English III American Literature is designed to support students in developing proficiency in key reading, writing, and language skills. The instruction supports students’ mastery of the Common Core ELA Standards and prepares students for success in future course, college, and the workplace.
This course emphasizes skills and strategies for independent close reading, analysis, and writing about a wide range of American literature texts. The course begins with an overview of effective reading and writing techniques that are applicable to all course materials and exercises. The characteristics of American literature – and why they are uniquely American - are discussed. The evolution of American literature is explained via an overview of the periods of American Literature.
As the course progresses, this first semester delves deeply into Native American literature, the Colonial Period, the Revolutionary Period, and Romanticism. Instruction in each standards-based unit of study integrates reading, writing, and language study while highlighting how literature reflects social, political, and moral issues during each period in the U.S.
Students have multiple opportunities to showcase what they learn throughout the course as they are encouraged to articulate their own ideas as well as to question, interpret, analyze, extend, and evaluate the ideas of others. The goal of instruction is to support students in acquiring critical knowledge while learning to become independent, strategic, and critical readers, effective writers, and skilled communicators.
Syllabus:
Semester 1:
Section 1 - Introduction and the Beginnings of American Literature
Objectives:
Section 1 includes lessons that focus on American Literature from the earliest Native American contributions to the Romantic Period.
The lessons in this section will help you:
- Demonstrate knowledge of eighteenth-, nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century foundational works of American literature
- Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.
- Delineate and evaluate the reasoning in seminal U.S. texts
- Analyze seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century foundational U.S. documents of historical and literary significance
- Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
Lesson 1 is designed to provide you with the necessary tools to be successful in the course.
This lesson will:
- Provide you with several ways to use notetaking for text analysis.
- Teach you how to master active reading.
- Explain how to go beyond a text for maximum comprehension.
- Show you how to organize your writing and avoid plagiarism.
- Give you the proper format for citing sources used in your writing.
Lesson 2 covers the characteristics and evolution of American Literature. You will also receive an overview of the periods of American Literature we will cover in the course.
In this lesson you will:
- Learn what makes American Literature uniquely American.
- Understand how American Literature developed over time.
- Explore sample texts from major periods of American Literature.
- Learn what makes a great piece of literature and why it is important to read the classics.
Lesson 3 focuses on using language in a formal context.
This lesson will help you:
- Understand the historical context of Native American Literature.
- Learn to write an objective summary of a text.
- Analyze a text.
- Consider how a sequence of events can create a coherent story and build toward a particular tone and outcome.
- Understand archetypes in literature.
- Polish your writing to successfully complete the assignments related to the lesson.
In Lesson 4A, you will learn what makes a story remarkable and various tools and storytelling techniques that writers use to craft a compelling narrative.
This lesson will help you:
- Understand the importance of plot and its five parts.
- Understand multiple plot lines.
- Learn to recognize and use various storytelling techniques.
- Understand concepts like point of view, mood, and tone.
- Develop characters through narrative techniques like dialogue.
In Lesson 4B, you will analyze a piece of Colonial Period literature.
This lesson will help you:
- Use what you previously learned about plot in a practical manner.
- Understand literary devices like foreshadowing.
- Identify narrative techniques like pacing.
- Better understand point of view.
- Develop characters via various techniques.
Lessons:
- How to Be Successful in this Course
- Introduction to American Literature
- Native American Literature
- Writer’s Tools and Storytelling Techniques
- The First American Bestseller
Section 2 - Colonial Period American Literature
Objectives:
Section 2 includes lessons that focus on Colonial Period American literature.
The lessons in this section will help you:
- Understand the characteristics of Colonial Period literature and the authors who wrote it.
- Acquire a better understanding of poetry and how to analyze it.
- Read and analyze informational texts.
- Compare different writing styles.
- Understand literary attributes such as nuance, syntax, and usage.
Lesson 1 focuses on poetry and various attributes that poets use to convey meaning.
This lesson will help you:
- Use specific tools to analyze poetry.
- Extract meaning from poems by understanding figurative language and literary devices that poets use to convey meaning.
- Understand how structure impacts meaning.
- Learn about theme and how to identify it.
- Understand figures of speech, nuance, syntax, and language usage.
Lesson 2 continues your study of Colonial Period American Literature with a look at informational texts.
In this lesson you will:
- Interpret informational texts to understand how Puritan values influenced literature.
- Learn to analyze a sequence of events.
- Consider how events in a text interact to produce a particular outcome.
- Understand argument and persuasion in a text.
- Learn to develop a persuasive argument.
- Consider visual argument.
Lesson 3 focuses on comparing texts from the Colonial Period.
This lesson will help you:
- Explore Puritan plain style writing.
- Contrast plain style and ornate style writing.
- Compare texts.
Lesson 4, you will read from Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack. This work is important because it inspired many future publications.
This lesson will help you:
- Consider English language conventions.
- Use context clues to uncover the meaning of a text.
- Learn about connotative meaning.
- Understand how authors shape a text to create meaning.
Lessons:
- Colonial Literature
- Exploring Informational Texts via the Salem Witch Trials
- Comparing Texts
- Ben Franklin/Poor Richard’s Almanac
Section 3 - Revolutionary Period American Literature
Objectives:
Section 3 includes lessons that focus on Revolutionary Literature, which was a time of reason and rational thinking.
The lessons in this section will help you:
- Determine and analyze the theme of a text.
- Interpret words and phrases used in a text.
- Understand how and when to use formal language.
- Analyze similar themes in two different texts.
- Consider how an author’s choices impact a text.
Lesson 1 introduces Revolutionary Literature and its practical purpose.
This lesson will help you:
- Understand the historical and social context of Revolutionary Literature.
- Learn about effective nonfiction writing via foundational documents.
- Understand how structure impacts a text.
- Gain insight into author perspective and rhetorical devices in persuasive texts.
- Learn to extract meaning from a text.
- Evaluate a text for literary devices like satire and irony that can enhance meaning.
Lesson 2 focuses on Patrick Henry’s famous speech, “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!”
In this lesson you will:
- Learn to identify and analyze the arguments, appeals, and rhetorical strategies
- Understand the structure of a classical argument.
- Learn various rhetorical appeals and persuasive techniques.
- Consider point of view and purpose.
- Determine themes.
- Learn to detect logical fallacies (flaws in reasoning).
Lesson 3 is intended to raise our collective awareness about the plight of marginalized individuals who were enslaved in the traditional sense (held captive and used for forced labor), explore the impact on American literature, and draw logical connections between events and literature.
This lesson will help you:
- Understand the origins of slavery for historical context.
- Detect explicit, implicit, and missing information in a text.
- Consider themes and how they interact.
Lesson 4, you will analyze the Declaration of Independence, a foundational U.S. informational text.
This lesson will help you:
- Evaluate seminal U.S. documents with historical and literary significance.
- Evaluate the structure of the Declaration of Independence to appreciate the importance of structure in clarifying a text.
- Consider the meaning of words and phrases in a document and how they help convey meaning.
- Build on what you previously learned about various persuasive techniques in writing.
Lesson 5 key concepts are taught in the context of our continued discussion of slavery in America.
This lesson will help you:
- Evaluate seminal U.S. documents with historical and literary significance.
- Discuss how these documents address similar themes, topics, and ideas.
- Further evaluate persuasive techniques in informational texts.
- Analyze a speech for meaning, explicit and implicit details, and figurative language.
- Evaluate poetry that paved the way for future African American writers.
Lessons:
- Introduction to Revolutionary Literature
- An Analysis of “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!”
- Introduction to Slavery in America
- Slavery in Historical Context
- Confronting Slavery in America
Section 4 - Romantic Period Literature
Objectives:
Section 4 includes lessons that focus on the Romantic Period in American Literature.
The lessons in this section will help you:
- Determine and analyze the theme of a text.
- Interpret words and phrases used in a text.
- Understand how and when to use formal language.
- Compare how different authors approach similar themes.
Lesson 1 introduces Romanticism.
This lesson will help you:
- Understand literary techniques, like symbolism, that authors use to impart meaning into a text.
- Explore figurative language and literary devices in Romantic Period literature.
- Learn how to read a text to extract meaning.
- Determine theme in a text.
- Summarize key supporting details and ideas that support your analysis of the theme.
Lesson 2 covers Romantic Period author, Washington Irving, who is considered the Father of the Short Story.
In this lesson you will:
- Learn to analyze a short story.
- Understand how the author uses rich, colorful figurative language to engage readers.
- Carefully evaluate a text for rich details and elements of Romanticism.
- Learn to summarize major events in a story.
Lesson 3 focuses on the writing of Edgar Allan Poe and the elements of poetry.
This lesson will help you:
- Explore elements such as setting, tone, and point of view to garner understanding of a text.
- Uncover connotative meanings and nuance in poetry.
Lesson 4, you will compare an American Romantic Period dramatist’s writing to that of a Shakespearean play.
This lesson will help you:
- Understand Shakespeare’s significant influence on American Literature.
- Learn more about how text structure contributes to the overall meaning of a text.
- Understand Drama as a genre of literature.
- Compare Romantic Period literature to Shakespearean drama.
- Gain further insight into the use of language and word relationships in Romantic Period literature.
Lesson 5, you will learn how four specific years of the American Romantic Literary Period: 1861-1865, when the Civil War occurred, impacted American literature.
This lesson will help you:
- Understand why the Civil War had a significant impact on American Literature.
- Read and comprehend wartime poetry and further your understanding of poetic devices.
- Deepen your understanding of point of view through works by female Romantic Period authors.
- Explore key literary concepts through a historical novel and a controversial text said to spur the Civil War’s beginning.
Lessons:
- Introduction to Romanticism
- Father of the American Short Story – Washington Irving
- Poe’s Literature
- Shakespeare’s Influence on Romantic Literature
- Civil War Literature (1861-1865)
