ENGLISH

Our curriculum is designed to give students a rewarding experience as they grow as readers, writers, thinkers, and speakers. Through collaborative and individual pursuits, students learn how to critically navigate the expanding seas of information and communication while fostering an appreciation for the power of language. We ask, “What is worth reading -- and why?” and we encourage students to answer this question for themselves by exercising choice in projects, readings, and assessments.

We explore texts that represent a range of voices and points of view that offer windows into the experiences of others and mirrors into students’ own experiences. Whether they are grappling with Shakespeare or preparing for a visiting Baird Symposium author, our students consider how texts reflect the human condition and how an author’s choice of genre, form, and diction affects meaning.

We strive to instill in our students a sense of pride in their written work and give them the tools to make their writing reflect their thinking at its best. Writing assignments range from the critical to the personal to the creative. Through one-on-one conferences, peer critiques, and multiple drafts and revisions, we teach writing as a process; we also encourage students to experiment with language and style through the study of vocabulary and composition.

Every English class also provides substantial practice in speaking and listening skills, as these are essential for effective communication. Through Harkness discussions, formal debates, presentations, speeches, performances, and daily conversations, students learn how to appeal to different audiences and build confidence in their ability to think and speak on their feet.

>>MIDDLE SCHOOL

Upper Prep English — Can I Borrow Those Shoes? The goal of Upper Prep English is to teach reading and writing skills through literature in a nurturing environment that encourages students to become comfortable and confident in those areas. Students learn the concepts of plot, theme, setting, and character development through their reading of short stories, novels, non-fiction pieces, and poetry. The focus on reading and writing includes grammar, sentence building, and vocabulary development. Students practice expository, narrative, and descriptive compositions in order to develop clear sentence structure and coherent paragraph development. We introduce and emphasize process writing, and students learn to brainstorm, draft, revise, edit,and publish their work.Spider Web discussions establish the skills necessary to explore and discuss literature as well as the development of active listening and speaking skills. We use various texts, voices, and perspectives to develop and deepen the aforementioned skills.

English 1 — Is that a Window or a Mirror? Organized around the central theme of exploring one’s identity and its effect on perspective, this English course for students in Form 1 continues to stress the skills of reading and writing. The literary focus is on vicarious experience: the fundamental value of literature. In a range of novels, non-fiction pieces, short stories and poems, students read about individuals who experience adversity to gain a broader perspective of the human experience. Writing development begins with a variety of frequently assigned, organized paragraphs and evolves into larger writing projects, including essay writing. The study of grammar, sentence building, and vocabulary development is coordinated with students’ reading and writing. Spider Web discussions remain central to the growth of skills

Form 1 Expedition of English, History, and Science Course: What is the Power of Water? This expedition-based interdisciplinary course will be team-taught by science, history and English teachers. This course will occur during the fall semester of 2020. Overview In this expedition course, students in Form 1 will explore the Connecticut River watershed as we pursue the question, “What is the Power of Water?” From the icy mountain tributaries in the Berkshires to the saltwater estuaries near the Long Island Sound, students will conduct hands-on experiments along the riverbanks and interview various stakeholders who live and work next to rivers like the Farmington and Connecticut. As an interdisciplinary courseand through the lenses of science, history, and literature, students will examine and explore both the literal and figurative power of water. Content Students will explore the history of settlement, conflict, and industrialization in Connecticut and along the river. As readers and writers, they will examine the inspiration that rivers have furnished for myth and literature. As scientists, they will conduct hands-on experiments and collect data across the Connecticut River watershed. Ultimately, students will synthesize their experience to tell their own stories of the river through the lens of a podcast, app, or literary magazine. Then in a culminating showcase, students will share their findings with the community. Experience In this course, students will use the Connecticut River as a classroom. While learning about subject material on campus, they will also have regular opportunities for place-based learning along the river and its watershed. By taking part in trash pickups, river and stream restoration, field tests, and dam removals, students will play their part in improving the life of the river. By studying artifacts and historical documents, they will understand how the river influenced the lives of past residents. And by writing about their own experiences, students will find their own lifelong connections to the river. Students will keep personal expedition journals, recording flora and fauna, along with writing their own narratives, poems, and creative responses.

English 2 — Which Wolf Do You Feed? Form 2 English students build on their strong foundation of previously established skills to meet the increased demands of reading and writing at a more sophisticated and complex level. Guided by the central theme of exploring the human experience, the literary focus is on character development with a gradually increasing emphasis on interpretation. Writing assignments encourage students to create fuller, more subtle prose by continuing to take a process approach to writing with particular emphasis on revision. Spider Web discussions are central to developing the ability to analyze and discuss literature, as well as the development of critical thinking, listening, and speaking skills. The study of grammar, sentence building, and vocabulary continue at a deliberate pace and remain intertwined with the students’ writing. Students respond creatively to various literary genres and practice developing coherent

>>UPPER SCHOOL

English 3: The Stories We Tell As memoirist and essayist Joan Didion observes, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” In English 3, we explore storytelling in its many forms. The course uses the lens of storytelling to develop students’ ability to think for themselves, to grapple with abstraction, and to read, write and speak with increasing proficiency. Readings focus onfellow storytellers across genres and epochs. Students explore a graphic novel, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and several more traditional novels including The Catcher in the Rye. The drama of the course consists of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothingand August Wilson’s Fences. Short story, book club and poetry units round out the curriculum. Students not only study the practice of storytelling but also become storytellers themselves. Sentence construction and vocabulary are focal points both in formal study and in practice while students are writing expository and creative prose. Furthermore, each student is required to join Harkness discussions and to practice public speaking.

English 4, 4 Honors: Challenging Convention In English 4, we focus on texts that challenge convention through characters, themes, structure, and style as we ask students to examine their notions about what a literary analysis, a sentence, or a topic of academic discussion should be. Works read include Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, The Great Gatsbyby F. Scott Fitzgerald, and There There by Tommy Orange. We round out the curriculum with two plays: Shakespeare’s Macbethand Sophocles’ Antigone, and a selection of poetry. Students are challenged to assume leadership roles in discussions and to develop

their own theses to become more independent thinkers. Particular attention is paid to helping students develop a sentence style commensurate with the increasing complexity of their ideas. Students continue to study vocabulary and experiment with sentence structure through learning a range of different sentence patterns. In addition, all Form 4 students participate in the Speakers’ Forum, an interpretive reading contest. Students in English 4 Honors read an additional work, read at a faster pace, demonstrate more independence in the writing process, and take a leadership role in discussions. Designed for those students who have excelled in all aspects of English and require additional challenge as readers, writers and speakers.

English 5: Expanding Horizons: Reading and Writing for the 21 st

Century

In English 5, students bring a new level of awareness to their roles as readers and communicators in the 21st century. The course requires students to recognize and apply different reading strategies as they analyze how voice, rhetorical situation, and style affect meaning within a diverse range of genres and forms. Students study film, speeches, poetry, a novel, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and a number of 21st century texts. In this exploration of diverse texts, students improve their own communication skills through developing and adapting their voice with an awareness of audience, context, and purpose. Students learn to craft effective questions to engage with texts and the worldaround them while also evaluating, synthesizing, and conversing with scholarly writing and criticism. In this pivotal year, students use feedback to cultivate habits of self-reflection. The final project allows students to showcase skills developed throughout the year.

English 5 AP ®

Expanding Horizons: Reading and Writing for the 21 st

Century

Students can opt to take this course, which runs parallel to the English 5 class, the Advanced Placement ® sections follow a more extensive bibliography, and the literary analysis, both in class and in writing, assumes a greater depth of reading experience, maturity of mind and the capacity to draw on wider and more independent sources. Furthermore, individual students carry responsibility for leading the class occasionally. This course prepares students for the Advanced Placement® Examination in English Language and Composition, and students enrolled in the course must take the AP® Language and Composition exam in May.

ELECTIVES

Elective: Journalism I (Spring) Journalism is not simply a mode of writing; it is also a mode of thinking. In addition to introducing students to the writing techniques integral to news, feature and sports writing as well as opinion and review writing, this course trains them in the more abstract observation and thinking skills required to identify news when it happens. The hope is that students gain a new perspective on their writing and critical thinking skills while wrestling with the accuracy, objectivity and responsibility to an audiencethat characterize solid journalism. Students can expect regular article assignments, style quizzes to train them as editors, and occasional readings from The New York Times. The course is a prerequisite for a staff position on the KO News. This course, anelective offered outside the required English curriculum and open to students in Forms 3-5 for 1/4 credit, meets three times every two weeks.

Elective: Journalism II: Digital Journalism (Fall) This course builds on the skills developed in Journalism 1 asstudents explore journalism in the digital age. Students learn how to better navigate the digital world at their fingertips, becoming news and media literate (informed, participating, engaged, conscious news producers and consumers). This course focuses on the differences between print and web journalism, exploring how to adapt stories for the web to appeal to a different audience. In packaging stories for the web, students learn how to create interactive content and graphics to aid in their storytelling. The semester ends with an exploration of the podcast form. For each of these main units, students explore a range of different contemporary professional examples to guide them as they create their own content. Prerequisite: Journalism (or by approval of Department Chair). This course, an elective offered outside the required English curriculum and open to students in Forms 4-6 for 1/4 credit, meets three times every two weeks.

The following elective is open to students in forms four and five who enjoy English, and who would like additional opportunities to explore literature.

Elective: Dystopian Futures (Spring)

Social chaos. An overreaching authoritarian government. Repression of free speech. Food shortages. Climate catastrophes. If this vision of the future sounds scary to you, then prepare to be even more terrified by the worlds constructed by writers of dystopian fiction. A form of speculative literature that imagines a horrifying not-too-distant future, dystopian fiction exaggerates contemporary social problems in order to critique them. By exploring dystopian texts such as George Orwell’s 1984, Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, a choice of dystopian novel, and Bong Joon Ho’s Snowpiercer, we will analyze the techniques writers use to warn their readers about what the future might look like if the present world goes in a drastically wrong direction. In written work, students will examine the distinctive conventions of this genre of literature, and assess the genre’s effectiveness in urging readers to action. Eventually students will apply these storytelling strategies by writing a short work of fiction in which they identify a social problem they care about and imagine a future in which this problem has spun out of control. As we read, discuss, and write, we will consider the central function that this kind of fiction serves for readers: does dystopian fiction work to comfort readers by reminding us that our current world isn’t as bad as the ones these writers imagine? Or does it work to unsettle readers by implying that we might not be too far removed from disaster? Ultimately, this class will invite students to grapple with the kind of future they do (and don’t) want to see. Open to students in forms 4 and 5.

FALL SENIOR ELECTIVES

Senior English at Kingswood Oxford offers semester elective options. During the fall semester, students must choose one class to fulfill their English requirement, but may elect to take an additional semester course according to their interest and availability. The spring semester electives are divided into two quarters. During the third quarter, all seniors write a senior thesis, a fifteen to twenty page original, research-based essay on a topic of their choosing. The fourth quarter, described by the course’s title, is a minicourse designed as an exploration of a topic that is both focused and fun.

English 6 Fall Elective: The American Dream Since America’s earliest days in the late 18th century through to today, there has been a concept of an “American Dream.” While the idea was not formally coined until the mid-20th century, there has always been an idealized vision of what can be in America. This concept has evolved (and continues to do so) throughout the years. In 1931 James Truslow Adams more formally coined the phrase “the American Dream,” describing "a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position." Whether sincerely believed or attacked as delusion, this dream has been a motivating force in our civilization. Even when denied, the dream is distinctly American. There are many books, songs, plays and movies that have celebrated, questioned and even denounced this vision.This course explores the American Dream, past and present, to better understand and assess the promise of this ideal. Works studied include Horatio Alger’s Ragged Dick, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Edward Albee’s The American Dream, Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Larry Watson’s Montana, 1948and contemporary music and culture.

English 6 Fall Elective: Creative Nonfiction: New Narratives in the 21 st

Century

This course will immerse you in the genre of creative nonfiction or, what Lee Gutkind refers to as “true stories, well told.” We will explore various types of creative nonfiction, including personal essays, Op-Eds, profiles, and podcasts with an eye for how these narratives are taking on today’s important social, political, and cultural issues as well as how creative nonfiction is adapting to the digital world in which we live. While the course will include some older essays and articles, the bulk of the reading is comprised of pieces published in the past ten years. The stories in this course will not bore you. They willcaptivate you and even at times enrage, sadden, shock, humor, and move you. After exploring a form and taking note of various authors’ different techniques and styles, you will produce your own creative nonfiction to workshop with your peers.

English 6 Fall Elective: Incarceration Nation Why do we as a society imprison people? Is it for public safety? To reform undesirable behavior? To punish? This course seeks to examine the history of imprisonment that led us to where we are today with our American prison system. Using various literary texts, this course explores the institutional response to crime: punishment. Writings by American prisoners, essays by Michel Foucault, excerpts from Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, prison letters by Martin Luther King, Jr and others, as well as poetry and podcasts provide the basis for class discussion. Students can expect research presentations, working on logic and biases, formal and informal writing, and lots of discussion. We will also examine why we punish, some issues related to the prison system, and our own perspectives on why we as a society punish, culminating in writing our own essays and/or editorials.

English 6 Fall Elective: The Invention of America

Wendell Berry once said: “If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are.” Berry is part of a tradition of “placed” writers in America including Thoreau, Frost, Faulkner, O’Connor, and Steinbeck. These writers and others helped to both define and create an American identity through their literature and artistry, turning away from Eurocentric expectations towards the landscapes, diverse regional cultures, and expanding cities. By doing so they reflect a national identity first created by many displaced people, those who immigrated to and migrated within this country first towards the invention of this nation. From the principles upon which it was founded, to the politics and

people who inhabit it, to its own varied geography, the identity of the United States has been slowly but surely shaped

into being. This course will take a close look at the emergence of this unique identity through the eyes of its artists and

writers from the 19 th

through the early 20 th

centuries. While this course will draw mostly from literature, a study of

relevant paintings, photography, and film will also be included.

English 6 Fall Elective: New York Literature: The Dream, The Grit and The Grind Of all the qualities that New York demands of its citizens, grit is arguably the most vital. New York is a massive city made up of eight million people, each striving for something: fame, success, love, etc. Despite such long odds, what brings people here is the promise of achievement whenone is willing to put in the work. In this class, we’ll explore the journeys various characters take as they struggle to make it in New York. Through selections by writers such as James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Arthur Miller, Colum McCann, Jay McInerney, and Colson Whitehead, we’ll discover the ways that the New York grind can either wear a person down or build him or her up.

English 6 Fall Elective: Word Play: Short Stories & Poems (a Service Learning Course) How do youwrite a story that keeps readers turning the page? Or inspires them to change their life? How do you craft a poem that comforts, heartens, or buoys up? In this creative writing, Service Learning course we’ll read, discuss, and write short stories and poems that delight, challenge, and edify. We’ll bring our favorites to local communities which might benefit from them: assisted care facilities, hospitals, and schools. We’ll read to, perform for, and listen to our audiences. We’ll design new ways to bring the power of the written and spoken word to our own campus at KO,

including collaboration with local writers. We’ll also reflect on the experiences––their impact both on the communities and on ourselves. If you love getting out of the classroom, giving back,and writing creatively, this could be the course for you. Course requirements: Courage and compassion Course Credit: 10+ community service hours, which will count toward Hall of Fame hours, but notgraduation requirement.

English 6 Fall Elective: Honors Symposium Seminar

This course studies the work of a renowned living author and his or her life and literary environment. It also examines the critical assessment of the author’s work and those writers who influenced his or her style and focus. Independent discussion, extensive writing and peer teaching are fundamental to the course as a means for developing a mature understanding of the symposium author.

The course culminates with the author’s visit to the School as part of the annual Warren Baird English Symposium . Students meet with the author and participate in a master class, both rich opportunities to question and discuss with the author the careful and thorough perspectives that they havedeveloped in their semester’s study. Designed for those students who have excelled in their study of English and have the passion and curiosity to explore a single author for the semester, admission to this course is by application only.

SPRING SENIOR ELECTIVES

Senior Thesis The Senior Thesis, the culmination of the long-range objectives of the English program at Kingswood Oxford, requires students to use all of their acquired reading, writing and thinking skills in an independent research paper with a substantial literary component. An assigned thesis advisor works with a small group of students in class to cover topic selection, methods of research and technical procedures, while the student pursues his or her independent research and writing. All Form 6 students are required to write a Senior Thesis during the third quarter.

English 6 Spring Elective: The Art of Watching Film Not only is there an art to making films; there is also an art to watching films, which students will discover through viewing a variety of different movies. Students will sharpen their powers of observation and develop the skills and habits of perceptive watching as they begin to see films –and the artistry behind them –in a new way. We will view a range of clips that showcase the various aspects of film (thematic elements, fictional and dramatic elements, visual design, cinematography and special visual effects, editing, color, sound effects and dialogue, score, and acting) and then fully analyze Mike Nichols’ The Graduate aswell as an additional film that the class votes on. By the end of the course, students will write an argument for why a film of their choice is good, and the class will have an opportunity to view a few of these films.

English 6 Spring Elective: The Happiness Class In the comic strip Peanuts, Lucy Van Pelt expressed, “Happiness is a warm puppy,” implying some of the simplest things bring us joy: love and companionship. What is your version of happiness? What can we learn from literature and reflection about our own happiness? In this course, students will listen to the first season of the podcast The Happiness Lab, which Dr. Laurie Santos created after learning that “Rates of depression in 20 year olds have doubled since 2009.” As we explore the series on the science of happiness, we will read accompanying short texts --odes, expressions of praise and gratitude, and various other works --that align with the podcast thematically. In addition to class discussions, students will write informal reflective journals and complete a project responding to a text of their choice.

English 6 Spring Elective: Hitchcock: Master of Suspense Suspense in movies, the dramatization of a film’s narrative material or the most intense presentation possible of dramatic situations, is what keeps us interested in the spectacle. It is what compels us to return again and again to the darkened room of the cinema. For 53 films, Alfred Hitchcock worked at perfecting this particular art form. After an introduction to the study of film as an art form, we will analyze an array of Mr. Hitchcock’s great films, including The Thirty-Nine Steps (or The Lady Vanishes), Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, The Birds, North by Northwest, and Psychoamong others. Besides learning the technical vocabulary necessary for film study, students will also be responsible for writing one shot analysis and presenting one film analysis of their choosing.

English 6 Spring Elective: Know Yourself: Literature and Psychology How well do you know yourself? In this elective, we will engage with this important topic of self-knowledge from two distinct vantage points: literature and psychology. We will work through several key questions of identity: for example, how much do we deceive ourselves about who we are? How much are we changed by how others perceive us? How well do we communicate who we are to others? What are the best ways to figure out who we really are? For each question, we will examine literary examples, including short stories and excerpts from novels by Jhumpa Lahiri, Virginia Woolf, Jamaica Kincaid, and David Sedaris, among others; we will also seek psychological insights from the Prisoner’s Dilemma, The Stanford Prison experiment, the Turing Test, and various other studies. Further, we will challenge ourselves with reflective exercises that get us thinking about how these questions apply to our own lives. These conversations will culminate in a public art exhibition: students will produce art pieces that reflect key principles from the course and share these pieces with the wider community.

English 6 Spring Elective: Monsters, Inc “By monster I mean some horrendous presence or apparition that explodes all of your standards for harmony, order, and ethical conduct.” So says Joseph Campbell in “ThePower of Myth.” This course explores the dynamics of horror, past to present, with special attention to monsters as manifestations of cultural values. What does a particular culture label as “monstrous” and why? What makes a successful monster at a given time? What exactly have certain authors (and filmmakers) captured (or unleashed)? Toward answering such questions, we explore history, myth, literature, art and film. We begin in the Dark Ages with the shadowy monsters slain by Beowulf and end with a moviegenre that just won’t die –the slasher film. Works studied may include John Gardner’s Grendel, Bram Stoker’s Dracula,

English 6 Spring Elective: Novels and Their Film Adaptations Is the book always better than the movie? What makes an adaptation successful? This course considers the challenges involved in converting novels to film. Must one be faithful to plot or are there more important issues inherent in adaptation? What pressures does Hollywood bring to the process? By examining novel and film pairs including Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and Jonathan Nolan’s “MementoMori” –the class tackles some of these questions to define the qualities of a successful adaptation.

English 6 Spring Elective: Robot Dreams “Alexa, play my favorite song.” “Siri, who am I?” Smart phones. Smart homes. Self-driving cars. Fraud detection. Preference detection. Facial recognition. There’s no question that artificial intelligence is ubiquitous these days and has made so much in our lives more convenient and––some would say––safer. But why is there something unsettling about machines that can think? Aren’t they just sophisticated tools, the next iteration of the candle or compass? What if robots become self-aware? Would that transform them from tools to… slaves? Should they have rights? Would they hate the master in us––or love the god inus? Could we love them? In this course, we will look to literature and film for answers. We’ll discuss what it means to be human. What it means to be free. What it means to love. We’ll start with selections from The Book of Genesis, Greek myths, and Frankenstein, and move into the 20th and 21st centuries with essays, short stories, news articles, and podcasts. We’ll watch Ex Machina, Her, and scenes from Westworld. We will end the course with student-designed projects.

English 6 Spring Elective: You Are What You Eat Imagine your favorite meal: a perfectly seared and deliciously greasy cheeseburger. A spicy, savory serving of chicken tikka masala. An oven-fired, gooey slice of cheese pizza. A zesty, herbaceous taco. What you love to eat says a lot about who you are, and because food can tell us so much about a person, writers have long drawn on culinary muses to spice up their work. From Marcel Proust’s crumbly madeleine cookie that made its consumer feel an “exquisite pleasure,” to Ralph Ellison’s sweet, buttery yam that with one bite transported the narrator to his Southern home, this class will examine the thematic, social, cultural, and historical meanings writers inscribe through representations of food in literature. In addition to fictional images of food, we will also analyze contemporary nonfiction food writing, exploring the way food reviews achieve both practical and literary goals. Readings for this class will primarily consist of selections from Eating Words: A Norton Anthology of Food Writing. In written work, students will analyze the ways authors entice us to read more through their mouth-watering descriptions of food, reflect on their own food memories, and experiment with crafting their own food reviews. Be prepared to turn a sharp eye towards your favorite restaurant, your dad’s specialty dish, or a meal from the cafeteria to hone your skills as a food critic. By the end of the class you might just learn to savor the written word as much as your favorite meal.