English Literature (7-8)

WELCOME TO ENGLISH LITERATURE (JUNIOR HIGH)

Contact Information:

• Instructor: Cliff Wheeler
• Email: [email protected]
• Cell: 616-901-5725

Course Description:

Are you ready to dive into some good books? Great, then this class is for you! This year, we are going to walk through fiction, non-fiction, plays, poetry, and even a few articles together. We will focus on 4-5 anchor works each semester. Along the way, we'll look at how to read for the big three (character/setting/plot), but will also look at themes, symbolism, allusions, motifs, and wrestle with the context and ideas presented in the stories. Here are the books we'll be covering first semester:

1) A Separate Peace (by John Knowles)

2) Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

3) Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

4) Carry On, Mr Bowditch by Jean Latham

Second Semester: 

1) The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

2) Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery

3) Out of the Silent Planet (by C.S. Lewis)

4) The Call of the Wild/White Fang (by Jack London)

5) Selection of poems, short stories, and articles

Plan to come to class having done the reading from the week before, having wrestled through discussion questions by writing responses and common place quotes, and be ready to engage through discussion! I'm looking forward to seeing you and hearing your thoughts as we work through these texts together. We will also have a final project where you can present a creative work (paper, essay, film, artwork, etc.) that takes a deeper dive into one of the works or ideas we have covered during the semester:

Additional Materials

In addition to the four texts mentioned above, you will also need:

- Pens/pencils

- Notebook

- Printed papers/homework (no handwritten copies, please)

- Post-its, markers, tissues, water, oranges, purring cats to help with the learning process (no cats, in case someone's allergic!)

Tuition:

This one hour core course tuition is $200/semester plus a $25 material fee/semester.  Please make payments by Venmo to @Cliff-Wheeler-2

This amount will be split into four payments as follows: 

FIRST SEMESTER:

$25 due first week of August

$75 due first week of September 

$75 due first week of October

$50 due first week of November

SECOND SEMESTER:

$75 due first week of January (Materials + tuition )

$75 due first week of February

$75 due first week of March