Freshman Honors – 9th Grade
Freshman Honors is the first English course in the Pre-AP plan in which your child has chosen to partake. Parents and students are advised that this course is extremely rigorous and is not equivalent to previous English classes.
Ninth Grade English is a required course in which students will demonstrate their knowledge in the areas of literature, basic reading skills and strategies, composition, vocabulary, oral communication and grammar. Students will be encouraged to develop critical thinking skills and an appreciation of literature. The works studied in this course are chosen based on literary merit and meet the requirements of the Georgia Performance Standards and prepare students for the End-of- course-test. Student writing and oral assignments will be generated from works studied and will focus on literary critique, analysis, and evaluation. Student writing assignments steep from the literature; they are designed for the student to structure ideas and arguments and to express a personal response to literature.
British Literature – 11th Grade
British Literature is a required English course and traces the development of literature in Great Britain roughly from the Anglo-Saxon Era to the Twentieth Century. This course will increase the students’ awareness of historical and cultural influences on literature as well as the growth and evolution of the English language. It will also trace the growth of literary genres. The works studied in this course are chosen based on literary merit and meet the requirements of the Georgia Performance Standards and prepare students for the Georgia High School Graduation Test (Writing). Student writing and oral assignments will be generated from works studied and will focus on literary critique, analysis, and evaluation. Student writing assignments step from the literature; they are designed for the student to structure ideas and arguments and to express a personal response to literature.
Advanced Placement – 12th Grade
An AP English Literature and Composition course engages students in the careful reading and critical analysis of literature. Through the close reading of selected texts, students deepen their understanding of the ways writers use language to provide both meaning and pleasure for their readers. As they read, students consider a work’s structure, style, and themes as well as such smaller-scale elements as the use of figurative language, imagery, symbolism, and tone (AP Central).
The AP Literature and Composition course is a humanities course designed to expose students to a variety of authors through a series of challenging, meaningful activities in preparation for the National Exam in May. This course is extremely rigorous and demanding. Parents and students are reminded that a successful college prep student does not necessarily equate a successful AP student as the nature of the course is too diverse. College Prep writing is not AP writing, and students are forewarned of this change in writing and thinking. We will address the big questions that have prompted people to use metaphor: “Who am I?” “Do I have choices?” “What makes me do the things I wish I would not do?” “How do I act in my community?” “Who is my neighbor?” The literary choices should both define ourselves and force us to question our assumptions about ourselves. We will also learn the language of criticism and discover new ways to talk about literature while preparing for the national exam. An intense vocabulary, consisting of literary terms and morphemes is also included in the course.