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To understand, share, and compile the literature researched in the first interim year of independent study
To use this research as a basis for discussion, lesson design, and learning by cooperative presentation
To be able to create courses which reflect a three-folding of content for grades 10 and 11
To introduce students to the themes of classics in literature and history, especially as they relate to grade 10
To practice a "Socratic" methodology appropriate for the tenth grade
The first part of this course includes an overview of the tenth grade English curriculum, with particular focus on the history of the English language from its Anglo-Saxon tap root to the present time. We read Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet as an example of how literature supports the "breaking of the blood tie" deeply experienced by the sixteen year old.
For the latter part of the course, we take up the tenth grade curriculum of the classics, which is designed to catapult the student back in time to the very origins of culture. Our aim is to familiarize ourselves with content that might be covered during this year and to introduce a "Socratic" methodology that may most fruitfully engage sophomores who are often adrift in tempestuous seas.
What "works" with the tenth grader; selection of texts (poetry, short stories, plays, and novels); skills that are best developed at this age (differences between the contrast of grade 9 and the comparison of grade 10); an approach to the writing of poetry; the origins of English; the Indo-European migrations; the Celts, Romans, and Anglo-Saxons; Old English; the Norman conquest, Middle English, Chaucer.
Using journals and models to improve writing skills; the five-part essay; Modern English, Shakespeare, the printing press and standardization of spelling, the seventeenth century and beyond; Romeo and Juliet, the masculine and feminine, the power of love.
A glance at the Mbuti culture in Africa; Ancient India and the origins of Hinduism as described in the Bhagavad-Gita; Persia's forces of darkness and light; Egypt's gods and grandeur. In literature, the evolution and art of poetry -- review of epic, lyric, and dramatic genres; introduction of metrical and sound devices in ancient and modern poetry to understand "how" a poem means.
The Golden Age of Greece -- the Persian Wars; the seeds of democracy; the origins of drama; the Athenian versus the Spartan ideal; Socrates' life and death. In literature, a special look at Homer's Odyssey as a mirror of the tenth grade experience.
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