English 9, a college preparatory course, introduces vital and foundational concepts that will serve students throughout their high school careers. Students study various literary genres: the short story, the play, the epic poem, poetry, and the novel. The course focuses on grade-level texts in order to strengthen reading comprehension and analysis, which provides the basis for academic writing. Writing centers on paragraph development using specific evidence to support a claim and draw logical conclusions. Using this paragraph structure, students write analysis and argumentative essays. Throughout the year, students deepen and apply their study of grammar and vocabulary.

Though summer reading is not required for this course, students will find that establishing a reading habit over the summer helps them get a head start on the reading experience they will have during the year. While we encourage them to read books of their own choosing, we also recommend the following titles as indicative of the type of literary rigor they may encounter in the English 9 classroom: Lois Lowry’s The Giver, Chaim Potok’s The Chosen, and Patricia McKillip’s The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. Parents may wish to have students read at least one of these titles, as doing so will help them enter the course better prepared for its pace and expectations.