The Van Geons Experience

Van Geons Classroom
Misenheimer, NC

English II

  

World Literature

 

 

Course Syllabus

 Letter to Parents and Guardians

Journaling Assignments  for Semesters One and Two

 

10225 Honors World Literature 

Full Year Course

NOTE: State Required Writing Test This course, typically taken in the tenth grade, emphasizes personal narrative, descriptive, and expository papers with a focus on a review of grammar and usage. The curriculum will cover a variety of authors and selections from world literature, short stories, novels, drama, and poetry. The instructor will stress vocabulary development and require written literary analysis that will develop thinking, organizing, and public speaking skills. A summer reading project is required.

  • English II- World Literature

THESE ASSIGNMENTS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE. I WILL UPDATE EACH WEEK REGULARLY, BUT DO NOT JUMP AHEAD . YOU MUST BE PRESENT IN CLASS TO GET THESE UPDATES.

 

Week One and Week Two Handouts

Week One

Day One- Syllabus

Journal writing – print journal prompts

Day Two- Review Syllabus

“What About Me?” activity

Due tomorrow (prefer via email)

Kite Runner paper due tomorrow- via email as an attached Word document- to

tvangeons@gmail.com

Day Three

  1. What turning points determine our individual pathways to adulthood?
  2. What can you learn about yourself by studying the lives of others?
  1.  How does what others think about you affect how you think about yourself?

 

What About Me? Activity due

Kite Runner paper due via email

Give Kite Runner questions and project choices- (questions and projects due Friday, September 5, 2008)

- BlogSpot – read “How to Blog” and complete English II Blog Assignment One for Kite Runner-  http://vangeons.blogspot.com/

 

Week Two

Daybook Journal Writing for Week – In class journaling

  1.  In a culture where we are bombarded with other people trying to define us, how do we make decisions for ourselves?
  2. What is the relationship between decisions and consequences?

 

Day One-

  • Journal prompt of “Has anyone ever kept something important from you?  How did you feel after you found out?”  When the students are done writing, we will discuss briefly what the students wrote and how they felt in their particular circumstances.
  • Students will begin work on their in-class presentation with their partner (due Friday)
  • Listen to an interview with the author on NPR- respond reflectively to the audiofile in your daybook.

 

Day Two-      

journal on the following quote: “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” - Andy Warhol. 

Q&A session about what they think Farid meant when he told Amir, “You’ve always been a tourist here, you just didn’t know it” (232).  What does this tourist metaphor say about the changing times?

 

Students will discuss news media and stereotypes about Afghanistan, 9/11, etc.  and will be asked to respond reflectively orally and written.

 

Day Three-     Copies of the two before-and-after pictures from Time of the woman who represented the suffering in Afghanistan (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/03/0311_020312_sharbat_2.html) (http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/100best/multi1_interview.html) :

Students work on presentations, finish daybook work

 

Day Four-     

Students presentations - work on them

 

 

Week Three and Week Four Handouts

 

  • Jewish Terms and Vocab for Night
  • "Hitler's First Photograph," "First They Came for the Jews", "To the Little Boy Standing With His Arms Raised" poetry in a Word Document
  • Specific Examples of Kindness, Cruelty, Selfishness, and Unselfishness Assignment
  • Who is Responsible? Activity
  • Film Paper Assignment due Sept 17
  • Night Essay Questions (Test Grade) due Sept 15
  • Night Study Questions for novel study (to be written in daybook) due Sept 15th
  • Student Created Webpage Assignment 
  • Journaling
  • Reciprocal Teaching/Dialectical Journaling

Week Five, Six, and Seven Assignments and Handouts

Week Eight:            

Week Nine            

  • Religious Literature and Creation Stories- Hindu, Hebrew, Chinese, others
  • Reciprocal Teaching/Dialectical Journaling

Week Ten           

Week Eleven                   

  • Dante’s Inferno
  • Journaling
  • Reciprocal Teaching/Dialectical Journaling

Week Twelve                     

  • Dante’s Inferno
  • Journaling
  • Reciprocal Teaching/Dialectical Journaling

Week Thirteen       

Week Fourteen                       

Week Fifteen                         

Week Sixteen                       

Week Seventeen                    

  • Exam Prep / Writing Workshops

Week Eighteen           

  • Exam Prep

Week Nineteen                    

Week Twenty                         

Week Twenty One      

  • Drama- Macbeth
  • Journaling
  • Reciprocal Teaching/Dialectical Journaling

Week Twenty Two    

  • Drama- Macbeth
  • Journaling
  • Reciprocal Teaching/Dialectical Journaling

Week Twenty Three               

Week Twenty Four                

 

Week Twenty Five                 

  • begin  Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
  • Journaling
  • Reciprocal Teaching/Dialectical Journaling

Week Twenty Six                  

  • Like Water for Chocolate, magical realism, Research project due
  • Journaling
  • Reciprocal Teaching/Dialectical Journaling

Week Twenty Seven             

  • Multigenre project, Oedipus and Antigone
  • Journaling
  • Reciprocal Teaching/Dialectical Journaling

Week Twenty Eight               

  • Multigenre project, Oedipus and Antigone
  • Journaling
  • Reciprocal Teaching/Dialectical Journaling

Week Twenty Nine 

Week Thirty                           

  • Reading project/ Lit. Circles to begin (Stolen Lives or The  Poisonwood Bible), Multigenre project due
  • Journaling
  • Reciprocal Teaching/Dialectical Journaling

Week Thirty One    

  • Reading project/ Lit. Circles to begin (Stolen Lives or The Poisonwood Bible), give Oral History project assignment
  • Journaling
  • Reciprocal Teaching/Dialectical Journaling  

Week Thirty Two  

  • Reading project/ Lit. Circles to begin (Stolen Lives or The  Poisonwood Bible)
  • Journaling
  • Reciprocal Teaching/Dialectical Journaling

Week Thirty Three                 

  • Writing Workshops
  • Journaling
  • Reciprocal Teaching/Dialectical Journaling

Week Thirty Four                   

  • Final paper due for Reading project/Lit circles
  • Journaling
  • Reciprocal Teaching/Dialectical Journaling

Week Thirty Five                   

  • Oral history projects due- Film Festival, begin Blindness by Jose  Saramago       
  • Journaling
  • Reciprocal Teaching/Dialectical Journaling

Week Thirty Six                     

  • Blindness by Jose Saramago  
  • Journaling
  • Reciprocal Teaching/Dialectical Journaling

Week Thirty Seven                

  • Blindness by Jose Saramago  / Plato's "The Cave" 
  • Journaling
  • Reciprocal Teaching/Dialectical Journaling

Week Thirty Eight                 

  • Socratic Seminars about yearlong studies, review for final
  • Journaling
  • Reciprocal Teaching/Dialectical Journaling

Week Thirty Nine           

  •  Finals

 

 

 

 

 

Former Technology Projects for My Class

~

Guidelines for:

 

 Reciprocal Teaching

 Dialectical Journals

 Dense Questioning

 



 

 

 

Tara E. Van Geons.

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Van Geons Classroom
Misenheimer, NC