The Beekman School's Fourth Year English Class for Seniors
This course begins with a focus on personal narratives, as students discover and develop their unique voice by reading and analyzing a selection of personal essays. Students learn, practice, and apply narrative writing skills to produce a complete personal essay for use in the college application process, while group discussion and analysis introduce students to college seminar skills and dialogue-based learning.
Students also engage a comprehensive unit on literary analysis, using a diverse array of literature - a novel, short story, and literary essay. The course also includes training in truth-telling through a process-based research project. Throughout the unit, students learn and practice comprehensive research skills, including background research, vetting news sources for bias, locating scholarly perspectives and even conducting phone and video interviews with experts.
Finally, students engage a dual unit on satire and poetry. First, students learn and study satire in established literature, and then they compare and contrast these works with present-day satire, including episodes from Saturday Night Live and The Colbert Report, as they analyze exaggeration, subversion and imitation.