Brown Mrs Penny

Visit the TeacherWeb® videos to learn about the features, modifications, and customizations available on your website. Click here to learn more.

Each student will need an ample supply of notebook paper (college ruled, if 
possible), blue and black pens, a colored pen for proofreading and 
correcting, a three-ring binder, and a great attitude.

It would be very helpful if you brought a box of tissues for classroom use!  
IF YOU COULD, PLEASE BRING PURELL HAND CLEANER FOR CLASSROOM USE AS WELL.

TEST DAYS ARE USUALLY ON FRIDAYS FOR ENGLISH!

SOMETIMES IT WORKS BEST TO E-MAIL ME DIRECTLY FROM YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS RATHER 
THAN GOING THROUGH TEACHER WEB.  SOMETIMES THE FILTERS DIRECT TEACHER WEB TO 
SPAM.  YOU MAY FIND ME AT pwbhha@gmail.com

The following items are handouts which I give to my classes at the beginning 
of each year.  You may want to refresh yourself occasionally by glancing over 
our course requirements.

English V
              AP® English Literature and Composition

Dear Parents and Seniors:

Welcome to Advanced Placement Literature and Composition!  You will be 
pleased to know that our course has been reviewed and approved by the AP® 
board, and colleges all over the nation will recognize that you have received 
credit for AP Certified work. As such, that extra point earned on your GPR 
will be accepted and approved by your college of choice.  This certainly has 
me excited about the year, so I am on GO! for you.  We have quite a bit to 
accomplish, and you guys have the minds and the willpower to accomplish it 
all.  College is a brief twelve months away.  We don’t have time to play, but 
we do have time to enjoy exploring English literature together.

This class is a combination of Survey of British Literature and Advanced 
Placement English.  In addition to working through the British Lit. book, we 
will study vocabulary; continue to write papers of argumentation, 
explication, analysis, and comparison; read parallels; learn to appreciate 
poetry, and do a    bit – but only a bit – of practice testing.  Your regimen 
will be demanding but achievable.

In December we will take the Princeton AP Examination in Literature and 
Composition practice test.  This test is highly reliable as a guideline to 
let you know how you may expect to score if you take the graded test in the 
spring.  As a general rule, the more you read and the more you allow yourself 
to use analytical thinking, the higher you score; the more you “fake” read 
and allow yourself to become dependent on memorization, the lower you score.  
This is where your own experience as a student comes into play, and it is 
where the old saying, “It will eventually catch up with you” does exactly 
that.  Taking this course does not ensure that you will exempt college 
English.  When we began this course over a decade ago, we decided to 
emphasize what the college freshman English student would need to be prepared 
to face college English.  It has never been our intention to teach the AP 
test.  Many of our students, however, do find themselves beginning the 
college experience with three hours of English credit on their records.  
Others have told me that, because of this course, they have been able to 
approach college English with confidence.

The practice test in December will not count on your GPA.  That’s the good 
news.  The other news is that you will all take a comprehensive exam in May 
that will count on your transcript.  My purpose in this is twofold:  It will 
be to your advantage to step back and survey the points we have covered in 
the year; it will also be a chance for you to prepare yourself for the 
comprehensive exams that professors love at the college level.

Our projected parallels are as follow:
•	Mythology by Edith Hamilton
•	Hamlet by William Shakespeare
•	Macbeth by William Shakespeare (in your lit. book)
•	Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot
•	Oedipus the King and Antigone by Sophocles
•	Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard
•	Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

Your summer reading assignments, A Doll’s House, Animal Farm, and Huck Finn, 
are currently due. We will begin work with Orwell and then move to Ibsen and 
test on both author on Wednesday, August 24.  Then we will move to Huck Finn.

GRADING SYSTEM  - Daily grades will count 34%; test grades will count 66%.  
Vocabulary tests will count once in the test column; major tests will count 
twice.

I will work as hard as 
possible to get your work back to you in a way that will help you build your 
writing powers as a student of literature and of life. You have my pledge 
that I will do my best in teaching, advising, and guiding you in your study 
and writing, and together we will do everything in our power to prepare you 
for a great college experience.

Honors English III

Welcome to Honors English III!  Prepare to be busy.  This is a class packed 
with instruction, writing, researching, working, and thinking, but I must 
admit that it is also filled with challenge and fun.  I will pledge this much 
to you:  I promise not to demand from you any more than you can handle.

Our objectives in this class are as follow:
1.	promoting an understanding of the chronological development of 
American literature;
2.	utilizing critical thinking skills;
3.	developing writing techniques in exposition, argumentation, and 
comparison;
4.	researching specialized topics;
5.	expanding written and oral communications;
6.	practicing for SAT and other standardized tests;
7.	enriching your working vocabulary.

As we work together I hope you will offer input that you may have concerning 
goals for our class, weaknesses that you would like to see strengthened, or 
even titles of works that you would like to see us add to the curriculum.

Materials needed:  We will use parallel reading from the list below and our 
textbooks, Adventures in American Literature, Write for College, and a 
vocabulary text.  I have many supplemental materials of my own that I plan to 
use.  You should also bring plenty of notebook paper and pens, a dictionary, 
a thesaurus, and an enthusiastic attitude.  In addition, you must have access 
to a computer with a word processing program and an Internet connection.

Reading List:  Huck Finn (Twain)
		To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)
		The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne)
		A Separate Peace (Knowles)
		Death of a Salesman (Miller)
		Deliverance (Dickey) or South of Broad (Conroy)
		A Painted House (Grisham)

I’d like to say a word about the nature of your presence in this class:
1.	If you don’t plan to read your assignments, this class is NOT for you.
2.	While this class does call upon your critical thinking skills, I 
openly admit that I have seen some memorizers do exceptionally well.  I have 
also seen students make well on tests for novels that they have “faked” 
read.  Trust me when I tell you that this will eventually catch up with you.  
Nothing can replace the experience that reading gives.
3.	Please understand that your presence in this class does not ensure 
that you will automatically test to exempt your college English classes.  At 
the end of your senior year, you will have the option of taking the Princeton 
AP test.  In December of your senior year, you will take a practice test; we 
find that the results of this test are highly reliable, so that you may 
accurately predict how you will score.  100% of the students who took the 
2005 AP test, for example, earned the exact grade on the “real” test that 
they earned on the practice test.

YOU ARE IN THE RIGHT CLASS IF. . .
1.	You are serious about your approach to study for Honors English;
2.	You wish to improve your writing skills;
3.	You want to develop critical thinking skills;
4.	You have an interest not only in what the language says, but also in 
how to say it most effectively;
5.	You hope to discover not only what happens in great American fiction, 
but also how the author manipulates the reader by using sight, sound, 
suggestions, allusions, imagery, satire, and a world of other techniques 
evident to the true Student of Literature;
6.	You want to be as prepared for college English as possible.

We’re going to have a great time.

English II - Honors

Dear Parents and Ninth Grade Students:

How exciting it is to begin another venture: Honors II English.  In my 
original note home to you (sent August 17). I called us pioneers.  I like 
that term and think that it applies well to us.  We were happy to create a 
new course for Honors I, and now it is my privilege to work together with you 
to build an Honors II curriculum.  Some of our work will continue along the 
same lines:
 
PURPOSE

1.	To further develop reading comprehension skills.  This is our surface 
task, and before we can move mountains or anything else, I need you to make 
sure that all assignments are read.  A DVD, full-color movies, and good 
friends who tell you what the plot seems to be can’t ever take the place of 
reading the written word!  Remember, studies show that the more you read, the 
higher your verbal score will be on the SAT.
2.	To expand written communication and expression of ideas. We shall 
explore the writing process from brainstorming to proofreading.
3.	To expose students to opportunities for spoken communication and 
expression of ideas.  How many of us suffer panic when called upon to speak?  
Hopefully, we have discovered that the more we do something, the easier it 
becomes.  That is what we will do here.  We will share original writings 
orally, recite a  passage or two, and near the end of the year, put on 
several plays for fellow classmates if time permits.
4.	To develop a more expanded vocabulary.  Vocabulary lists will 
accompany many classroom reading assignments.  We will work with them to 
incorporate them into your own language warehouse.
5.	To promote creative thought and analytical skills.  This is my 
favorite, but I must admit that sometimes it frightens eighth graders.  Too 
often schoolwork deteriorates into a memory game where the best memorizers 
are confused with the best learners and thinkers.  We are going to try to put 
as many wrinkles into the brain as we can, so please bear with the 
probability that every question may not have only one answer.

I have worked with this age group long enough to realize that sometimes 
students’ feelings get hurt if an answer to a question does not receive the 
maximum credit that a question is worth.  Please remember that you are 
working to put your best foot forward, and even the best writers sometimes 
have off days.  Work hard.  Set your own standards for excellence.  No one 
can do better than you are doing if you do your best!  That’s all I ask.

HOMEWORK:  Some kind of homework, usually reading work, will be made daily.  
It is imperative that you keep up with your assignments on a day-to-day 
basis.  Lengthy writing assignments and tests are assigned several days in 
advance in order that you may gauge your time wisely.

VOCABULARY – We will use a vocabulary series that begins with English I and
carries throughout English IV and V.

MAJOR TESTS:  Major tests will consist of material from assignments, 
lectures, and any reading that may have been assigned.  If you should happen 
to miss a class, it is your responsibility to make up work and get notes from 
another classmate.  Generally speaking, test day for the English II-H course 
is
Friday.

POP QUIZZES – I believe that this is one of the best ways to check to see if 
students are reading and comprehending their assignments, so you may count on 
at least one pop quiz a week.  As long as you keep up with your assignments 
daily, you should have nothing to worry about.  These quizzes count as a 
daily grade.

GRADING SYSTEM:  Major test grades and vocabulary test grades compose 66% of 
your grade; daily grades and pop quizzes count 34%.

MATERIALS NEEDED:  You will write all formal papers and announced hand-in 
work in blue or black ink, so always bring at least one good pen to class.  
You will need a three-ring binder (either a separate binder or a section in 
your school binder), loose-leaf notebook paper, and access to a comuter and 
the internet.  If the latter is a problem, please let me know.

A PERSONAL NOTE:  I love teaching literature and writing! I am serious about 
what I do and I expect the best from each of my students.  I also pledge to 
give you the best of myself as a teacher.  With the pleasure of teaching 
writing, however, comes the burden of paperwork.  I will go ahead and admit 
to you that, after today, I will be behind in grading.  It comes with my 
territory.  I ask you to be patient with me, especially when I am grading 
essays, discussions, and reports.  I spend hours writing constructive 
criticism that is my most personal teaching aid for your child.  Take time to 
read over these remarks.  This is my opportunity for one-on-one work with the 
writing process.  It’s a good thing.  Your child's progress is important to 
me, and I want to give him/her my best.

Sincerely,

Penny W. Brown. Instructor
SCISA Master Teacher
Class of 2006

Automatically clean input to optimize for the web.

Or, would you like to view and optionally restore one of these previous versions?

Password: Forgot your password?

TeacherWeb.com

Content on this site is the responsibility of the Subscriber. Additional information is available in the TeacherWeb Terms & Conditions

Brown Mrs Penny

Announcements