August 8-12

"Writing is a process of self-discipline you must learn before you can call yourself a writer. There are people who write, but I think they're quite different from people who must write."

—Harper Lee  
from a 1964 interview

English 9 Honors

Welcome to New Century
NOVEL: We will begin our course with Harper's Lee's Pulitzer Prize winning novel To Kill A Mockingbird.
This is a link that will take you to THE BIG READ'S (The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts, designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The National Education Association presents The Big Read in partnership with Arts Midwest) section about the author Harper Lee. http://www.neabigread.org/books/mockingbird/mockingbird04.php
Please read all information on this page carefully, better yet...PRINT IT OUT AND BRING TO CLASS.
WRITING: Your first week in class you will  be given a prompt to which you will respond in an essay. This will allow me to have a base line by which I can measure your progress in writing. The competency objective for the writing element of the course will be to achieve mastery in constructing a solid 5 paragraph essay that responds to a prompt.
GRAMMAR: types of rhetorical sentences (loose, periodic, cumulative)

VOCABULARY: this is a link to College Board's top  SAT/ACT A-B vocabulary words
http://quizlet.com/1618346/sat-a-b-flash-cards/
you will have a vocab quiz each FRIDAY over 20 words


ENGLISH 11
Novel: Huckleberry Finn
We will begin our course with Mark Twain's landmark work Huckleberry Finn. This is a link to an excellent website on Huckleberry Finn. This is the homepage for the links below and much information about the narrative. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/railton/huckfinn/huchompg.html
I would like you to go to these links and read the Atlanta Constitution Journal's positive reaction to the book http://etext.virginia.edu/twain/atlanta.html and The Boston Evening Traveler's negative reaction http://etext.virginia.edu/twain/bosttrav.html. Clemens  critiques society often contrasting self-diluted characters as successes within society with individual characters as outsiders or failures of society.
Link to folkbeliefs and lecture in class (you need to look over the entire website on Huck Finn)
http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/projects/riedy/list1.html



The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been labeled as a PICARESQUE NOVEL. A picaresque novel is an adventure story that involves an anti-hero or picaro who wanders around with no actual destination in mind. The picaresque novel has many key elements. It must contain an anti-hero who is usually described as an underling with no place in society, it is usually told in autobiographical form, and it is potentially endless, meaning that it has no tight plot, but could go on and on. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has molded itself perfectly to all these essential elements of a picaresque novel.
THIS NOTION OF THE ANTI-HERO IS THE FIRST IN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND THE REASON THAT THE MODERNIST WRITER ERNEST HEMINGWAY said "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called 'Huckleberry Finn. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."

Unlike The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn deals with controversial issues. Perhaps the most important and scandalous theme is Clemens strong view against slavery. Although Clemens wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn after the civil war, many people were not only racist but contained a great deal of resentment against African-Americans. Clemens used Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a catalyst for his stance against slavery. One way in which Clemens demonstrates his views against slavery was the intimate relationship he created between Huck, a white boy, and Jim, a runaway slave. Throughout the novel Clemens humanizes Jim, as oppose to describing him as property or less than human, the belief of many Southerners at the time. In many ways Clemens describes Jim as a better, more decent human being than most white people. Jim acts like a proper father figure to Huck, disciplining in a civilized manner, contrasting Pap who beats him and the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson who guilt Huck into thinking he his damned to Hell. In actuality Jim could be labeled the only suitable adult in the narrative, and the single positive, respectable example for Huck to follow. Jim is not only the best role model for Huck, but he is also the only character in the novel to demonstrate the concept of an ideal family.

GRAMMAR: types of rhetorical sentences (loose, periodic, cumulative)


WRITING: Your first week  in class you will  be given a prompt to which you will respond in an essay. This will allow me to have a base line by which I can measure your progress in communicating through the written word.

READING ASSIGNMENTS: read through chapter 5
reading quiz on Wednesday

VOCABULARY: this is a link to College Board's top SAT/ACT
vocabulary A-B
http://quizlet.com/1618346/sat-a-b-flash-cards/



AP LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION
Vocabulary: go to this link to practice the AP rhetorical terms: http://quizlet.com/262591/ap-english-language-vocabulary-flash-cards/  You will have a test over these on Monday August 22(A Day)

Novel: we will begin with Huckleberry Finn. Please go to the notes posted under English 11and read the comments that I posted about the novel. Read through chapter 5
Reading quiz on Wednesday
Grammar: types of rhetorical sentences (loose, periodic, cumulative)
AP multiple choice test --60 minutes
Timed Essay-40 minutes

Myth and Legend
Introduction to Comparative Mythology
This week we will define mythology, look back to the Paleolithic period (Old Stone Age) to man's need to create gods and stories to explain his world. We will consider ways of interpreting myths. Are myths meant to be interpreted symbolically or literally?

As G. S. Kirk puts it, "a myth may have different emphases or levels of meaning."  Since it often serves more than one purpose, "a tale about human actions [can] contain more than a single aspect and implication

Additionally we will define and examine  Joseph Campbell's  MONOMYTH.

Vocabulary: Mythical Archetypes --handout

DEFINING MYTH

From the Greek mythos, myth means story or word. Mythology is the study of myth. As stories (or narratives), myths articulate how characters undergo or enact an ordered sequence of events. The term myth has come to refer to a certain genre (or category) of stories that share characteristics that make this genre distinctly different from other genres of oral narratives, such as legends and folktales. Many definitions of myth repeat similar general aspects of the genre and may be summarized thus: Myths are symbolic tales of the distant past (often primordial times) that concern cosmogony and cosmology (the origin and nature of the universe), may be connected to belief systems or rituals, and may serve to direct social action and values.

FRENCH 1 2 3
SEE YOU IN CLASS!