English 11: free lessons and course outline

Eleventh grade is the American literature year, and it is taught here in order because the order is the argument. Emerson is answering the Puritans, Whitman is answering Emerson, the realists are answering Whitman, and Fitzgerald is answering all of them at once. Reading chronologically lets a student watch a national literature argue with itself for three hundred years instead of meeting a dozen unrelated authors. California's ELA standards run in two-year bands, and grade 11 belongs to the 11 to 12 band, which raises the demand on evidence, on the analysis of foundational documents, and on sustained research. The writing runs alongside the reading and ends with a full documented paper. THE READING SCHEDULE. Weeks 1 to 3, the colonial and revolutionary unit: Bradstreet, Edwards, Equiano, Franklin, Paine and the Declaration. Weeks 4 to 7, the Romantics: Emerson's Self-Reliance, Walden in selections, Civil Disobedience, Fuller, one Hawthorne tale, one Poe tale and Bartleby. Weeks 8 and 9, the literary analysis essay. Weeks 10 to 14, the Civil War unit: Whitman, Dickinson, Jacobs, Lincoln, Bierce and the war poetry. Weeks 15 and 16, the synthesis essay. Weeks 17 to 22, realism and naturalism, with The Awakening read whole in weeks 19 and 20. Weeks 23 and 24, the argument essay. Weeks 25 to 31, modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, with The Great Gatsby read whole in weeks 26 to 28. Weeks 32 to 36, the research unit and the documented paper, which should be started in week 28 rather than begun from nothing at the end. Every text is in the public domain and none of them has to be bought.