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CP English IV 2017-2018

Mrs. Vellenga
Periods 2, 3, 4, 5, & 7 -- Room 602

Instructor Contact Information


Mrs. Vellenga
E-mail: javellenga@olatheschools.org
Phone: (913) 780-7160
Office Hours: 7:30-7:55 a.m. & 3:00-3:30 p.m.
Falcon50: Lunch during Session A; Office hours during Session B.
Plan: 6th Period (M,T,Th,F)

Text: Collections: Grade 12. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015.

Course Objectives:
1. Apply strategies and skills to read, understand, analyze, and evaluate a wide variety of print and
electronic texts of depth and complexity in order to be college and career ready.
2. Write to communicate effectively with different audiences for varying purposes.
3. Apply knowledge of language, syntax, conventions, and text presentation to create, critique, and discuss
texts.
4. Develop listening, speaking, and viewing skills to acquire knowledge and communicate effectively with
different audiences for varying purposes.

Focus
The course will focus primarily on your developing clear and analytical writing skills combined with a basic
survey of British literature. The student will be expected to read works of literature, poetry, and non-fiction
with a critical eye in order to regularly participate in seminar-like discussion and respond in writing to those
works in an analytical style.

Course Outline
1st Quarter: Anglo-Saxon literature (Beowulf), College Readiness (scholarship and/or application essay), The
Renaissance (Hamlet by William Shakespeare)

2nd Quarter: The Renaissance (Hamlet by William Shakespeare, lots of poetry), Pride and Prejudice by Jane
Austen

3rd Quarter: The Romantic Poets (William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron,
Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats); The Victorians (Alfred Lord Tennyson, the Brownings, Matthew Arnold,
Thomas Hardy, AE Housman); 1984 by George Orwell

4th Quarter: Modern Poetry (Wilfred Owen, T.S. Eliot); Brave New World by Aldous Huxley; Senior Technology
Conference
Outside Reading
Each student is responsible for reading 600 pages of outside reading each semester, or 300 pages a quarter.
Testing of this reading will be conducted throughout the quarter/semester during class time, or during Falcon
50. This will include some writing, discussion and possibly an oral presentation component. Outside reading is
extremely important in preparation for college. The average weekly reading load, of an incoming college
freshman, is 600 pages a week. To prepare for your transition to college, your reading stamina MUST be strong.
You will work on building your stamina this year.

Materials Required
Composition notebook
Current ancillary literature
Online access to the textbook at home OR a book checked out
Binder/Folder for Handouts
Pencils and blue/black pens (please avoid neon colored ink)
An ample supply of loose-leaf notebook paper

Grading System
Your grade in this class is designed to communicate clearly the extent to which you have mastered the
curriculum of the course. The assessment scale that will be used in this class is no doubt familiar to you by this
stage in your academic careers:

90 100% = A (Exceptional)
80 89% = B (Above Average)
70 79% = C (Average)
60 69% = D (Unsatisfactory)
0 - 59% = F (Failing)

You should feel free to visit with me, before or after school, or during Falcon 50, at any point during the
semester if you have questions regarding your current grade or about ways in which you could improve.

Your final semester grade will be calculated based on a total points basis (first and second quarters combined)
with a cumulative final exam that will be worth approximately 15-20% of the semester grade.

Olathe South Writing Center


Over the course of the year, you will have many writing assignments for this course ranging from paragraphs to
full essays. If you are looking for ways to improve your writing, visiting the Writing Center is a great way to
help. Fifteen minute appointments are available during the Falcon 50 (MTWF in room 215) and during
Seminar (in room 202). You can sign up for an appointment at: www.oswritingcenter.wix.com/oswc.

Final Note from Your Instructor


I am quite excited at the prospect of the coming year. Working together and learning from each other, I know
that we will have success meeting the objectives of this course. I am glad to have each and every one of you in
my class and I look forward to getting to know each of you better as the year progresses.

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