ENGLISH The English curriculum develops and enhances the skills of close reading, thoughtful writing, and respectful speaking and listening. Students practice their critical thinking skills in seminar-style classes, which encourage them to interact in collaboration with their teachers and each other. Harkness discussions (text-based, student driven dialogues) occur regularly in all classes and require participation by all. Over the course of four years, students encounter a wide range of increasingly challenging literature which, combined with their personal experiences, provide a rich mine of shared experience – the subject matter for the extensive writing they do in each of the rhetorical modes. In a multi-layered process, beginning in the ninth grade with complex thesis construction and culminating with the research and organization associated with the I-Search in the eleventh grade, students develop independence of judgment, mastery in the art of persuasion, and familiarity with effective research techniques. Moses Brown requires students to take four years of English. In the first three years, students enroll in the yearlong course appropriate to their grade level, with the option of applying to the honors program in the fall of junior year. In the senior year, students may choose among various semester courses or apply for admission to the yearlong Advanced Placement course. With guidance from their teachers, students may elect to take the AP exam in either Language and Composition or Literature and Composition in May of either their junior or senior year—or both.
Yearlong Courses English 1 English 2 English 3 (Honors) AP English Fall Semester Courses Civilizing America: Literature & Legality of Race The Campus Novel Literature of War Moby Dick Today Off the Map: Literature of Survival
Spring Semester Courses Fiction into Film Food: The Evolution of Humanity Reading & Writing Poetry Monsters The Graphic Novel Playwriting
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