class 1: Introduction: What is literature? What is English literature? What is English teaching?

class 2: poetry and sound; alliteration, assonance, consonance, rhyme

class 3: syllabic verse; meter; scansion

class 4: grammar and sentence patterns; enjambment

class 5: acrostics and other graphical forms

class 6: metaphor and other rhetorical devices

class 7: speeches and speaking; Hamlet on hand gestures

class 8: drama and dialogue: film and television

class 9: listening; performing; watching and making videos

class 10: Romeo and Juliet, Act I

class 11: Romeo and Juliet, Acts II-III

class 12: Romeo and Juliet, Acts IV-V

class 13: Romeo and Juliet: selecting and integrating passages into a curriculum; editing; summarizing

class 14: elements of fiction: plot arcs; short fiction

class 15: organization; parallel structure

class 16: specific and concrete details; organizing descriptions;

class 17: translating and composing

class 18: choosing textbooks and teaching materials; review and workshop

n/a

Students will be graded on three written assignments (25% x3 = 75%) and class participation (25%). Attendance is required.

required book:

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (Arden Third Series, or Oxford)

recommended books:

Kenneth Koch, Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?

Kenneth Koch, Wishes, Lies, and Dreams: Teaching Children to Write Poetry

John Holt, How Children Fail

Martha C. Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education

Daniel T. Willingham, Why Don’t Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom

Daniel T. Willingham, When Can You Trust the Experts? How to Tell Good Science From Bad in Education

Daniel T. Willingham, The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads

E.D. Hirsch, The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them

E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Why Knowledge Matters: Rescuing Our Children from Failed Educational Theories

E.D. Hirsch, Jr., The Knowledge Deficit: Closing the Shocking Education Gap for American Children

E.D. Hirsch, Jr. and John Holdren, editors, What Your Kindergartener Needs to Know: Preparing Your Child for a Lifetime of Learning

E.D. Hirsch, Jr., editor, What Your First (Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth) Grader Needs to Know: Fundamentals of a Good First- (Second-, Third-, Fourth-, Fifth-, Sixth-) Grade Education

Diane Ravitch, Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms

Diane Ravitch, The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn

Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education

Jonathan Kozol, On Being a Teacher

Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in Americas Schools

Bill Watterson, Exploring Calvin and Hobbes: An Exhibition Catalogue