English – ENG4C

Can you be a bystander in life?

In this unit students will focus on the following main ideas: Conflict is essential for human development.
A person must be the change s/he wishes to see in the world. People’s lives and literature follow similar patterns. Bias and perspective influence a person’s understanding. Students will prepare photo essays and presentations and unit test will be done to evaluate their understanding.

Modern Anthology

The stories chosen for this course have been written in recent decades and deal with situations that are familiar and interesting to students at this level. Short lessons on style are integrated into the study in this section in order to make matters such sentence structure, punctuation, and transitional devices more relevant to the work at hand.

Similarly, the short poems in this unit reflect on topics that appeal to 4C students. Rather than study poetry solely for its technical merits, these lessons encourage students to reflect on larger issues they face. Topics such as new technologies, travel, life in the city, and relationships with parents form a familiar backdrop to the reading and thinking students do in this unit. Rather than the traditional assignment on poetry analysis, students write their own poetry by easing into the process through brainstorming, writing a free verse poem, and finally, including devices such as rhyme. The poems are then presented in an online poetry workshop in which peers and teachers respond to the lines students produce.

eZines

In a world that is becoming increasingly dominated by visual imagery, it is no surprise that magazines continue to attract a great deal of attention. While the publications continue as always, the formats have changed from hard copy versions and conventional subscriptions to eZines which are published entirely online. Students commonly refer to both formats, so this unit allows students to study online and hard copy texts and to reflect on how they are both similar yet different from each other. Aspects such as cover art, the editorial, and a feature article come under scrutiny as students consider the vocabulary of publishing, how new technologies become part of online publishing through blogs and videos, and the future of conventional mass market publishing in the magazine industry. To end the unit students will produce their own eZine which includes a cover page, an editorial, a feature article, and a link to a video that complements the content featured in the eZine.

Novel Study – Jimmy Comes Home

Students will read and analyze Robert Checkwitch’s Jimmy Comes Home. Students will be asked to participate in discussion forums where they will respond to a scenario and create their own opinions based on what they read. Students will compare their own lives to the lives of characters on Green Star Lake review. Students will examine various themes throughout the novel in preparation for their final writing task. At the end of the unit, students will write a five-paragraph essay in MLA format on the themes and characters in the novel.

Final Project   

Final Exam  

6 hours  

2 hours