Upper School Curriculum

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English

The Benjamin English curriculum, consistent with the School’s philosophy, is committed to the preparation of its students for college-level English and literature.  The general courses have this as their primary objective while honors and advanced placement courses aid students in academic preparation for highly competitive and most competitive colleges. We accomplish these goals by teaching a logical, sequential curriculum that emphasizes the mastery of literary analysis as well as mastery of oral and written expression.  This is a reading and writing intensive curriculum that our elective offerings ably support. 
Students must earn four credits in English as a requirement for graduation.  Students must meet this requirement by taking three year-long courses and two Senior Selections or four year-long courses.
 

  • Introduction to World Literature and Composition

    Introduction to World Literature and Composition                                  Full Year; 1 Credit
    This course offers students a literature-based exploration of the three central areas of English studies: critical reading, written analysis, and oral communication. Through a comprehensive study of texts in multiple genres and media, and across multiple time periods, students develop an understanding of the skills needed for success throughout the Upper School's curriculum. Further study of the standards of written English, including grammar and mechanics, is complemented by a review of the conventions of the most recent edition of the MLA Handbook. Students must complete assigned summer reading before their return to school in August.
    Prerequisite: 8th Grade English
     

  • American Literature and Composition

    American Literature and Composition                                               Full Year; 1 Credit
    Literary analysis based upon plot, setting, characters, conflict, point of view, diction, artistic devices, and themes is the primary focus of these courses.  Readings include non-fiction, poetry, short stories, novels and plays, as well as film analysis. The emphasis is on American literature, but not exclusively. The teachers use class discussion to broaden minds, enhance vocabulary, improve proficiency in verbal expression, and encourage self-confidence and critical thinking. Honors students read more literary works, do more writing and display more sophistication in their work. Honors preparation focuses more on their preparation for AP Language and Composition in the junior year. Students must complete assigned summer reading before their return to school in August.
    Prerequisite: Intro to World Literature  
     

  • Honors American Literature and Composition

    Honors American Literature and Composition                                    Full Year; 1 Credit
    Literary analysis based upon plot, setting, characters, conflict, point of view, diction, artistic devices, and themes is the primary focus of these courses.  Readings include non-fiction, poetry, short stories, novels and plays, as well as film analysis. The emphasis is on American literature, but not exclusively. The teachers use class discussion to broaden minds, enhance vocabulary, improve proficiency in verbal expression, and encourage self-confidence and critical thinking. Honors students read more literary works, do more writing and display more sophistication in their work. Honors preparation focuses more on their preparation for AP Language and Composition in the junior year. Students must complete assigned summer reading before their return to school in August.
    Prerequisite:  a grade of B+ or better in Introduction to World Literature and Composition is required, and department approval.
     

  • Western Literature and Composition

    Western Literature and Composition                                                  Full Year; 1 Credit
    This is a literature and writing course focusing on development in the critical analysis of literature and the writing of critical essays.  The content includes a study of novels, plays, films, short stories and poetry as well as an applicable method of critical analysis. The course examines the historical and literary significance of major works and authors. In-class timed essays, formal papers, quizzes, and projects are prominent forms of assessment.  The course places an emphasis on oral presentation and critical essays as the result of literary analysis. Students must complete assigned summer reading before their return to school in August.
     Prerequisite: American Literature and Composition or Honors American Literature and Composition.

  • AP English Language and Composition

    AP Language and Composition                                                          Full Year; 1 Credit
    This course provides a more sophisticated and in-depth treatment of the requirements of 11th grade literature as well as preparation for the Advanced Placement examination in English Language and Composition.  Participants have frequent writing assignments, both in-class timed essays and writing at home. Literature of the five genres provides the subject matter for tests patterned after those of the AP Language exam.  Students must complete assigned summer reading before their return to school in August.
    Prerequisite:  American Literature and Composition (A- or higher is required), (If coming from the Honors (level highly recommended), B+ or higher is required), or Western Literature and Composition, and department approval.

  • Senior English: Arts of War

    Senior English: The Arts of War                                One Semester (Spring); ½ Credit
    “War, said he, was the best subject of all.  It offered maximum material combined with maximum action.  Everything was speeded up and the writer who had participated in a war gained such a mass of experience as he would normally have to wait a lifetime to get.” –Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Poets, writers, playwrights, filmmakers and painters all seem drawn to war.  In this course, we will look at poems, novels, short stories, films, and essays: all about or inspired by the subject of war. From this we will learn about war, our world, each other, and ourselves.  Potential works: (print and film): The Iliad, Troy, Henry V, Full Metal Jacket, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Das Boot, All Quiet on the Western Front,  A Farewell to Arms, Regeneration, The Sun Also Rises, Platoon, Saving Private Ryan, Johnny Got His Gun, The Red Badge of Courage, Ran, Breaker Morant, Midway, The Caine Mutiny, and more.

    Prerequisite: Western Literature and Composition or AP Language and Composition.
     

  • English-SS: Detective/Mystery Genre

    This course will focus on detective genre, crime scene investigation and mystery narratives. Readers will examine the techniques writers use to keep their audience in suspense.  We will seek to find the cause of some of the social and moral climate that factors into criminal fiction and explore the dark mysteries that infect the human heart.
    The course follows a chronological sequence as it traces the history of this genre as well as the historical events that impact this literature.  We will examine such writers as  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Edgar Allan Poe, and J. K. Rowling.

    Prerequisite: Western Literature and Composition or AP Language and Composition    .
     

  • Senior English: Ethics in Literature and Film

    Senior English: Ethics in Literature and Film          One Semester (Fall); ½ Credit
     Aristotle once said, “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”  This course examines the ways in which novels and films can raise ethical issues that challenge us to reflect upon our lives and the society in which we live. During the semester, we will examine works of literature and film that shed light upon how we should act. We will use literary examples to reflect philosophically about the nature of good and evil. What do we mean by good and evil? Are they relative to different cultures or time periods?  Assignments will include selections from novels, short stories, plays and films, and we will relate the ethical issues portrayed to contemporary experience. Altogether, this course is designed to help students gain a better understanding of ethics by analyzing the situations portrayed in fictional stories.
     
    Prerequisite: Western Literature and Composition or AP Language and Composition

  • Senior English: From Page to Stage

    Senior English: From Page to Stage                            One Semester (Fall); ½ Credit
    Have you ever written a play? Ever attempted it? This course will give aspiring writers the opportunity to create a play, have it read and then revise over several drafts, work with actors and a director and finally stage it before a live audience. This will be a process-oriented course which will introduce young playwrights to the traditional elements of Aristotelian drama and current theories and plays by authors as diverse as Samuel Beckett and David Mamet. By studying plays from early Greek Drama to the latest contemporary works, students will have a firmer understanding of how to structure their own work and get it ready for Opening Night!

    Prerequisite: Western Literature and Composition or AP Language and Composition.

  • Senior English: Humor, Satire, and Memoir

    Senior English: Humor, Satire and Memoir                  One Semester (Fall); ½ Credit
     David Rakoff instructs, “Not being funny doesn’t make you a bad person. Not having a sense of humor does.” Mary Karr’s writing and teaching have taught her that “If the voice is strong enough, the reader will go anywhere with you.”  David Foster Wallace confesses, “I do things like get in a taxi and say, ‘The library, and step on it.’” Come along for a ride through fiction and nonfiction texts which employ humor to illuminate and/or satirize aspects of society and the human condition.  

    Authors will include Jane Austen, David Foster Wallace, David Rakoff, David Sedaris, Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Franzen, Oliver Sacks, and Mary Karr, as well as various episodes of Ira Glass’s NPR program This American Life.  Students will be tasked with analyzing the thematic concerns of each text, deciphering the stylistic choices employed, and examining how each influences meaning.  This course will include much discussion of voice and tone as we embark on the journey of how humor, satire and memoir can lead us closer to discovering truth.
    Prerequisite: Western Literature and Composition or AP Language and Composition.

  • Senior English: Literature of the City

    Senior English: Literature of the City                      One Semester (Spring); ½ Credit
    What is it that fascinates writers, artists, and thinkers about the city? What started as physical centers for business, production, and residency quickly evolve into settings of imagination, myth, aspirations, and horror.  Much more than concrete and brick towers, cavernous streets, and urban planning, cities rapidly become thriving symbols of what unites and defines a people, while simultaneously adding to the fragmentation of the definition of the “human experience.”  This course will explore a single city, in literature, film, and art, thereby allowing students to reflect upon the forces that help create and perpetuate the role it plays in the global consciousness. Interested students may then participate in a site-visit/travel-study to the studied city during Spring Break.
     
    Prerequisite: Western Literature and Composition or AP Language and Composition.

  • Senior English: Nonfiction Text and Film: Reading in the Reel World

    Senior English: Nonfiction Text and Film:  Reading in the Reel World               
    One Semester (Fall); ½ Credit
     This course is a study of nonfiction and documentaries--How much of a story is true? In this class we will focus on nonfiction, a genre that attempts to present “truth” in written, oral, and visual forms. In exploring contemporary books, songs, and films, we will seek to understand the ways truth can be created, developed, and explained. In short essays, a research paper, and expository personal responses, students will be challenged to question the reality they think they know. Successful completion of the course will leave one skeptical of the media, documentaries, and nonfiction literature. That is, of course, assuming this description is true.  

    Prerequisite: Western Literature and Composition or AP Language and Composition.

  • Senior English: Health, Illness, Medicine and Humanity

    Senior English: Health, Illness, Medicine and Humanity   
    One Semester (Spring); ½ Credit
     Oliver Sacks asserts,“In examining disease, we gain wisdom about anatomy and physiology and biology. In examining the person with disease, we gain wisdom about life.” Eula Biss reminds us that we “cannot control what happens to [us], but [we] can control how [we] feel about it. Or, as Jean-Paul Sartre put it, ‘Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.’” Leslie Jamison postulates, “Empathy comes from the Greek empatheia - em (into) and pathos (feeling) - a penetration, a kind of travel. It suggests you enter another person's pain as you'd enter another country, through immigration and customs, border crossing by way of query: What grows where you are? What are the laws? What animals graze there?”
    Come along for a ride through fiction and nonfiction texts which probe the topics of health, illness, and medicine in order to gain a closer understanding of our human condition.  Authors may include Oliver Sacks, Susan Sontag, Elaine Scarry, Leslie Jamison, Joan Didion, Albert Camus, Michel Foucault, Virginia Woolf, Raymond Carver, Jonathan Franzen, Fyodor Dostoevsky and others.  Students will be tasked with analyzing the thematic concerns of each text, deciphering the stylistic choices employed and examining how each influences meaning. This course will include much discussion of diction, voice and tone as we embark on the journey of how these discussions of health, illness and medicine can lead us closer to discovering the truth about humanity.
    Prerequisite: Western Literature and Composition or AP Language and Composition
     
     

  • Senior English: Science Fiction

    Senior English: Science Fiction, Fact, and Fantasy            One Semester (Fall) ½ Credit
    If you like Slaughterhouse Five, Katniss, Gryffindor, Middle Earth, The Road, the Tardis, Dune, Inferno, I am Legend, this course is for you. During the semester we will study some of the giants of science fiction and fantasy: Bradbury, Herbert, Heinlein, Asimov, Rowling, Tolkien, and others. Through literature, television, and film, we will look at science fiction and fantasy: where it comes from, where it is now, and where it takes us. Be students on fire.  Potential works: (print and film) Stranger in a Strange Land, Dune, Hunger Games, Lord of the Rings, 2001: a Space Odyssey, The Road, Harry Potter, Doctor Who, Brave New World, the Left Hand Of Darkness, Brazil, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Twelve Monkeys, and more. 

    Prerequisite: Western Literature and Composition or AP Language and Composition.

  • AP English Literature and Composition

    AP Literature and Composition                                                            Full Year; 1 Credit
    A literature and writing program focusing on the critical analysis of literature and the writing of critical essays, this course prepares students for the Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition exam.  The students have frequent writing assignments, both in-class timed and at home. Literature of the five genres, plus film, provides the subject matter for tests patterned after those of the AP Literature examination.  Students must complete assigned summer reading before their return to school in August.
    Prerequisite:  AP Language and Composition recommended and department approval required.

  • Expository Writing (F)

    Expository Writing            One Semester (Fall ) or Spring ) or Full Year; ½ or 1 Credit
    This writing class gives students the opportunity to pursue newspaper writing.  The course focuses primarily on the production of The Pharcyde, the school paper.  Students learn to write, edit, layout, produce and support journalistic publications.  Graded work includes numerous news articles, exercises, and graphical work. All members of the staff contribute two Saturdays per semester to complete the layout of the paper. This course may be taken for credit for more than one year.
     

  • Expository Writing (S)

    This writing class gives students the opportunity to pursue newspaper writing. The course focuses primarily on the production of The Pharcyde, the school paper. Students learn to write, edit, layout, produce and support journalistic publications. Graded work includes numerous news articles, exercises, and graphical work. All members of the staff contribute two Saturdays per semester to complete the layout of the paper. This course may be taken for credit for more than one year.

  • Film Analysis

    Film AnalysisOne Semester                                                                       (Fall); ½ Credit
    The film analysis course gives students an understanding of films as works of literature and provides instruction in the basic film types and genres. The course directs students in the following areas of study: the use of motifs in film, the use of narrative in film, the use of elements specific to film such as cinematography, lighting, editing and sound. The course also explores the use of film as social commentary. Students view and discuss films in a variety of genres and develop and apply a system of analysis for the writing of film reviews. They keep journals on all films presented, and on a regular basis the teacher grades these reports.  Students watch outside films as well.

    Prerequisite:  Introduction to World Literature or equivalent.

  • Mythology

    Mythology                                                                      One Semester (Fall); ½ Credit
    Students learn about familiar and unfamiliar mythology: Greek, Roman, Norse, Native American, Asian, Irish, and Judeo-Christian. By experiencing different myths in a variety of cultures, students gain not only knowledge but also an appreciation of the beliefs of others.  The course also explores the use of myth as literary allusion.
    Prerequisite: Introduction to World Literature or equivalent.
     

  • Speech

    Speech                                                                           One Semester (Spring); ½ Credit
    This one-semester course introduces the basic principles of crafting and delivering various types of speeches. Students learn about verbal and nonverbal delivery techniques and complete a variety of exercises designed to enhance these skills. The second half of the course centers on the various types of persuasive speeches and methods of persuasion. The teacher evaluates students primarily on their performance in a series of speaking projects, as well as on their written critiques of others, group work, and class participation. No prior knowledge or experience in public speaking is necessary.

    Open only to 10th, 11th, and 12th grade students.

  • Honors Expository Writing

    Honors Expository Writing        One Semester (Fall or Spring) or Full Year; ½ or 1 Credit
    In order to earn Honors Credit for the Expository Writing course, a student must be taking the course for the second year or beyond and he/she/they must have earned an active leadership role in the newspaper (an editorial position). Students are expected to contribute additional pieces to issues of the newspaper (at least one additional article per issue). Students who have editorial roles are tasked with assisting new journalists to develop, compose, and edit their pieces. Students who have editorial roles agree to take on additional work, such as participation in layout and revision days/evenings that go beyond the traditional expectations of a regular course. 

  • Senior English: Horror Fiction

     Senior English:  Horror Fiction                                               One Semester; .5 credits
    Warning: This class is not for the faint of heart. But if you enjoy scary stories or being creeped out by nefarious characters and eerie settings, this is the genre for you.  We will examine the type of fiction that has become a part of Western culture. How is it tied to our beliefs today? What does the horror genre teach us about ourselves? What scares us? Why do we enjoy being frightened? We will evaluate the underlying psychology behind the human desire to seek out fear. By charting the history of the form from ancient folktales to contemporary fiction, we will identify the elements of the horror genre and discuss the significance of monsters and the hauntings that continue to impact contemporary society.  Some possible works include: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, Edgar Allan Poe Short Stories, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Coleridge,  Zone One by Colson Whitehead, Inferno by Dante Algieri, Carrie  by Stephen King, and The Turn of the Screw by  Henry James.

  • Senior English: The Study of the Short

    Senior English: The Study of the Short                                 one semester; .5 credits
    This course will closely examine the fundamental principles behind the telling of a narrative in its most truncated form: the short story, the essay and the poem. The infrastructure for this class will allow for discussion of past and current social expectations of human behavior, cultural mores and the reluctance to conform to those norms. Students will consider how each particular story develops the character, perspective and most importantly, the voice of its author within the framework of their cultural background. The focus will be on the most influential and innovative global writers within the 20th and 21st centuries. Some examples are W.E.B. Du Bois, Raymond Carver, Nuruddin Farah, Amos Oz, Reinaldo Arenas, Duong Thu Huong and Bharati Mukherjee.

  • Senior English: Women in Literature

    In this course students will read works by women authors. The goal will be to examine the literary techniques authors use to create female characters and how they use these characters to comment on the universal human experience. Students will learn about the historical context of each work and explore how the characters’ struggles and triumphs can be related to real life. The goal is to read two works of fiction and one work of nonfiction as well as various short works (essays, poetry, short stories), both fiction and nonfiction. If there is time there will also be a film study. Students will continue to build on what they have learned in previous years about literary analysis and argument. Second semester includes Black History Month so this course can address that as well.

  • Writing Across the Genres

    This core freshman course provides a thorough instruction in the fundamentals of written expression. A writing intensive course, Writing Across the Genres will provide a thorough review of basic grammar, mechanics, essay structure, and style, giving students the best opportunity to develop the writing and content reading skills necessary for success in a college preparatory school environment. Students must complete assigned summer reading before their return to school in August.

    Prerequisite:  8th Grade English and selection based on a departmental placement test.

Department Faculty

Main Address & Lower/Middle School

11000 Ellison Wilson Road
North Palm Beach, FL 33408
Ph: 561.626.3747

Upper School

4875 Grandiflora Road 
Palm Beach Gardens, FL 33418 
Ph: 561.472.5998
A premier PK3 - Grade 12 independent, coeducational day school with campuses in North Palm Beach and Palm Beach Gardens. Since 1960, The Benjamin School has provided a challenging college preparatory education to a diverse student body in a structured, nurturing community environment.
 
After hours emergency contact:
Leslie Downs/Chief Operating Officer
Ph:  561.657.0075 or 561.747.0585