length of the memoirs, students will pick which one they wish to focus on for the class: I AM MALALA by Malala Yousafzai or A LONG WAY GONE by Ishmael Beah. 

The Grammar Unit will be covered throughout the semester and will include the following topics:
This first-semester grammar unit will review the parts of speech and cover some common problems that writers face, including subject-verb agreement, commonly confused words, the correct use of pronouns, and covers punctuation use (commas, colons, semicolons, dashes, and parentheses).