Hello, Conner Students!

I hope that you are having a wonderful summer. I know that

some of you have asked librarians (including my daughter) for

help, and I am pleased that you are making progress. If you have

further questions about your summer reading assignment or need

help finding materials, you may meet me at the Boone County

Library Main Branch in Burlington on Tuesday, July 2nd from

9:00am to 12:00pm or Thursday, July 11th from 5:00pm to

8:00pm. I'll sit in the circle under the dome. If you don't know

me, just ask a librarian at the desk to identify me.

Please feel free to email if you don't need to see me face-to-face

or are unable to meet at the times listed. I will gladly set another

appointment with you or answer your quick questions. I also am

including Ms. Karle's email, whom many of you already know.

Please don't hesitate to ask for help.

Mrs. Widener

Mrs. Widener: kara.widener@boone.kyschools.us

Mrs. Karle: wendi.karle@boone.kyschools.us

Conner High School

2013/2014 English IV Summer Reading Assignment The summer reading assignment is designed to reinforce an appreciation for reading, while also

providing opportunity for students to utilize their reading skills throughout the summer months.

Senior English IV and IV Honors Summer Reading Assignment

Dear Conner High School Students and Parents:

All Conner High School students are required to read independently over the summer. Parents

are strongly urged to review the titles with their children and make choices as a family.

Assignments:

o Honors English 4 Classes need to read two novels

o Regular English 4 Classes need to read one

o Students are expected to take notes on important passages throughout the

book. There should be at least 12 quotes per book written down with an

explanation of the significance of the passages. This is due the first week of

class. (100 points—Regular English 200 points—Honors English)

o Students should also be prepared to complete a project and paper on this book

by the first week of class.

o Students are strongly encouraged to bring the book/s he or she read to English

class on the first day of class.

Some copies of the titles listed on the following pages are available at the Boone County Library

for check out. They are also available on Kindle, and at Barnes and Noble and Joseph Beth

Booksellers.

Please read the descriptions below (Note: These descriptions do not include all information,

again please make an informed decision when choosing your summer reading book/s).

*English IV students should choose one of the following books to read. English IV HONORS

Students should choose two:

A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Join Douglas Adams's hapless hero Arthur Dent as he travels the galaxy with his intrepid

pal Ford Prefect, getting into horrible messes and generally wreaking hilarious havoc.

Dent is grabbed from Earth moments before a cosmic construction team obliterates the

planet to build a freeway. You'll never read funnier science fiction; Adams is a master of

intelligent satire, barbed wit, and comedic dialogue.

The Hitchhiker's Guide is rich in comedic detail and thought-provoking situations and

stands up to multiple reads. Required reading for science fiction fans, this book (and its

follow-ups) is also sure to please fans of Monty Python, Terry Pratchett's Discworld

series, and British sitcoms

Dracula by Bram Stoker (Curriculum recommended text)

Jonathan Harker is travelling to Castle Dracula to see the Transylvanian noble, Count

Dracula. He is begged by locals not to go there, because on the eve of St George's Day,

when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will come full sway. But

business must be done, so Jonathan makes his way to the Castle - and then his

nightmare begins. His beloved wife Meena and other lost souls have fallen under the

Count's horrifying spell. Dracula must be destroyed . . .

Emma by Jane Austen (Curriculum recommended author)

This is a classic novel about a self-assured young woman whose capricious behavior is

dictated by romantic fancy. Emma, a clever and self-satisfied young lady, is the daughter

and mistress of the house. Her former governess and companion, Miss Anne Taylor,

beloved of both father and daughter, has just left them to marry a neighbor. The movie

Clueless was based on this novel.

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

Intense is the word for Ender’s Game. Aliens have attacked Earth twice and almost

destroyed the human species. To make sure humans win the next encounter, the world

government has taken to breeding military geniuses -- and then training them in the arts

of war... The early training, not surprisingly, takes the form of 'games'... Ender Wiggin is

a genius among geniuses; he wins all the games... He is smart enough to know that time

is running out. But is he smart enough to save the planet?

I am Legend by Richard Matheson

One of the most influential vampire novels of the 20th century, I Am Legend regularly

appears on the "10Best" lists of numerous critical studies of the horror genre. As Richard

Matheson's third novel, it was first marketed as science fiction (for although written in

1954, the story takes place in a future 1976). A terrible plague has decimated the world,

and those who were unfortunate enough to survive have been transformed into blood-

thirsty creatures of the night. Except, that is, for Robert Neville. He alone appears to be

immune to this disease, but the grim irony is that now he is the outsider. He is the

legendary monster who must be destroyed because he is different from everyone else.

Employing a stark, almost documentary style, Richard Matheson was one of the first

writers to convince us that the undead can lurk in a local supermarket freezer as well as

a remote Gothic castle. His influence on a generation of bestselling authors--including

Stephen King and Dean Koontz--who first read him in their youth is, well, legendary.

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta in 1992, top student and athlete

Christopher McCandless abandoned his possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings

account to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska, where he went to live in the wilderness.

Four months later, he turned up dead. His diary, letters and two notes found at a

remote campsite tell of his desperate effort to survive, apparently stranded by an injury

and slowly starving. They also reflect the posturing of a confused young man, raised in

affluent Annandale, Va., who self-consciously adopted a Tolstoyan renunciation of

wealth and return to nature. Krakauer, a contributing editor to Outside and Men's

Journal, retraces McCandless's ill-fated antagonism toward his father, Walt, an eminent

aerospace engineer. Krakauer also draws parallels to his own reckless youthful exploit in

1977 when he climbed Devils Thumb, a mountain on the Alaska-British Columbia

border, partly as a symbolic act of rebellion against his autocratic father. In a moving

narrative, Krakauer probes the mystery of McCandless's death, which he attributes to

logistical blunders and to accidental poisoning from eating toxic seed pods.

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

Short and snappy as it is, Stephen King's On Writing really contains two books: a fondly

sardonic autobiography and a tough-love lesson for aspiring novelists. The memoir is

terrific stuff, a vivid description of how a writer grew out of a misbehaving kid. You're

right there with the young authors he's tormented by poison ivy, gas-passing

babysitters, uptight schoolmarms, and a laundry job nastier than Jack London's. It's a

ripping yarn that casts a sharp light on his fiction. This was a child who dug Yvette

Vickers from Attack of the Giant Leeches, not Sandra Dee. "I wanted monsters that ate

whole cities, radioactive corpses that came out of the ocean and ate surfers, and girls in

black bras who looked like trailer trash." But massive reading on all literary levels was a

craving just as crucial, and soon King was the published author of "I Was a Teen-Age

Grave robber." As a young adult raising a family in a trailer, King started a story inspired

by his stint as a janitor cleaning a high-school girls' locker room. He crumpled it up, but

his writer wife retrieved it from the trash, and using her advice about the girl milieu and

his own memories of two reviled teenage classmates who died young, he came up with

Carrie. King gives us lots of revelations about his life and work. The kidnapper character

in Misery, the mind-possessing monsters in The Tommyknockers, and the haunting of

the blocked writer in The Shining symbolized his cocaine and booze addiction (overcome

thanks to his wife's intervention, which he describes). "There's one novel, Cajon, that I

barely remember writing."

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider

their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak,

audiences can't help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the

world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we

want as our legacy? When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie

Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he

had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave--"Really

Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"--wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of

overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment

(because "time is all you have...and you may find one day that you have less than you

think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about

living. In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence

that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book

that will be shared for generations to come.

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire

Born with green skin and huge teeth, like a dragon, the free-spirited Elphaba grows up

to be an anti-totalitarian agitator, an animal-rights activist, a nun, then a nurse who

tends the dying ,and, ultimately, the headstrong Wicked Witch of the West in the land

of Oz. Maguire's strange and imaginative postmodernist fable uses L. Frank Baum's

Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a springboard to create a tense realm inhabited by humans,

talking animals (a rhino librarian, a goat physician), Munchkin landers, dwarves and

various tribes. The Wizard of Oz, emperor of this dystopian dictatorship, promotes

Industrial Modern architecture and restricts animals' right to freedom of travel; his holy

book is an ancient manuscript of magic that was clairvoyantly located by Madam

Blavatsky 40 years earlier. Much of the narrative concerns Elphaba's troubled youth (she

is raised by a giddy alcoholic mother and a hermitlike minister father who transmits to

her his habits of loathing and self-hatred) and with her student years. Dorothy appears

only near novel’s end, as her house crash-lands on Elphaba's sister, the Wicked Witch of

the East, in an accident that sets Elphaba on the trail of the girl from Kansas, as well as

the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman and the Lion, and her fabulous new shoes. Maguire

combines puckish humor and bracing pessimism in this fantastical meditation on good

and evil, God and free will, which should, despite being far removed in spirit from the

Baum books, captivate devotees of fantasy.

Students entering AP® English Literature & Composition in the fall of 2013 must

complete the Summer Reading Assignment for the following:

Edith Hamilton’s Mythology—includes packet with questions (see attached)

Anna Karenina—includes completion of papers (see attached)

All assignments will be due the first day of class and are worth a significant amount of the first

quarter’s grade. Please do not wait until the last minute to work on this. If you are confused,

lost the assignment, or want to discuss the summer reading with your future classmates, you

may enroll in our classroom homepage. First go to Edmodo.com. You will need to create an

account (be sure to write down your password so you do not forget it) and enter our class code:

k3ag7x

If you have any questions, please email me at angeline.feldmann@boone.kyschools.us . It may

take a few days for me to respond as I may be on vacation at that time. I look forward to being

your teacher!

Sincerely,

Mrs. Feldmann

Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina is a large novel which addresses the social issues of 19th century Czarist Russia from two points of view: Anna Karenina and Constantine Levin. Tolstoy juxtaposes the stories of these two characters to ultimately provide a message on how one should live a worthwhile life.

In preparation for our discussion you should:

Take careful notes on the plot development, focusing on Tolstoy’s sense of religion/spirituality and society versus nature

Make a character list with descriptions of each of the main characters (you may use Spark Notes or Cliff Notes for this and as long as you have them available to you they do not have to be written)

Research Tolstoy to determine the autobiographical elements of the story (an introduction to the novel should effectively cover this)

Write a summary of Levin’s story and a summary of Anna’s story highlighting their struggles in their respective stories (each summary should be one page double spaced using quotes from the work)

Write a brief statement of Tolstoy’s view of women in 19th century Russia. Include Anna, Dolly, and Kitty in your discussion (one page double spaced using quotes from the work).

Write a statement of Tolstoy’s message in the story regarding how one should live a worthwhile life (One page double spaced using quotes from the work).

These will be due the first day of class.

Edith Hamilton’s Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes

Reading Guide Questions

Directions: These questions will be collected the first day of school. A test will be given before

the end of the first week of school.

Part I

Chapter 1: The Gods

1. Which came first, the Greek gods, or the universe? Explain.

2. Who were the Titans? What happened to most of them?

3. List the twelve great Olympians and indicate their Roman names, if applicable.

4. How did Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus divide their realms?

5. What bird and tree are sacred to Zeus?

6. Describe the supernatural birth of Athena.

7. What bird came to symbolize Athena?

8. How is the Oracle at Delphi linked to Apollo?

9. By what other names or epithets is Apollo known?

10. What is the name of Apollo’s twin sister?

11. Who is the goddess of love and beauty who is said in later poems to have sprung from the

sea foam?

12. In some stories, Aphrodite is the lover of Ares; in others, she is the husband of what god?

13. Which god is Zeus’s primary messenger?

14. Which god do all the other gods detest? Why is it fitting that his bird is the vulture?

15. Which god was said to be both ugly and deformed? How is he important to the other gods?

16. Who was the goddess of the hearth?

17. Who is the god of Love? Why is he often represented blindfolded?

18. How many muses are there? What talents do they represent?

19. Who is Charon? What does he do in Hades?

20. What is the primary occupation of the Furies?

21. Who is Leda? What is unique about her four children?

22. Why can’t anyone describe the Sirens?

Chapter 2: Great Gods of the Earth

1. How are the worship of Demeter and the worship of Dionysus similar? How are they

significantly different?

2. What happened to Demeter’s only daughter? What is her name?

3. What does Dionysus have to do with the creation of theatre and plays?

Chapter 3: Creation

1. Who are Gaea and Ouranos?

2. What child of Cronus and Rhea defeated Cronus and ruled in his place?

3. Why did Cronus eat his children?

4. Describe two ways that Prometheus helped humans.

5. How did the beautiful maiden Pandora become a curse to mankind?

6. How did Zeus punish Prometheus?

7. When humans became so depraved that Zeus decided to destroy them, what did he do to kill

them off? Who survived? How?

8. Who are the Stone people, and how did they come to be?

Chapter 4: Earliest Heroes

1. Why was Io changed into a cow tortured by a gadfly? How did her story end happily?

2. How did Zeus kidnap Europa?

3. How did the Cyclopes help Zeus?

4. Why did Odysseus blind Polyphemus, the Cyclopes?

5. One story claims that Zeus created the narcissus to help his brother Hades. Explain.

6. Who was the young man named Narcissus, and how did he die?

7. Why did Hera curse Echo?

8. Who accidentally killed Hyacinthus by striking him in the head with a discus?

9. What “dark background” does Hamilton suggest for myths about young people whose deaths

result in the growth of foliage?

10. Who was Adonis? How did he die? What flower is said to have sprung from his blood?

Part Two

Chapter 5: Cupid and Psyche

1. Why did Venus hate Psyche? What did she ask her son Cupid to do to Psyche? Why didn’t he

do it?

2. Why did Apollo tell Psyche’s parents to leave her on a cliff? Who did Apollo say was destined

to be her husband?

3. What made Psyche’s sisters jealous of her? What did they want her to do to her husband?

4. How did Psyche’s husband know she did not trust him?

5. What impossible tasks did Venus give to Psyche? Who helped the girl accomplish them?

6. How did Jupiter get involved in the affair of Psyche and Cupid?

Chapter 6: Lovers 1. How is the story of Pyramus and Thisbe like that of Romeo and Juliet?

2. What was the great gift of Orpheus? What killed his wife? What did he do to bring her back

to life? Why didn’t he succeed?

3. How did Ceyx die? How did his wife learn of his death? What did the gods do for both of

them?

4. With whom did Pygmalion, the woman hater, finally fall in love? How did Venus help him?

5. How did Baucis and Philemon impress Zeus? Instead of allowing them to die from old age,

how did the gods recognize their devotion to each other?

6. Why does Endymion sleep forever?

7. Why did Daphne’s father turn her into a laurel tree? How did Apollo honor the laurel?

Chapter Seven: The Golden Fleece

1. Why was the ram with the golden fleece sent to carry away Helle and Phrixus?

2. When Phrixus was safe in Colchis, what did he do with the ram and its fleece?

3. Years later, when Jason demanded that his cousin Pelias return the rule to him, the rightful

heir, Pelias demanded that Jason do what first?

4. What was the Argo?

5. Why did Medea betray her father and help Jason to gain the golden fleece?

6. What promise did Jason make to Medea (what he promised her if she helped him)? What

further promise does he make when she warns him at night that he needs to flee soon?

7. How did Medea bring about the death of the evil king Pelias?

8. How did Jason betray Medea?

9. How did Medea kill Jason’s bride?

10. Why did Medea kill her children?

Chapter Seven: Four Great Adventures

1. Who was Phaëton? In what way did his foolishness lead to his death?

2. Who was rumored to be the real father of Bellerophon?

3. How did Bellerophon tame the winged horse Pegasus?

4. Why did King Proetus want Bellerophon to die? What tasks did he give Bellerophon to

achieve this purpose? How did pride (“thoughts too great for man”) finally cause Bellerophon’s

death?

5. Describe the events leading up to Otus and Ephialtes killing each other.

6. Why did King Minos imprison Daedalus and his son in the Labyrinth which Daedalus

designed?

7. What advice of his father’s did Icarus fail to follow? What happened to him?

Part III Great Heroes Before the Trojan War

Chapter 9: Perseus

1. Why did Danaë’s father want her to die? Why was he afraid to kill her outright?

2. How did Danaë become pregnant when she was locked in a sunken house of bronze?

3. How did King Acrisius try to get rid of Danaë and her son Perseus?

4. Who found Danaë and Perseus and raised them as their own children?

5. Why did Perseus boast that he would bring the head of a Gorgon as a gift?

6. What two gods helped Perseus to kill the Gorgon? Which Gorgon was mortal?

7. What gifts did the gods provide to help Perseus succeed?

8. Why was Andromeda chained to a rock to be taken by a sea serpent?

9. How did Perseus save Andromeda? What did her ask of her father, Nereus?

10. When he returned home, why did Perseus show the Gorgon’s head to King Polydectes and

his friends when he knew the sight would turn them to stone?

11. How did the prophecy that King Acrisius would be killed by his grandon come true?

Chapter 10: Theseus

1. Who suggested that Aegeus, the king of Athens, kill the “stranger,” Theseus?

2. What action of Theseus saved him from the poison cup prepared for him?

3. Why were the Athenians forced to send seven maidens and seven youths to Crete (where

they were sacrificed) every nine years?

4. Who were the parents of the Minotaur? Explain that.

5. How did the Athenian youth die in Crete?

6. How did Theseus kill the Minotaur? Who helped him? (Note the theme of a maiden forsaking

her family ties for love.)

7. Why did King Aegeus kill himself when he saw his son’s ship returning?

8. How was the rule of Athens different from that of other Greek states?

9. How did Hades prevent Theseus and his friend Pirithoüs from kidnapping Persephone?

10. Why did Phaedra write in her suicide note that the son of Theseus, Hippolytus, “laid violent

hands” on her? What curse did Theseus call down on his son?

Chapter 11: Hercules

1. Give examples to support the claim that Hercules was emotionally unstable.

2. What proof exists that Hercules truly repents when he loses his temper and harms another?

3. Why did Hera hate Hercules so much?

4. The story of Hercules and the golden apples show evidence of either Hercules cleverness or

Atlas’ stupidity. Explain.

5. Why did Hercules decide he needed to bring Queen Alcestis back from Hades?

6. Who gave Deianira the “love charm” which led to Hercules’ death?

7. What happened to Hercules after his body was burned on a funeral pyre?

Chapter 12: Atalanta

1. Why did Atalanta’s father leave out on a mountain to die?

2. How did Melanion beat Atalanta in a footrace and therefore win her hand in marriage?

Part Four: Trojan War Heroes

Chapter 13: The War

1. Paraphrase the story of the Judgment of Paris.

2. Why were so many Greek leaders willing to go to Troy for ten years to win Helen back for

Menelaus?

3. How did Achilles’ mother try to prevent him from going to Troy? Why did she do this?

4. Why didn’t Odysseus want to go to Troy? How did he try to get out of it?

5. What plan did Odysseus use to find Achilles?

6. Why did Agamemnon sacrifice his daughter?

7. Who was the greatest Greek champion? Who was the greatest Trojan champion?

8. Who were the King and Queen of Troy? (You’ll need to know this when we read Hamlet.)

9. How did Agamemnon offend Achilles? How did Achilles react to this offense, and what effect

did it have the Greek’s success in the war?

10. Whose death caused Achilles to re-enter the battle?

11. A prophecy claimed that Achilles would die shortly after whom?

12. How did Achilles spoil the body of Hector after he killed Hector?

13. Achilles relented and gave Hector’s body to whom? Why?

Chapter 14: The Fall of Troy

1. Most of what we know about the fall of Troy comes from what classical work?

2. Why is it ironic that Paris shot the arrow which killed Achilles? (What have you learned about

Paris as a warrior?)

3. Why did the nymph Oenome refuse to cure Paris of his mortal wounds?

4. How did Sinon convince the Trojans to bring the giant wooden horse into their city? What

benefit did the Trojans think they would get from doing this?

5. Who helped the Trojan prince Aeneas escape from the burning city? Why?

6. What happened to the Trojan women who survived the sacking and burning of the city?

Chapter 15: Odysseus

1. What turned Athena and Poseidon against the Greeks?

2. Why didn’t the Trojans believe the prophetess Cassandra?

3. Who was Telemachus, and how did Athena help him?

4. What happened to Odysseus and his men in the land of the Lotus Eaters?

5. How did Circe change Odysseus’s men into swine?

6. Why did Odysseus travel to Hades?

7. After many years of stonewalling her suitors, what feat does she devise, promising to marry

the man who can accomplish it?

8. How does the nurse of Odysseus recognize him in disguise?

Chapter 15: Aeneas

1. What city was Aeneas destined to found?

2. Who was Dido, and what did she do for Aeneas?

3. Why did Hera want Aeneas to fall in love with Dido?

4. Why did Dido kill herself?

5. Why does Aeneas go to Hades?

6. Who does Charon, the ferryman of Hades, refuse to take in his boat?

7. When are souls made to drink from the river Lethe? Why?

8. Who was Lavinia, and why did her father want her to marry Aeneas?

9. Who was Turnus, and why did he want to kill Aeneas and the other foreigners?

10. Who helped the Trojans in the battle againsTurnus and his allies?

Part Five: Great Families

Chapter 17: Atreus

1. What three plays did Aeschylus write about Agamemnon and his family?

2. How did Tantalus insult the gods? How was he punished in Hades?

3. How did Niobe anger the gods? How was she punished?

4. Why did Clytemenstra turn from her husband, Agamemnon, and plan his murder?

5. How was Orestes trapped between his duty to avenge his father and moral law?

6. How was Orestes punished for killing his mother? What goddess purified Orestes?

7. Paraphrase the alternate story of Iphigenia.

Chapter 18: Thebes

1. Who was the founder of Thebes?

2. Why did King Laius want his infant son to die?

3. Why did Oedipus leave his home in Corinth?

4. Why did the people of Thebes make Oedipus their king?

5. When Oedipus learns that King Polybus has died, he also learns what about the people he

thought were his parents?

6. Who were the parents of Oedipus? Why didn’t he die on the mountain as an infant?

7. How did Jocasta react when she realized she had been married to her son?

8. How did Oedipus harm himself?

9. Which son of Oedipus was the eldest and therefore had the stronger claim to the throne?

10. Where did Oedipus die?

11. Why did Antigone defy the law of King Creon? What law did she claim was higher than his?

12. How did Theseus of Athens cause the other bodies of Greek warriors to receive proper

burial?

Chapter 19: The House of Atreus

1. Why did Tereus cut out Philomela’s tongue?

2. How did Philomela let her sister know what Tereus had done to her?

3. How did Procne get revenge on her husband?

4. How did Cephalus test the fidelity of his wife Porcris?

5. Why did Creüsa live her baby in a cave to die?

6. What did Creüsa want to ask the oracle at Delphi?

7. How did the god Apollo make things right for Creüsa and her son?

Part Six: Miscellaneous Myths

1. Why did Midas have ass ears?

2. Who was the teacher of Aesculapius?

3. How did Aesculapius benefit mankind?

4. Why did Circe change Scylla into her present form?

5. Who were the Amazons?

6. Why was Arachne changed into a spider?

7. How was the life of Tithonus cursed?

8. What is the story of Hero and Leander?

9. Who was Leto, and who are her two most famous children?

10. Who were the Myrmidons?

AP English Language and Composition Summer Assignment 2013

The first assigned reading for the summer is The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell. This book is

available in paperback. It is inexpensive. I would urge you to obtain your own copy (since it will be

used in class activities). After you have read the book you will prepare a critique that will be typed

and turned in on the first day of class in August. You will also have questions based on the book

on an assessment in class.

I.Wordy Shipmates

The Book Critique Format (typed, 12 font, double spaced, minimum of 4-5 paragraphs, two

pages): Section 1: Brief biography of author (one paragraph) Section 2: Summary (summary of the

major facts/points/ideas in the book: 1-2 paragraphs) Section 3: Critique: Your personal reaction,

criticism, and ideas concerning the book. Use the following questions as a basis of this section. Feel

free to expand your ideas and reflections on the book. This is the most important section.

• What did you learn of importance?

• What was the book’s main thesis?

• Why did the author concentrate on this specific group of Puritans (as opposed to the more

famous Pilgrims)?

• Many other books had already been written about the Puritans. Why did Vowell feel the need to

write this book?

• What impact did the Puritans have on the historical development of what would be become the

United States? Why?

• What did you like about the book? How might the book have been improved?

• What connection (if any) does the book have to current America? Are there any parts of

American life or culture today that are Puritan related?

II.For the second assigned reading, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the following will

be due the first day of class in August.

Section 1. Vocabulary Section of the Reading Log

While reading The Scarlet Letter select 10 words that are new to you. For each term,

you must

Correctly spell the term and provide the page number.

Label the part of speech.

Define the term in your own words. Do NOT merely copy the definition out of

the dictionary. Simply use the dictionary as a starting point.

Create an original sentence in which you provide contextual clues that express your

understanding of the term.

Example:

Term: venerable (page 104)

Part of speech: adjective

Definition: one who deserves respect, usually because of his/her age, character, or

accomplishments.

Sentence: One does not become a venerable politician by accepting gifts from

lobbyists, but rather by standing up for high moral standards, conducting ethical

business and always fighting for the people.

Section 2. Reflection Letter

You will write a 2-page reflection letter to me that answers the following question: What

did I learn while exploring/reading The Scarlet Letter? This question can embody a

variety of learning experiences. There is no right or wrong answer as long as you support

your opinion with descriptive language about your experience. This letter should be

viewed as a self reflection in which you consider the writing, reading, and thinking you have

done this summer. Here are some things to consider when composing your letter:

What did you learn about the human experience or the way society has evolved?

What did you learn about your own reading/writing habits?

How did you grow as a reader/writer?

Anything else you can think to discuss in your letter. This is your personal

reflection. The ultimate question presented at the beginning of this assignment is

deliberately meant to be open-ended so that each student can form it to meet

his/her own needs.

Letter Format:

Date -- Month spelled out, date and year (Example: August 15, 2013) and ENTER TWICE

Dear Ms. Hamilton:

Body of the letter in paragraph form in which you answer the question, “What did I learn while

exploring The Scarlet Letter?” Do not tab the paragraphs. Instead, double space between them.

Formal closing followed by a comma -- (Example: Sincerely,)

Your name