English Textbooks: Books will be purchased and billed as needed.

The Third Form teaches the skills and habits that will lead to success at every other level. Writing instruction begins with pre-writing: paying attention to the subject matter, collecting material, brainstorming, and planning. The composition stage begins with teaching control at the sentence level, from correctness to clarity and force. As the year unfolds, we teach them to create various kinds of unified, coherent, and thorough paragraphs. They move from writing about their own experiences to writing basic analysis and argument. We believe that good writing is about getting the right word into the right place, so they study grammar and vocabulary. They learn to build and punctuate every kind of sentence–and how to take them apart and fix them when they aren’t working.

Reading instruction focuses on noticing and remembering details, discerning patterns and structures, and making crucial inferences. To this end, we teach them how to pay sustained attention to a text and how to mark and take notes. We teach them to read in all the core genres: fiction, poetry, drama, and essays. In all their reading, they practice connecting what a text is doing with how it does it as we teach them to tell the difference between, figurative and literal language, to identify tone, point of view, structure, and other essentials.

In both reading and writing, we teach them to think clearly, using sound logic and creativity. We teach them to make clear claims and to back them up with evidence and explanation, but we also want them to be inventive in solving problems. The core elements of this class will be repeated in a constantly widening and deepening spiral of sophistication for the next four years.

The core elements of this class will be repeated in a constantly widening and deepening spiral of sophistication for the next four years.

English Textbooks: Books will be purchased and billed as needed.

Fourth Form English is a direct continuation of the work begun in the Third Form, but the challenges increase, and the skills become more complex. They read more demanding texts and write longer, more substantial pieces. They develop a new level of grammatical control as their vocabulary grows. They are challenged to make more subtle inferences in their reading, as they practice backing up their claims with textual evidence.

English Textbooks: Books will be purchased and billed as needed.

The roots of literature are deep in the collective human psyche. To understand what literature is really doing, this class will look at where it comes from: myths, legends, and fairy tales.The course will also look at how specific writers have reinterpreted ancient stories and forms to speak to their own day and time. 

English Textbooks: Books will be purchased and billed as needed.

This course will study works of literature that have been staged in theater productions and films. Students will study the primary works and ponder the central themes and dynamics, and then they will look at the way they have been translated into dramatic works. 

English Textbooks: Books will be purchased and billed as needed.

The American historian Frederick Jackson Turner said in 1893 that “American energy will continually demand a wider field for its exercise.” A hundred years later, on the syndicated TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation, Captain Jean-Luc Picard called space “the final frontier.”  And in 2022, the Western film The Power of the Dog was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. What’s the continuing appeal of “the frontier”?  What is a frontier, anyway? These questions and more will be explored through a thorough study of the narrative.

English Textbooks: Books will be purchased and billed as needed.

A man goes to a strange land; troubles ensue. It’s the plot of a thousand great stories new and old, but also of religious, racial, and colonial conflicts and confrontations across the world. The questions these experiences raise are as important as ever: Who is civilized, and who is savage? Can outsiders ever understand foreign cultures, let alone join them? Students in this class will travel through stories to other continents and other worlds, and see their own through foreign eyes.

English Textbooks: Books will be purchased and billed as needed.

The American historian Frederick Jackson Turner said in 1893 that “American energy will continually demand a wider field for its exercise.” A hundred years later, on the syndicated TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation, Captain Jean-Luc Picard called space “the final frontier.”  And in 2022, the Western film The Power of the Dog was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. What’s the continuing appeal of “the frontier”?  What is a frontier, anyway? These questions and more will be explored through a thorough study of the narrative.

English Textbooks: Books will be purchased and billed as needed.

This course is for those who have a passion for (or special interest in) creative writing. We will be taking pieces from the stage of raw notes into finished, polished pieces which, we hope, will be worthy of publication in The Talon or elsewhere. We will write non-fiction pieces, short stories, and poems; we will work on every stage of writing from research to editing; we will draw inspiration (and ideas) from masters of each genre. We will also be working closely with visiting professional writers.

NOTE:  This course is the English Department’s version of an STS.  You must apply for this by emailing Mr. Hale and expressing why you would be a good candidate for it, and you must have the support of one of your previous teachers or Mr. Wright (via The Talon).