Year 11 Humanities: Week One

Some General Notes for Year 11
This year is going to be full, and you should expect to spend most of your day working on school work just as if you were working a full-time job.  That doesn't mean it will all be drudgery, but handling this sort of workload will be good practice for college.  College classes, in general, cover more ground more quickly than high school classes do and therefore, give quite a bit of homework in addition to time spent in class.  I think it's safe to say that all college students spend at least part of their weekend on homework.  (You can talk to Garrett about this if you want.)

On the other hand... our schedule isn't set in stone.  There are a few books that I've scheduled in for you that I think could made optional, dropped entirely, or moved to the next term.  What I want you to do is to try your best to follow the chart for the month of September.  At that point we'll have enough data to make some adjustments.

Following the chart might be easier if you figured out a sort of daily schedule for yourself.  You can break the readings down into daily pages if you want and do a little bit of reading from every book on a daily basis, or you can just assign each book to a different day and do the entire reading at one time.  So, for instance, if you break down your readings for The Scarlet Letter for 4 days a week, you'd be reading about 5 or 6 pages a day.  Or maybe you'd rather sit down on Tuesday afternoons and read all 22 pages for the week.

You might also assign different subjects to different days of the week.  In that case a schedule might look like this:

Monday
German class
Precalc homework
APES work
chemistry
Religion
Government
15 minutes of test prep

Tuesday
Precalc class (and homework?)
German homework
APES
chemistry
History
15 minutes of test prep

Wednesday
German class
Precalc homework
APES work
chemistry
Literature
15 minutes of test prep

Thursday
Precalc class (and homework?)
German homework
APES
chemistry* (You may only choose to do chemistry 3 days a week, though.)
Language Arts (Rhetoric/Writing)
15 minutes of test prep

Friday
Music class
Nature walk
Precalc
German
APES
Geography (which is pretty light)
15 minutes of test prep


A schedule like this one assumes that you'll be putting in some definite time every day on the single subject, though -- like an afternoon.  (Except in the case of Literature/Language Arts which go together and will also be lumped in with some of the reading we do in the mornings together.  Government, History, and Geography are also going to be combined on your transcript into a course we'll call something like "Early American History and Government" or "American History and Government I".)   

Writing This Year

Every week you'll be doing approximately 3 short writing assignments that won't be revised, with 2 or 3 longer (revised) essays per term and maybe a research paper in the spring.  I'll assign the short writing assignments based on your reading and they should be included in your weekly blog post.  (You can hand-write or type the short assignments as you like.)  These assignments will be due every Friday, and you will need to show them (and your chart) to your father.  Also, you'll need to meet with him to discuss Government; you two will need to work out a good time, and he may require you to answer questions in the workbook that goes along with your book.  We will hash that out this week.

You'll also notice that Week 12 on your chart is light on readings and includes "essay or exam topic" entries for many subjects.  Week 12 will be our exam week.



Week One Links and Writing Assignments

Writing Assignments:
Only one since we're just getting started:
1) Summarize the section of Alexander Pope's "Essay on Man" that you are assigned for this week


Literature
Alexander Pope: 24 Annotated Poems
A vast encyclopedia about the history of English and American literature which you may want to explore: Vol. XI: The Period of the French Revolution

Essay on Man by Alexander Pope (And on audio here)
Gulliver's Travels on audio here
Two audio versions of The Scarlet Letter



Writing and Language Arts

To listen to the audio lectures for TESS (Traditional English Sentence Style), go here and scroll down to see the lectures linked in the sidebar. 



History
  
The Brothers Green teach American History, too: Crash Course American History.
(Term One is basically videos #1-#6)
Salem Witchcraft Trials, actual transcripts
You might also want to dip into Francis Parkman's classic history, The Jesuits in North America