Courses/Curriculum
The English curriculum at Paint Branch is thematically organized and
modeled after the College Board Pacesetter program. Students construct
meaning of print and non-print texts to acquire information, evaluate
ideas, appreciate the art of literature and media, and integrate new learning
with previous knowledge. When students compose, they generate or gather
ideas, organize, draft, review, and consider revisions based on established
and evolving criteria.
Typical Course Sequence
The four core English courses move students grade by grade through increasingly
more difficult tasks to practice and show mastery of the processes and
content as outlined in the curriculum. The curriculum is recursive, with
each course building on skills and concepts introduced earlier. Core texts
in all grades include multicultural novels, biography, non-fiction, drama,
poetry, short narrative, exposition, primary documents, speeches, and
films reflecting the unit theme.
Research and Media
Strands related to research, technology, viewing and media literacy, and
oral communication spiral through all four years. Students conduct research
each year, learning skills that build successively until they write a
research paper independently in their senior year. They learn how to use
the computer as a research tool and as a tool for communicating, presenting,
word-processing, desktop publishing, and multimedia production. Teachers
also emphasize and give regular practice in close and critical reading
of dense text to prepare students for what they will encounter on the
SATs, in college, in primary documents, and even in many high school text
books.
Assessment
Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) mandate countywide exams for both
semesters of each English course. Core English courses require common
tasks for each unit that mimic tasks students will face on state high
school assessments and SATs. Students also keep English portfolios, selecting
a common task for each semester and carrying the portfolios with them
from year to year for reflection, progress checks, and goal-setting. In
their senior year, students develop showcase portfolios that require considerable
analysis and explication.
Interdisciplinary Connections
English courses at each grade have a primary focus and the curriculum
is designed to connect naturally and meaningfully to other disciplines.
The independence theme of Grade 9, for instance, fits neatly with US History
and the leadership theme of Grade 10 coincides with National State and
Local Government (NSL). In addition, Paint Branch teachers design interdisciplinary
projects such as the Grade 10 Imagination unit that connects the novel
Flatland to geometry and art classes' study of patterns and perspective.
In Grade 11, English students collaborate with science students on Tom
Stoppard's play Arcadia, and write their own original science fiction.
Advanced English Opportunities
The English department offers each core course on-level and at the honors
level. Students may enroll in Advanced Placement English Language and
Composition in Grade 11 and in Advanced Placement English Language and
Literature in Grade 12.
English Electives
The English department also offers electives-which most students begin
to take as sophomores and juniors, as their schedules allow-in theatre,
journalism, creative writing, yearbook publication, literary magazine
publication, and introductory and advanced television production.
Summer Reading
2008-2009 Summer Reading Program for
Paint Branch High School
Many studies have shown that reading promotes students' mental growth,
capacity to process information, and ability to understand themselves
and the world around them. Good readers become good thinkers and good
writers. Success in school and in the workplace depends heavily on the
ability to read. In high school classes, students are required to read
complex passages and decipher their meanings as part of instruction and
assessments. The High School Assessments and county-wide finals require
students to understand complex questions and highlight the important information
contained within a question. Students who take the SAT and Advanced Placement
examinations will encounter tests similarly designed to evaluate their
critical reading ability, understanding of a variety of vocabulary, and
writing skills. In the workplace, employees are expected to understand
their tasks based on written information. Therefore, it is important to
expect all students to read during the summer. Research strongly suggests
that reading, like most skills, improves with practice. Summer reading
serves as one measure for determining proficiency of the following MCPS
indicator and objective:
Indicator:
Refine and extend comprehension skills through exposure to a variety
of texts, including traditional print and electronic devices.
Objective:
Read a minimum of 25 self-selected and/or assigned books or book
equivalents representing various genre per year.
In order to prepare our students for these challenges both in high school
and beyond, English Department members have selected books and created
cross-curricular assignments to provide summer reading opportunities for
each student. Students will be evaluated on their reading when they return
in the fall with common assignments for each grade level.
All students are expected to complete the summer reading assignment for
their grade level in the time allotted. Students transferring into Paint
Branch High School may complete the assignments for their grade levels
on the required reading from their previous schools and submit the assignments
to the appropriate teacher on the second day of school.
In addition to reading assignments, students taking:
[Click on any of the previous
Math Classes listed for packets. All Math Packets in Adobe Acrobat.]
are required to complete math
review packets due on the first day of school to math teachers.
Copies of all reading assignments are available at the links below (pdf)
and will also be available in the guidance office, the main office
and on the website. Any questions concerning summer reading assignments
or lists should be brought to the student’s English teacher.
Grade 9 |
Grade
10 |
Grade
11 |
Grade
12 |
AP
Language and Composition
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AP
Literature and Composition
All reading lists in Adobe Acrobat (pdf)
Get Adobe Acrobat Reader
Shakefest
Celebrate Shakespeare's Birthday April 22, 2005 at the annual
Shakefest here at Paint Branch. All instruction in our English classes
will be focused on Shakespeare and his works. Students and teachers are
dressing up as someone from Shakespearean time. Students are also encouraged
to bring in a birthday cake to help celebrate and remember Shakespeare.
There will be students performing soliloquies from Shakespeare's plays,
demonstrations of sword fighting, and Elizabethan dance .
See pictures from past
Shakefests.
Resources
TurnItIn.Com - An
Online Writing Tool
Women in Film & Video (WIFV) of Washington, DC is a nonprofit organization
dedicated to advancing professional development and achievement for women working in all
areas of film, video, multimedia, and related disciplines. The DC chapter is part of an
international network of 40 chapters around the world.
 Instructional
Television
Instructional Television
(ITV) is a full-service television and multimedia facility that produces
programs for staff, parents, students, and the general community. Many
programs are produced in multiple languages to reach the growing multi-cultural
community in Montgomery County. ITV programs can be viewed on two county
cable channels, 33 and 34, as well as on the web. In addition, videotapes
are disseminated to schools, libraries, and other government agencies.
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Pulitzer
Prize
HISTORY OF THE PRIZES
In the latter years of the 19th century, Joseph Pulitzer
stood out as the very embodiment of American journalism. Hungarian-born,
an intense indomitable figure, Pulitzer was the most skillful of newspaper
publishers, a passionate crusader against dishonest government, a fierce,
hawk-like competitor who did not shrink from sensationalism in circulation
struggles, and a visionary who richly endowed his profession. His innovative
New York World and St. Louis Post-Dispatch reshaped newspaper journalism.
Pulitzer was the first to call for the training of journalists at the
university level in a school of journalism. And certainly, the lasting
influence of the Pulitzer Prizes on journalism, literature, music, and
drama is to be attributed to his visionary acumen. In writing his 1904
will, which made provision for the establishment of the Pulitzer Prizes
as an incentive to excellence, Pulitzer specified solely four awards
in journalism, four in letters and drama, one for education, and four
traveling scholarships. In letters, prizes were to go to an American
novel, an original American play performed in New York, a book on the
history of the United States, an American biography, and a history of
public service by the press. But, sensitive to the dynamic progression
of his society Pulitzer made provision for broad changes in the system
of awards. He established an overseer advisory board and willed it "power
in its discretion to suspend or to change any subject or subjects, substituting,
however, others in their places, if in the judgment of the board such
suspension, changes, or substitutions shall be conducive to the public
good or rendered advisable by public necessities, or by reason of change
of time." He also empowered the board to withhold any award where
entries fell below its standards of excellence. The assignment of power
to the board was such that it could also overrule the recommendations
for awards made by the juries subsequently set up in each of the categories.
Since the inception of the prizes in 1917, the board, later renamed
the Pulitzer Prize Board, has increased the number of awards to 21 and
introduced poetry, music, and photography as subjects, while adhering
to the spirit of the founder's will and its intent.
The board typically exercised its broad discretion in
1997, the 150th anniversary of Pulitzer's birth, in two fundamental
respects. It took a significant step in recognition of the growing importance
of work being done by newspapers in online journalism. Beginning with
the 1999 competition, the board sanctioned the submission by newspapers
of online presentations as supplements to print exhibits in the Public
Service category. The board left open the distinct possibility of further
inclusions in the Pulitzer process of online journalism as the electronic
medium developed. The other major change was in music, a category that
was added to the Plan of Award for prizes in 1943. The prize always
had gone to composers of classical music. The definition and entry requirements
of the music category beginning with the 1998 competition were broadened
to attract a wider range of American music. In an indication of the
trend toward bringing mainstream music into the Pulitzer process, the
1997 prize went to Wynton Marsalis's "Blood on the Fields,"
which has strong jazz elements, the first such award. In music, the
board also took tacit note of the criticism leveled at its predecessors
for failure to cite two of the country's foremost jazz composers. It
bestowed a Special Award on George Gershwin marking the 1998 centennial
celebration of his birth and Duke Ellington on his 1999 centennial year.
Over the years the Pulitzer board has at times been targeted
by critics for awards made or not made. Controversies also have arisen
over decisions made by the board counter to the advice of juries. Given
the subjective nature of the award process, this was inevitable. The
board has not been captive to popular inclinations. Many, if not most,
of the honored books have not been on bestseller lists, and many of
the winning plays have been staged off-Broadway or in regional theaters.
In journalism the major newspapers, such as The New York Times, The
Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, have harvested many of
the awards, but the board also has often reached out to work done by
small, little-known papers. The Public Service award in 1995 went to
The Virgin Islands Daily News, St. Thomas, for its disclosure of the
links between the region's rampant crime rate and corruption in the
local criminal justice system. In letters, the board has grown less
conservative over the years in matters of taste. In 1963 the drama jury
nominated Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but the board
found the script insufficiently "uplifting," a complaint that
related to arguments over sexual permissiveness and rough dialogue.
In 1993 the prize went to Tony Kushner's "Angels in America: Millennium
Approaches," a play that dealt with problems of homosexuality and
AIDS and whose script was replete with obscenities. On the same debated
issue of taste, the board in 1941 denied the fiction prize to Ernest
Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, but gave him the award in 1953
for The Old Man and the Sea, a lesser work. Notwithstanding these contretemps,
from its earliest days, the board has in general stood firmly by a policy
of secrecy in its deliberations and refusal to publicly debate or defend
its decisions. The challenges have not lessened the reputation of the
Pulitzer Prizes as the country's most prestigious awards and as the
most sought-after accolades in journalism, letters, and music. The Prizes
are perceived as a major incentive for high-quality journalism and have
focused worldwide attention on American achievements in letters and
music.
The formal announcement of the prizes, made each April,
states that the awards are made by the president of Columbia University
on the recommendation of the Pulitzer Prize board. This formulation
is derived from the Pulitzer will, which established Columbia as the
seat of the administration of the prizes. Today, in fact, the independent
board makes all the decisions relative to the prizes. In his will Pulitzer
bestowed an endowment on Columbia of $2,000,000 for the establishment
of a School of Journalism, one-fourth of which was to be "applied
to prizes or scholarships for the encouragement of public, service,
public morals, American literature, and the advancement of education."
In doing so, he stated: "I am deeply interested in the progress
and elevation of journalism, having spent my life in that profession,
regarding it as a noble profession and one of unequaled importance for
its influence upon the minds and morals of the people. I desire to assist
in attracting to this profession young men of character and ability,
also to help those already engaged in the profession to acquire the
highest moral and intellectual training." In his ascent to the
summit of American journalism, Pulitzer himself received little or no
assistance. He prided himself on being a self-made man, but it may have
been his struggles as a young journalist that imbued him with the desire
to foster professional training.
http://www.pulitzer.org/index.html
National Book
Award
THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS:
A TRADITION SINCE 1950
The National Book Awards
have become the nation's preeminent literary prizes, and The National
Book Awards Ceremony and Dinner the most important event on our literary
calendar. Today, the Awards are given to recognize achievements in four
genres: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People's Literature.
The Winners, selected by five-member, independent judging panels for
each genre, receive a $10,000 cash award and a crystal sculpture.
http://www.nationalbook.org/
The National
Book Critics Circle Awards
The nominees for the National
Book Critics Circle awards for the publishing year 2004 in the categories
of fiction, nonfiction, biography/autobiography, criticism, and poetry
have been selected. The winners will be announced this March at the
organization’s 31st annual awards ceremony. The National Book Critics
Circle is a not-for-profit organization of book editors and critics
with some 600 members nationwide. The organization was founded in 1974
to encourage and raise the quality of book criticism in all media and
to create a way for critics to communicate with one another about their
professional concerns.
http://bookcritics.org/index.html
PEN/Faulkner
Award  
The PEN/Faulkner Award is
a national prize which honors the best published works of fiction by
American citizens in a calendar year. Three judges are chosen annually
by the Directors of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation to select five books
from among the 200 to 300 works submitted. The winning writer receives
$15,000 at the award ceremony held at the Folger Shakespeare Library
in May; four other nominees receive $5,000 each. The judges generally
make their decision about the five finalists in early to mid-March,
at which time the names are announced
Background & Mission
PEN New England is one of
five regional branches of PEN American Center, which in turn is part
of International PEN, the only worldwide organization of writing professionals.
Our mission is to advance the cause of literature and reading in our
region and to defend free expression everywhere.
PEN (Poets/Playwrights, Essayists,
Editors, Novelists) was founded in 1921 under the presidency of John
Galsworthy; among early members were Joseph Conrad, George Bernard Shaw,
and H. G. Wells. Over the years, PEN centers have been established on
six continents. PEN New England, founded in 1978, currently serves a
thousand members in the literary community throughout Massachusetts
and in all the New England states. We welcome as associate members all
writers, editors, and others interested in being part of this literary
community and in advancing the goals and programs of PEN.
Twenty years ago, novelist
Anne Bernays began PEN New England with a few other writers. Now it
has close to 900 members. It has adapted this mission to suit the needs
and exploit the riches of the New England literary community, and its
activities include the awarding of two major books prizes, literacy
programs, events introducing new writers and celebrating new books,
and panels which address a wide range of writing and professional issues.
The activities of PEN New
England are guided by an Executive Board and its advisory body, the
Council. PEN NE Executive Board and Council members are chosen because
of the significant contribution they have made to the NEW England literary
community.
http://www.penfaulkner.org/public/pfaulk/index.htm
Hemingway Foundation/PEN
Award
PEN New England is now accepting
submissions for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for books published
in 2004. The award of $8,000 is presented for a novel or book of short
stories by an American author who has not previously published a book
of fiction. The prize was won last year by Jennifer Haigh for Mrs. Kimble
(Morrow). Two finalists and two runners-up will also be named; each
of these authors will be awarded a residency at UCross Foundation in
Wyoming.
http://www.pen-ne.org/awards/index.html
The William Faulkner Creative Writing Competition
A national competition open to previously unpublished
work in seven categories: Novel, Novella, Novel-in-Progress, Short Story,
Essay, Poetry, and Short Story by a High School Student. Click
here for more information.
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