Thank you for requesting Honors English 11 for the 2013-2014 school year at Pickerington High School North. We will have a busy year as we work to develop your rhetorical skills with a specific concentration on argument, analysis, and research. We will read a variety of literary genres as your ability to interpret, analyze, and synthesize develops. We will refine your knowledge and use of writing conventions and prepare you for the ACT and/or SAT tests that most of you will attempt in the spring of 2014.
Annotated Note Taking means that you comment on what you are reading as you read it so that you may refer to the specific parts of the text when you write your analysis. You will read two novels over the summer and produce detailed annotated notes in hard copy form. Please separate your notes by chapters. Your notes may be hand- written or typed, but they should be on loose paper that will collected on August 19, 2013. You will need to identify specific characteristics of both major and minor characters, comment on key moments in the novels, look for important symbols, and write down questions that you have about the text as you go through it. Make sure that you include the specific page numbers that correspond to the notes that you take.
Do not merely take notes in the book itself;
we will be collecting notes, not individual texts.
In addition to the notes, quizzes over both novels will be given.
Once school begins, your first assignment will be to write an analytical essay over The Adventures ofHuckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. These novels tell the stories of characters who experience a journey, meet unusual people along the way, and grow as individuals afterward. They witness the best and the worst of human nature. Also, both authors make use of dialect in conversation. You will need to provide your own copies of these novels.
On August 19th we will collect your annotated notes and begin discussion of the ideas in the novels. You will then be given a choice of prompts that ask you to concentrate on the settings, characters, plots, and themes in both of these significant samples from American literature.
We hope that you enjoy your summer, and we hope that you enjoy reading these novels over the summer months. Take time to relax, because once school begins, we have a lot of work to do!