Honors English 12

This course teaches skills for:

• Using words well & continuing to develop vocabulary
• Developing thoughts & ideas logically so as to become an effective writer & speaker
• Discovering creative writing as a useful vortex for both expressing & understanding emotions
• Appreciating Poetry & Fiction, particularly in the Short Story genre
• Learning the basic elements of stories & poems

Students will learn the fundamental elements and various styles of stories and poems, how to interpret and present poetry, and how to write well, by reading great writers and imitating classic styles, through composition work and vocabulary practice and tests, writing creative stories and poems, and oral presentation exercises.

Students taking this course for Kolbe Honors (H) credit will have eight papers, a mid-term, and final exam each semester.  Additionally, honors students should expect to have daily reading and minor weekly written assignments or quizzes.

Assignment due-dates and some grades are established by the parent.  To receive honors credit with Kolbe Academy, students must submit a number of designated assignments to Kolbe Academy for grading, usually exams and select papers.  The parent- and Kolbe-established grades are averaged to produce the final grade for the honors course.

Alternatively, a student may enroll in the Self-Paced Plus© grading assistance program to receive additional grading assistance by a Kolbe Academy faculty or staff member on designated assignments in the course.  In this case, parents may still submit grades for the student to be averaged in with the required Kolbe-graded honors assignments, or they may use the teacher-graded materials only to receive credit.

• Vocabulary Workshop Level G, Sadlier-Oxford
• Vocabulary Workshop Level G Teacher Manual, Sadlier-Oxford
• The Art of the Short Story, edited by Dana Gioia & R.S. Gwynn
• The Menagerie of Marsepink, Claudio Salvucci, Arx Publishing
• Writer’s Workshop, Gregory L. Roper
• MLA Handbook Eighth Edition

Optional physical copies available for purchase for the following under the English “Optional Material” section in the Kolbe Bookstore (digital copies are provided with the self-paced course):

• Treasury of Poems, (BOOK) The Kolbe Oral Presentation Series, Vol. IV. Kolbe Academy Press
• Poetry: A Spoken Art, (CD) The Kolbe Oral Presentation Series, Vol. IV. Kolbe Academy Press (Included with Treasury of Poems.)

Self-Paced Plus courses include the following:

• Grading by a highly qualified teacher for selected assignments (listed below) in the course.
• Access to teacher through the course’s discussion board.
• Option to report grade given by the teacher, or to report a grade assigned by parent.
• The pacing is still established by the parent in conjunction with the student’s goals and academic calendar. 
• Assignments will be graded within 1-2 weeks of the submission date, excluding holiday breaks.  (For the quickest grading, students should turn assignments in incrementally throughout the year.  If a student turns in multiple assignments to be graded at once, expect a response time of 1-2 weeks per assignment submitted.)

Self-Paced Plus Assignment List:

*We developed rubrics to assist in grading the composition assignments.  Each composition assignment will have a rubric available for the student in the course.