This course is at the middle school honors level, but is also perfect to help your learner sharper their skills and prepare for high school.  

Elevate your literary skills in this 6-week Honors ELA course. We will explore three compelling short stories: "A Jury of Her Peers" by Susan Glaspell, "Dark They Were and Golden-Eyed" by Ray Bradbury, and "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. Spending two weeks on each story, students will engage in deep literary analysis, focusing on essential skills and literary devices. Through these narratives, learners will demonstrate proficiency inferring, uncovering themes, and identifying symbolism. They will also analyze rhetoric, supporting interpretations with evidence, analyzing plot and character development, conducting character analyses, and understanding and composing expository texts. Additionally, students will build connections between the texts and broader literary and societal concepts. This course is designed to challenge and enhance the analytical abilities of honors students, preparing them for advanced literary studies.

All three short stories are at a ninth grade reading level and vocabulary lists will be provided. All stories will also be shared in the classroom as a PDF. Our first story, A Jury of her Peers, will be annotated for learners, but they will be expected to annotate their own copies and our subsequent stories on their own. With the exception of "The Lottery," learners are expected to read our stories on their own prior to class so they can be prepared for our close reading- a second reading that allows for deep analysis now that the outcomes of the story are know on a basic level with the first reading.