Beyond English Language and Literary Arts
Ages 11-15

Introduction
BELLA is an advanced course designed for students who are operating at a high level intellectually and whose English is effectively native for educational purposes.

‘Effectively native’ means that a student’s English does not usually interfere with their ability to reach their intellectual and creative potential when the language of instruction is English, in lessons as taught in native English speaking countries.

In practice, this means three things: the ability to understand a teacher’s verbal explication without language supports; grade level reading level (native-English grade level) or higher; and the ability to express complex and creative ideas accurately, first time and most of the time, in speech and writing.

Once students reach that level, the BELLA program takes students beyond ordinary grade level knowledge through Studio’s trademark focus on deep cultural and historical immersion, broad skills development, and higher order thinking skills.

Students can expect to go deeper, into history and philosophy; broader, into the expressive skills of oral presenting and digital publishing; and higher, into the thinking skills of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, the building blocks necessary for cultivating creativity.

Semester One

Week 1
Introduction to Reading: Know the letters, sounds, words, sentence structures, paragraphing, and whole text conventions and terminology for the study of English Language and Literature

Week 2
476AD – 1066 and Beowulf: Be able to read poetry (meter, rhyme, alliteration, figurative language)

Week 3
1066 – 1485 and Chaucer – The Canterbury Tales – The Nun’s Priest’s Tale: Be able to analyze literature according to historical context

Week 4
Marlowe – Doctor Faustus:
· Know the structure and conventions of a play
· Understand the influence of antiquity on English Literature

Week 5
Shakespeare – Macbeth: Know Shakespeare’s context, sources and influences

Week 6
Shakespeare – Romeo and Juliet – Blank Verse: Analyze the relationship between verse and meaning

Week 7
Shakespeare – Sonnets – The Sonnet Form: Analyze the relationship between a poem’s structure and its meaning

Week 8
Revolutions: Glorious, Industrial, American, French; and Romanticism – The Lyrical Ballads, Blake, Byron, Shelley, Keats: Understand the relationship between historical change, intellectual change, and literary change

Week 9
Coleridge – The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: Understand the Romantic poets’ ideas about nature – Part One

Week 10
Wordsworth – I Walked as Lonely as a Cloud: Understand the Romantic poets’ ideas about nature – Part Two

Week 11
Coleridge – Kubla Khan: Understand the Romantic poets’ ideas about creativity

Week 12
Mary Shelley – Frankenstein:
· Understand the Romantic poets’ ideas about nature and science
· Reading and writing gothic horror

Week 13
Robert Browning – My Last Duchess: Understanding dramatic monologues

Week 14
Presentation preparation: Be able to present on an academic topic, live in front of a group

Week 15
Presentations

Semester Two

Week 16
Dickens – Great Expectations：
· Reading and writing a setting and character description
· Reading and writing dialogue

Week 17
Dickens – Oliver Twist : Reading and writing a setting and character description revisited

Week 18
Robert Louis Stevenson – Treasure Island：Reading and writing adventure – setting antagonist, action scene

Week 19
J. M. Barrie – Peter Pan:
· Understand the differences between novels and plays
· Writing dialogue – revisited

Week 20
The Russian Revolution and Arthur Ransome – Swallows and Amazons:
· Understand biographical context
· Writing adventure revisited – setting as integral to an action scene

Week 21
T. S. Eliot – Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats – Macavity the Mystery Cat; Andrew Lloyd Webber – Cats: Understand the influence of literature on popular culture

Week 22
The Interwar Period and Tolkien – The Hobbit: Understand fantasy as contemporary history

Week 23
8 C. S. Lewis – The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: Understand fantasy as allegory

Week 24
The Cold War, the Berlin Wall and John Le Carre – The Spy Who Came in from the Cold: Be able to read for historical and biographical information, and reproduce for a specified audience

Week 25
Fleming – The Man with the Golden Gun: Be able to write a dramatization of a novel in the form of a screenplay

Week 26
Horowitz – Skeleton Key and post-Cold War espionage fiction: Be able to read and use semantic fields for creating atmosphere

Week 27
Student selections

Week 28
Presentation Preparation

Week 29
Presentation preparation: Be able to present on an academic topic, live in front of a group

Week 30
Presentations