Novel Advanced Placement ELA
Novel offers three Advanced Placement courses, AP Seminar, AP Language, and AP Literature, as part of its culturally responsive, research-based 9-12 curriculum scope and sequence. Novel’s AP courses are carefully aligned to the College Board’s Conceptual Frameworks and course sequence recommendations in their Course Exam Descriptions (CEDs). Novel AP units prioritize reading and writing about seminal works of rhetoric and fiction, build essential knowledge to help students comprehend and think critically about complex texts, incorporate direct instruction on writing and research skills, and regularly assess students’ performance on multiple-choice and writing tasks that simulate the subparts of AP tests.
Text selections for AP Seminar, Language, and Literature were made using Steinhardt’s Culturally Responsive Scorecard to ensure diverse representation of characters, voices, and authors and to reflect an orientation towards social justice. The central texts and themes in Novel AP courses encourage students to use disciplinary skills like research, argumentation, and literary analysis to probe moral dilemmas and systemic tensions while proposing their own insights and solutions.
Additionally, Novel’s AP courses include comprehensive assessment suites aligned to the items and tasks on AP exams, and time is built into units and lessons to respond to students’ assessment data. Every full-length unit has 1-2 “on-demand” free-response writing assessments and a 2-3 day end-of-unit assessment with 3-5 multiple-choice passages and 1-3 free-response questions. Meanwhile, at least two lessons per unit have students return to prior assessments to reflect on their performance and revise elements of their written work. There are also recommendations in the AP unit plans for using flexible learning days for data-driven instruction.
AP Seminar | Digital Dilemmas: Truth and Technology in the Information Age
In AP Seminar, students will examine how internet-based technologies and breakthroughs of the 21st century are transforming the ways humans produce, share, and evaluate knowledge. The course will begin with an examination of key innovations that structure the modern internet, analyzing their societal impact on human decision-making, access to information, and the evolving relationship between technological systems and trusted knowledge. Through purposeful reading, discussion, and research, students will analyze and evaluate various problems and solutions related to the complex social, cultural, and ethical systems in which advanced technologies operate.
Throughout the five unit sequence, students will develop the purposeful reading, research, writing, and presentation skills necessary to identify and analyze complex problems, determine and evaluate solutions, and argue for solutions that will most benefit relevant stakeholders. Ultimately, students will learn the value of diverse perspectives; how to locate and assess valid, relevant, and credible evidence and sources; and the importance of considering the positive, neutral, and negative implications of any solution proposed to solve real-world problems.
AP Language | Arguments for Change: Rhetoric and Reasoning as Tools for Civic Engagement
This AP English Language and Composition course invites students to critically examine how rhetoric shapes public understanding and elevates whose voices are heard or should be heard. Text selections will expose students to a range of change movements and social topics such as urban policy, environmental instability, migration, and racial justice, while emphasizing the rhetorical choices writers make to persuade specific audiences and advance their line of reasoning. Throughout the course, students will follow a pattern of reading others’ arguments and then writing their own. This ensures students move back and forth between analyzing arguments and practicing emulating effective argumentation techniques and strategies they have encountered in their reading and analysis.
This course is structured around six thematic units that focus on how arguments are made for social change in several dimensions of American life—from the politics of identity and environmental justice to historical and contemporary debates on reparations. Students will engage with nonfiction texts including speeches, essays, investigative journalism, memoirs, and legal arguments, alongside multimedia sources such as visual art, photography, and performance. By critically analyzing how writers construct arguments within and against systems of power, students will refine their ability to craft their own persuasive and research-based writing.
AP Literature | What Constitutes a Classic? Expanding Literary Traditions and Building a Critical Lens for Works of Fiction
The AP English Literature and Composition course engages students in careful reading and critical analysis of imaginative literature. Through close reading of selected texts, students explore how writers use language to create meaning and provide pleasure for their readers. As they read, students consider a work’s structure, point of view, style, and themes, as well as smaller-scale elements such as the use of figurative language, imagery, symbolism, and tone. The course cultivates the reading and writing skills that students need for college success and for intellectually responsible civic engagement.
The course is organized into seven thematically linked units that align with College Board’s skill categories and big ideas from the AP Literature Course Exam Description (CED). Each unit integrates core texts with supplemental readings to provide multiple perspectives and deepen student understanding. By the end of the course, students will be able to:
Read closely, annotate purposefully, and think critically about works of literature
Analyze how writers use language to create meaning and effect
Consider, evaluate, and respond to multiple interpretations of literary texts
Write interpretive essays that demonstrate understanding of literary elements and techniques
Develop and support analytical arguments about literature with reasoning and evidence
