Great Books (Period 2 & 3)

Course Description: The major purpose of this course is to examine and analyze the historical, social,and cultural influences that influence writiers and their unique aesthetic cntributions to American and World literture. Students will study aspects and representative types of novels such as Gothic, picaresque, utopian, adventure, historical, and romance through an examination of plot situation, character motivation,and thematic implications. Students will develop a basis for understanding of international works through investigations of universal themes across cultural, social, and historical contexts and evaluations of how the influences of the regions and historical eras shaped the characters, plots, and settings. Students will develop and synthesize learning by participating in oral and written responses to literature by analyzing the stylistic and thematic elements of texts in comparison to other significant texts across regions, cultures, and historical periods. As a means of developing the critical thinking and communication skills necessary for the demands of college and work, students will engage in discussion to prepare oral and written arguments that provide all relevant perspectives and consider the validity and reliability of sources. Students will engage in a study of interpretive theories to help them understand multiple perspectives and ways to understand literature from different lenses (e.g., Marxist, feminist, deconstructivist, gender, and cultural studies).

In this course, there is an emphasis on writing. Great Books includes the historical investigation report, which requires students to use primary and secondary sources to compare different points of view regarding a single historical event and explain the reason for the similarities and differences.. Students are expected to write and revise a minimum of eight academic compositions, including timed writing pieces, within the twelfth grade year.This course provides students opportunities to increase awareness of the audience, purpose, and progression of the stages of the writing process and writing conventions to produce narrative, persuasive, expository, and descriptive texts of at least 1,500 words each. CA Reading/Language Arts Framework requires that students in the twelfth grade are expected to read two million words of running text annually on their own,including a good representation of classic and contemporary literature, magazines, newspapers, and online articles. Great Books fulfills a "B" requirement of the UC/CSU Subject Area Requiremenrs and is one of the possible courses paired with Expository Composition.