12th Grade English Curriculum Resource & Lesson Plans

How It Works

You can use this 12th Grade English course as a template for designing and implementing your course. Here are the key components of the course and how you can use them:

• Chapters - Each chapter covers a unit of 12th grade English, from British literature to literary terms and writing rules. Use these chapters as mile markers as you map out your course. We recommend planning to spend a week on each chapter, but you can always allocate the chapters according to the length of your specific 12th grade English course.
• Lessons - Within each chapter are video lessons that further break down topics into bite-sized chunks. These lessons cover single topics like African American art and literary themes or the difference between active and passive voice. Each one is often appropriate for a single class.
• Key Terms - Within each lesson are key terms. These are emphasized on screen and in the transcript. As you develop your syllabus, these key terms help you focus on the most important learning objectives. For example, the lesson on book citations includes key terms like APA, Chicago and MLA formatting.

Video Lessons

As you work on your 12th grade English plans, save time by incorporating video lessons from this resource. Here's how:

• Introduce Topics - Your students will be in the right mindset for understanding topics like common English usage errors if you begin class with a short video. It can be a jumping-off point for a lecture, group activity or class discussion.
• Break Up Lectures - The video format, which often includes animation, helps students visualize literary periods and locations like Shakespearean England.
• Assign For Homework - Each lesson in the course, from American drama to capitalization can be assigned to your students as homework.

Transcripts

Each video lesson includes a complete transcript. You can utilize these transcripts in several ways:

• Lecture Notes - Do you need a guide as you plan a lecture, such as one on a particular American or British book? The transcripts cover each topic in depth, with key terms highlighted for quick reference.
• Student Reading - Perhaps you'd like your students to learn about commonly misspelled words, but you don't have class time available. Assign the transcript as extra reading.
• Study Tools - When it's time for a unit exam on British prose, you can point your students to the transcripts on Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and related topics.

Quizzes

Each video lesson has a corresponding quiz. Here's how to use the quizzes:

• Homework - Assign a quiz to your students as homework. You'll receive an email with the results, which enables you to verify they've completed the assignment and that they've understood the material. Questions cover everything from understanding good diction to key facts, like when individual authors lived and worked.
• Tests - You can meld the material in the quizzes into your own student assessments, saving you valuable time. Need a few questions on The Crucible? There are plenty!
• Discussions - Jump-start a discussion with questions like: How do I achieve subject-verb agreement?

Sample Curriculum

Below is a sketch of the 12th Grade English curriculum modeled on an 18-week course. This sample can be adapted based on your course schedule. Navigate the chapters and lessons for more detail.

Week	Unit	Sample of Topics Covered
Week 1	British Prose for 12th Grade	A Tale of Two Cities, Heart of Darkness, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice and other famous British novels
Week 2	British Poetry for 12th Grade	'Don Juan', 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner', 'The Faerie Queene' and other major British poems
Week 3	British Plays for 12th Grade	'Hamlet', 'Macbeth', 'Importance of Being Earnest', 'Waiting for Godot' and other major British plays
Week 4	Works by African American Writers	Black Boy, Harlem, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Invisible Man and other African American literary works
Week 5	American Prose	The novels of William Faulkner , F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck
Week 6	American Drama for 12th Grade	The plays of Arthur Miller, Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams
Week 7	Literary Terms for 12th Grade	Allusion, euphemisms, irony, paradoxes and other key literary references
Week 8	Essay Writing for 12th Grade	Audience opposition, logical fallacies and proofreading techniques
Week 9	Using Source Materials	Understanding when to cite sources, formatting citations, steering clear of plagiarism and writing a bibliography
Week 10	Conventions in Writing: Usage	Avoiding faulty comparisons, mixed structure sentences and poor diction
Week 11	Usage	Errors in the use of pronouns, subject-verb agreement and verb tense
Week 12	Punctuation in Writing	Differences between independent and dependent clauses, comma splices and run-on sentences
Week 13	Elements of Grammar	Nouns, pronouns, verbs and other parts of speech; predicates, sentence agreement and other grammatical issues
Week 14	Capitalization and Spelling	The power of active voice, clear sentences and faulty comparisons