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Old, New Curriculum Vary Widely

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Published: March 6, 2009

Hillsborough County Schools Language Arts

These are examples from the materials teachers are either required or choose to use. It may vary by school and by teacher.

Before SpringBoard

12th Grade - British Literature Chronologically

Unit 1, Old English and Medieval periods: May include excerpts from "Beowulf," Homer's "Iliad," Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales"

Unit 2, The English Renaissance: May include sonnets and poetry, works of Edmund Spenser, Sir Walter Raleigh, Shakespeare, the King James Bible, Sophocles

Unit 3, the 17th and 18th centuries: Poetry, songs and essays including works by John Donne, John Milton, Daniel Defoe, Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson and Sir Isaac Newton.

Unit 4, the Romantic Period: Poetry, including Robert Burns, William Blake, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats and Jane Austen's fiction.

Unit 5, the Victorian Period: Poetry including Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning; and Rudyard Kipling. Fiction by Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte and Leo Tolstoy.

Unit 6, Modern and Postmodern Periods: Poetry including William Butler Yeats, T.S. Eliot and Dylan Thomas; speeches by Sir Winston Churchill and Mohandas K. Gandhi; short stories including those of Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Virginia Wolfe and D.H. Lawrence.

SPRINGBOARD

Grade 12 – Theme: How Perception Changes Meaning

Unit 1 – Perception is Everything: May include readings from Amy Tan's "The Joy Luck Club" or "Shooting An Elephant" by George Orwell; scenes from the films "Forrest Gump" or Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window"; music such as Marvin Gaye's "I Heard it Through the Grapevine." Activities: Create a photo essay; creative a reflective essay

Unit 2 – The Subjects: May include scenes from "My Fair Lady," "The Manchurian Candidate," "Nine to Five," "Cinderella" and "The Legend of Bagger Vance." Activity: Write a script transforming a scene from "Pygmalion" reflecting one of the critical lenses studied (cultural, feminist, archetypal, or Marxist)

Unit 3 – The Story: May include reading "My Sister's Keeper" by Jodi Picoult or "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver; song "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel.

Unit 4 – The Palette: Shakespeare's play, "Othello" and modern film versions of that play; song "The Right to Love" and an essay by Tilden G. Edelstein, "Othello in America: The Drama Of Racial Intermarriage." Activities: staging an interpretation; composing an argumentative timed writing

Unit 5 – The Lighting: Media reports on the 1993 Waco massacre; song, "For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield. Activities: analyzing appeals in the reporting of a current event; examining bias in editorials

Unit 6 – Building the Portfolio; Preparing for the Show: Students research and prepare portfolios. Activities: making an oral presentation; reflecting on reading and writing through critical perspectives.

BEFORE SPRINGBOARD

Grade 11 - American Literature Chronologically

Unit 1 – Beginnings 1750 – Native American myths and legends, writings by Christopher Columbus, John Smith and William Bradford, comparisons with Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff."

Unit 2 – 1750-1800 – Nonfiction, including work by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry with comparisons to John F. Kennedy.

Unit 3- 1800-1870 – Poetry, including William Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holms, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman and fiction from Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne

Unit 4 – 1850-1914 – Songs, including spirituals; speeches, including the Gettysburg Address; nonfiction, including works by Mark Twin, Jack London and Edith Wharton and poems, including works of Edgar Lee Masters and Paul Lawrence Dunbar

Unit 5 – 1914-1946 – Poetry, including work by Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg, and short stories including works by Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner. E.B. White, James Thurber and Langston Hughes

Unit 6 – 1946 -Present – Nonfiction, including works by Carson McCullers, William Safire and Amy Tan; poetry by Sylvia Plath, Robert Hayden and Randall Jarrell; and short stories by E. L. Doctorow and Tim O'Brien; Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible"

SPRINGBOARD

Grade 11 – Theme: The American Dream

Unit 1 – The American Dream: May include excerpts from works by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Dan Rather and Studs Turkel; the poem "Money" by Dana Gioia and clips from the movie "The Godfather, Part II." Activities: presenting findings from a survey; conducting a career search

Unit 2 – American Forums – The Newspaper Op-Ed Page: Includes newspaper articles from the New York Times, The Oregonian and Washington Times; editorial cartoons and letters and A Children Now Poll. Activity: creating an op-ed page

Unit 3 – The Pursuit of Happiness: May include the book, "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer and Andre Dubus' memoir "Digging." Activities: Writing a personal essay; writing a multi-genre paper

Unit 4 - …And Justice for All; May include reading Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" and viewing the 1996 movie by the same name, clips from the movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" and reading The Declaration of Independence, writings of Patrick Henry and Jonathan Edwards and an excerpt from Margaret Chase Smith's Speech on McCarthyism. Activities: creating and presenting a persuasive speech; researching a time period

Unit 5 – The American Journey: Includes the novel, "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston or her essay, "How it Feels To Be Colored Me," the movie or screenplay "Smoke Signals," and the PBS movie "Zora Is My Name." Activities: writing an analytical essay; writing a screenplay

Unit 6 – Revisiting and Reflecting: Students reflect and assess the year's work and submit a portfolio

BEFORE SPRINGBOARD

Grade 10 – World Literature

Unit 1 – Theme: On the Edge – Nonfiction, including works by Sir Edmund Hillary and Jon Krakauer; short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Guy de Maupassant; poems.

Unit 2 – Theme: Striving for Success, including poems by Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Maya Angelou, David Diop; nonfiction, short stories.

Unit 3 - Theme: Clashing Forces – Including: poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Carl Sandburg; short stories such as Doris Lessing's "Through the Tunnel" and O.Henry's "Hearts and Hands," a James Thurber essay and readings from the novel "Snow Falling on Cedars" by David Guterson

Unit 4 – Theme: Turning Points – Including a speech during the Invasion of Constantinople, Pearl S. Buck's short story "The Good Deed" and poems by Franz Kafka and Emily Bronte

Unit 5 – Theme: Expanding Horizons – Including short stories by Virginia Woolf, readings from Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes," essays and poetry

Unit 6 – Genre: Short Stories – Including works by Mark Twain, Anton Chekhov and Stephen Vincent Benet to compare plot, conflict, point of view, character, setting and themes

Unit 7 – Genre: Nonfiction – Including essays by Rachel Carson, Elie Wiesel and Dylan Thomas and reviews or articles by Roger Ebert and Paul O'Neil as comparison

Unit 8 – Genre: Drama – Including work by Sophocles, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Noa Ben Artzi-Pelossof

Unit 9 – Genre: Poetry – including works by William Butler Yeats, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, John Keats and Rudyard Kipling

Unit 10 – Genre: Epics and Legends – Including readings from Miguel de Cervantes' "Don Quixote," T.H. White's "The Once and Future King" and Eric P. Nash's "Star Wars: An Epic for Today"

Source: Hillsborough County Schools

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