Course Title: Literature
Grade: 8
Credits: 2
A. Course Description:
Literature 8 is a study of the literature and writings of the Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment Periods of Western Europe and Colonial and Revolutionary Periods of 17th and 18th century America. The readings correspond with the students' study of history, and class discussions center on the historical impact of the writings, as well as their literary value. As part of their study of the U.S. Constitution and Missouri State Constitution, students will write and present a bill to the State Legislature.
B. Course Objectives:
This course is designed to train students in the Dialectic stage, as well as prepare them for the Rhetoric stage, by emphasizing critical thinking and analysis skills and introducing standards of critique and assessment through discussion, student speeches, declamation and thesis writing, debate, and argumentation.
C. Course Goals:
Students will be able to do the following:
- Identify literary terms and use them appropriately;
- Develop hypotheses independently;
- Integrate ideas into an original proposal;
- Classify information appropriately;
- Assess information accurately according to historical events;
- Formulate authors' and characters' worldviews;
- Compare and contrast concepts and hypotheses accurately.
D. Teacher Materials:
Student texts, novels, research notes on the selected literature and writings; supplementary materials not included in the students' reading list.
E. Student Texts:
- The Pilgrim's Progress
- Selected Poems of John Donne
- The Merchant of Venice
- Don Quixote
- Biographies of Tyndale, Luther, Calvin
- Handbook of the Christian Knight
- Gulliver's Travels
- Great Expectations
- Of Individualism in Democratic Countries
- The Mayflower Compact
- The Declaration of Independence
- The History of the Plymouth Plantation
- A History of the Dividing Line
- Selected Essays and Speeches of Franklin, Paine, Henry and Winthrop
- Johnnie Tremain
- The Federal and State Governmental Structures
- Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain ISBN: 0486280616
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