English High A.

Across the next ten weeks, we'll aim to read the entirety of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in even instalments. We will spend about an hour each week discussing its plot, style and themes, ensuring everyone is up to speed so they can read on. The novel's themes are universal and profound. We will be discussing the challenges of overcoming racism, the way a great novel can depict growing up (the bildungsroman genre), and how the best fiction is that which provides us not with perfect characters, but real, human ones. In the second hour, I'd like to cover a range of activities. I will be introducing the students to a selection of Mark Twain's funniest and most insightful short stories and essays, which will provide us inspiration to write our own short stories and essays of social criticism and satire. Mark Twain is a master of using satire and wit to reveal a society's weaknesses, winning an audience over with humour in order to unveil to them important ideas that they may not like to hear. This is why I'd like this course not just to focus on understanding Twain (we will be writing analytical essays and extended responses on Huckleberry Finn) but also on how we can write persuasive essays and short stories with morals that address society's contemporary challenges, whether that be racism, climate change or inequality.