essential english

This course offers students practice with reading comprehension, writing for purpose, vocabulary development, and opportunities to develop speaking and listening skills. During this course, students read three novels paired with short stories, poems, and non-fiction text to enrich students’ understanding of topics, symbols and themes of the novels. In particular, we will explore the themes of Individual, Familial and Social Identities and study how identity is formed through individual choices and choices impacted by our family and society. Students are expected to engage actively in class discussions that promote higher-level critical thinking and inference skills. Their writing will also progress through building strong thesis statements and paragraph development. After completing this course, students will develop writing and verbal skills needed for test taking, academic work, and future professional careers. Students will practice critical thinking of texts, writing short informal

Topics Covered

Topics Covered

Topics Covered

UNIT 1: INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY

Understanding Ourselves Through Literature
Understanding Ourselves Through Literature: Poetry as a Friend
Understanding Ourselves Through Literature: Poetry, Nature, and Inner Peace
Exploring Intelligence and Disability in Literature
Charlie as Narrator: Reliable or Unreliable?
Theme and Understanding Charlie’s Dilemmas
Symbolism in Charlie and Algernon’s Relationship
Diction and Wording Charlie’s Future
Concluding Flowers For Algernon

UNIT 2: IDENTITY AND FAMILY Session 10: Identity and

Family in American Chinese Culture
Dialogue and Giving A Voice to Written Characters
Blurred Boundaries Between Genre: Fiction and Nonfiction

UNIT 3: IDENTITY AND SOCIETY Session 13: Introduction to

Identity and Society in The Giver
Learn how to develop an essay thesis topic.
Learn how to develop persuasive text-based body paragraphs

Outcomes

Topics Covered

Topics Covered

Critical analysis of texts: Students will be introduced and practice critical thinking skills.
Writing evidence-based arguments: Students will learn to write an argumentative and evidence-based essays.
Logic and craft: Students will gain practice in logically organizing sentences and paragraphs.