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Humanities Course Descriptions
Humanities - 7th Grade During seventh-grade Humanities, students will read many pages, write frequently, and search for answers to difficult questions. Throughout the entire year, students will be asked to think about the following question: "What can we learn about cultures from the stories that they tell?" To answer this question, we will begin by studying some of the earliest civilizations on earth, such as African tribal kingdoms, and will end our study by thinking about the role of the individual in shaping civilizations. Students will read fictional texts such as The Giver, by Lois Lowry; A Girl Named Disaster, by Nancy Farmer; and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. In addition, students will read short stories, folktales, and nonfiction history texts. Through weekly writing lessons and grammar instruction, students will learn to express their thoughts and ideas through clear, well organized writing. Students will be asked to complete vocabulary, grammar and writing assessments on a weekly basis. During the course of the year, students will write expository essays about novels or nonfiction articles, and will also create their own folktales and memoirs. Humanities - 8th Grade In Humanities we focus on both English and History. This year, we will be studying four civilizations: the Byzantine Empire, Classical India, the rise and spread of the Islamic world, and Celtic Ireland. As we learn about these cultures, we'll also be learning how historians think, what questions they ask, and how they make connections between the past and the present. Students will read "The River Between" by Ngugi WaThiong'o, "Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi, "Greenwitch" by Susan Cooper, and many short stories, articles, poems, and essays. In Humanities we also build skills in reading, formal and creative writing, and critical thinking. For this class we will read a novel during almost every unit, as well as several shorter readings. Students will practice formal essay writing, creative writing, and note taking. In the 8th grade it is particularly important that students get a solid grounding in grammar, mechanics, and other bedrock writing skills, and we will learn and practice these all year long. Humanities - 9th Grade The modern world did not just appear but rather was built upon the foundation of societies that came before it. Throughout the year we will grapple with the essential questions surrounding human beings, what they believe, and what the impact of these beliefs are. These questions will be analyzed in the context of studying American Indians, Western Europe during the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the era of European Exploration/Colonization. We will consider how and why the people and ideas involved in each unit have had such a powerful effect on our lives today. Humanities - 10th Grade This course is a combined History and English/Language Arts class covering topics in the literature and history of The United States of America from the Revolutionary War through the Civil War and Reconstruction. The course will include the following 4 units: Revolutions, Slavery and the Early 19th Century, The Civil War, and Reconstruction. Each of these units will roughly correspond with the four academic quarters of the year. Humanities - 11th Grade Throughout the history of our country we have struggled to integrate dissenting voices into mainstream American culture. This course will explore issues of integration through the lens of four units. We will cover the Labor Movement between 1880 and 1920, the Suffrage Movement between 1880 and 1920, the Civil Rights Movement between 1930 and 1970, and the current status of immigration and integration in the United States. Each unit will be accompanied by primary and secondary sources, and a major fictional text, as well as essays and poems. Some of the texts which will be used this year are Out of This Furnace, by Thomas Bell, Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin, and Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut. |
