Fourth Form - Core Courses/Departmental Offerings

The following courses are offered as Core Academic Courses for the Fourth Form. All Fourth Form students take these courses. To view additional departmental course offerings please click here.

English II

English II emphasizes close reading skills and builds paragraph and essay writing skills as part of the form’s core curriculum. Fourth Formers learn the basic structure of a persuasive essay, with a special emphasis on forming meaningful and defensible theses with appropriate supporting evidence. Students learn to differentiate fact from opinion. They learn to rephrase or summarize what the teacher or a classmate has said and to take notes in a discussion setting. Nightly written responses to reading selections, which include Beowulf, Henry V and Tale of Two Cities, prepare the students for active and productive classroom participation. The students finish the year by reading In the Heart of the Sea in preparation for their own five-day sail. After the first marking period, an honors section is broken out from the rest of the class. Students in this section read additional texts and respond to more sophisticated writing assignments. The basic syllabus remains the same.

History II

History II builds upon the skills developed in History I. Students are taught to apply the cultural model approach to an in-depth analysis of modern European history. In keeping with the overall theme of the Fourth Form, The Quest: Coming of Age, students are encouraged to inquire into the meaning and nature of the hero in history. At the conclusion of History II, students should be very familiar with the cultural history of Europe, from the late Middle Ages to the present. Additionally, students should be able to answer the following questions: Why do cultures need heroes? What are the stages of a hero’s journey? As in English, a special honors section is created for those students who show special affinity for the study of history. They read additional primary sources such as Machiavelli’s The Prince, and The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels. This section’s added goal is to sharpen analytical skills both in reading and writing.

History of Science: An Inquiry into the Mechanical Arts

This Fourth Form course will run roughly parallel to the core English and History offerings in the form. In keeping with the form theme, The Quest: Coming of Age, the class will examine several significant discoveries and inventions from the Middle Ages, Renaissance on into the early 20th century. Each term's class discussion and projects will center themselves upon one main text as well as a small collection of articles and primary source materials. There will be strong emphasis on a hands-on, inquiry approach to learning. Projects may include the construction of remote-controlled robotic siege machines that are tested against the defenses of a scale-model medieval fortress and competitions to build "machines" that draw inspiration from Rube Goldberg, Leonardo da Vinci, and 20th-century inventors and theorists.