The Final Finale

I am typing this up in the middle of the registration meetings, so I may just throw in a few fun facts with credits and classes while I am recapping today's agenda. For instance, as many of you will be applying to college during the first semester of senior year, your junior grades will be the marker of your abilities to those colleges.

In all classes today, we finished looking at the MC passage regarding Nantucket and worked with process of elimination to find the best answer. As noted, you need to understand the passage via reading and not skimming to better answer these questions. Afterwards, we looked at the writing prompt and how Sandy's tone reveals a sardonic, frustrated, agitated stance on the war, the propaganda machine, and the military. If you grabbed onto the accurate attitude and polysyndeton, you most likely had a higher score on the AP exam.

In first hour, we started talking about your senior options for next year, and we will finish going over those tomorrow.

In third & fourth hour (maybe seventh), you received your finals back, filled in your rhetorical analysis chart, and placed all your papers in your portfolio.

So, what are the options for next year's English credit?

Year-long:

• AP Lit (all literature analysis involving prose and poetry, a book club of verbal and written analysis, more reading emphasized over writing) 
• Senior Lit (a continuation from American Lit, this class aids students in writing - academic and lifestyle - and reading)

Semester classes:

• Shakespeare (you've heard it through a wall for a semester, and this is the focus on Shakespeare's plots, characters, and motifs; assignments are more project-based)
• Creative Writing (another side of your brain required to write with freedom and not rely on the formula of modes of discourse)
• Sci-Fi (reading and analyzing science fiction motifs, characterization)
• Advanced Composition (this is the same credit as AP Lang first semester so you still can take this course, but you will not be double-dipping on credit; this course preps your for the varying modes of discourse required at any level of college writing)
• Speech (moving from quick bursts to fully developed, researched speeches to help ease you into public speaking)
• Advanced Speech (continuation of speech)

Practical Art Elective: Newspaper
Drama Elective: Film Studies

You have to take one full year of English, but you can also take more English courses if you would like to treat some classes as electives. So, you could take AP Lit and then take Shakespeare and Speech. Or, you could take 4 semester courses.

You want to choose the course(s) that are best for you and what you want to do in the future. I would recommend talking to teachers of the courses and also students currently enrolled in these classes.