Combined Class

The-powers-that-be have decided that AP Language & Composition will be combined with English Honors III due to the low number of students enrolled in AP. Students will receive credit for the course in which they are enrolled. The good news is that same basic material is covered. Unfortunately it means that the pace of the class will be set by the English Honors III course (don’t worry too much, the class will go faster than American Literature), and we will have to increase the number of outside of class sessions. I will still keep to the two Saturday (or Sunday) sessions in the spring term (TBA) in which you will take a full-length exam. However, we will have to have weekly morning sessions (period 0) starting the second week of school. So, I need your input here. Do you prefer Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday mornings? (Yes, you can eat in my room and we will talk about a breakfast rotation) We can’t do Mondays because we will forget on the first day of the week, and Fridays are out because it is "late start" for students and "early start" for teachers (faculty meetings before school this year). Please post your response as a comment to this post so that the other students can see your responses. The morning sessions and two weekend sessions will be part of your over all grade and attendance is required.

You will have many different assignments than those of the English Honors III students and some the same. For example, the vocabulary and term paper are the same. However, how you look at a piece of literature will be the main difference. When the English Honors III class has a literature packet and notes on each chapter to complete for The Scarlet Letter, you will have a Critical Reading Response (CRR) on each chapter. You will learn how to complete CRR’s over time. This really isn’t much different to how I used to teach AP and Honors at a previous institution. BTW the students who attended all of the morning sessions this past year are also the ones that passed the exam. By starting in the fall with the morning sessions, I believe we will have the whole AP class pass the exam.