This week in English

This week high school English classes hit the ground running, not only with blogs, but also with various units in literature.

The freshmen and sophomores are both working on short stories.  By exploring different short stories, students are building their knowledge of various literary terms and vocabulary words.  The freshmen will be refreshing themselves on the basics that they learned in middle school and begin to dig deeper into their texts, while the sophomores will expand the repertoire that they built as freshmen and continue learning how to explore and relate to their reading.

The juniors have begun discussing early American literature, starting with Native American origin myths.  This week they will be reading several different stories that originated in Native American oral tradition, which will start them on their journey to discover how literature can give us insight to how America came to be what it is today.

The seniors are also reading a work originating in oral tradition, only this work dates back to the earliest reaches of the English language.  Beowulf is the first known work to be written in the English language.  Students will be following Beowulf on his quest to defeat enemies and gain fame so that he may achieve immortality in the stories of generations to come.

The year has only just begun, and there are many new things in store for the entire high school!