AP English Language and Composition (Period 2) Assignments
- Instructors
- Terms
- Fall 2017
- Spring 2018
- Department
- English
- Description
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As a junior level course, we study mostly American writers, speakers and leaders, but there will be supplemented material from around the world. This is a rigorous course that gives students ample opportunities to examine a writer’s purpose in accordance with the writer’s use of rhetorical devices, including tone, diction, audience, organization, appeal, style, and attitude. The course teaches students how to read and evaluate primary and secondary sources in order to incorporate them into an original composition. This course also requires students to write (formally and informally) synthesis, rhetorical analysis, and argument essays in response to a variety of prose and genres. They will learn how to link technique and meaning into well-organized, supported, logical responses to complex texts (primarily nonfiction). You will also read four books outside of class. Though more will be covered over the course of the year, the following essential standards/skills are what every student must master in order to be considered minimally proficient in this course:
Students will be able to…
- Write arguments, using suitable approach and appropriate evidence, to support claims regarding topics or texts (a-f).
- Cite strong and thorough evidence from the text that supports explicit and inferred analysis.
- Direct and drive a conversation by posing and responding to questions that probe ways of thinking and gathering evidence, prove and challenge ideas and conclusions, and promote a variety of perspectives.
- Understand the author’s point of view and purpose and analyze how the style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness and/or beauty of text.
- Conduct a short, as well as sustained, research project that answers specific questions or solves problems; broaden or narrow search when appropriate; integrate information from multiple sources demonstrating understanding.
- Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning and/or use of evidence and/or language.
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Assignment
Reader Response Assignment -100 points
This year, you will be required to read FOUR (4) books outside of class to build your knowledge bank. After each book, you will submit a response to turnitin through Canvas that will give your peers and me a chance to hear your thoughts, feelings, reactions, and questions about the ideas, actions, characters, settings, plot, themes, and other elements in the chosen book. You can't be wrong in your responses as long as you follow directions! Let me hear your voice.
- Finish each book, write and submit your response by the following dates:
Book 1: by November 17, 2017
Book 2: by January 19, 2018
Book 3: by March 23, 2018
Book 4: by May 18, 2018
- Along with your name, date and class period, write the prompt # in the top left corner on each new response.
- The title of your response should be the author and title of the novel. Length must be minimum of 400 words.
Below is a list of prompts from which to choose. To be sure that you are responding and thinking about your reading in many different ways, you may only use each prompt once. Cross out the number once you’ve responded.
- Did this book make you laugh? cry? cringe? smile? cheer? Explain with textual evidence.
- What connections are there between the book and your life? Explain with textual evidence.
- What is the most important sentence(s)/paragraph/passage in this book? The most important event or feeling? Explain with textual evidence.
- Who should or shouldn’t read this book? Why? Provide textual evidence.
To help ensure that you are choosing rigorous novels (and since Junior year is supposed to entail American Literature), I am providing you with a list of approved authors and corresponding work. You must choose from this list. IF you want to go outside of this list, you need to talk to me and have me check off on the choice (ex: William Shakespeare).
Mitch Albom – Tuesdays with Morrie/ The 5 People You Meet in Heaven
Julia Alvarez – How Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents/ In the Time of Butterflies
Maya Angelou – I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings/ Letter to My Daughter
James Baldwin – Go Tell It on the Mountain/ Sonny’s Blues
Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451/ Something Wicked This Way Comes
Octavia Butler - Kindred
Truman Capote – In Cold Blood
Willa Cather – My Antonia
Orson Scott Card – Ender’s Game
Ta-Nehisi Coates –Between the World and Me
Junot Diaz – The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Frederick Douglass – The Narrative of the Life
Dave Eggers – Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Ralph Ellison – Invisible Man
Ralph Waldo Emerson – Nature or other essay collections
William Faulkner – As I Lay Dying
Tina Fey – Bossy Pants
- Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby
Jonathan S Foer – Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter
Joseph Heller - Catch 22
Ernest Hemingway – The Sun Also Rises/ A Farewell to Arms/ A Moveable Feast/ The Old Man and the Sea
Frank Herbert - Dune
John Irving – The World According to Garp
Henry James – The Portrait of a Lady
Jack Kerouac – On the Road
Ken Kesey – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Stephen King – The Dark Tower series
Erik Larson – The Devil in the White City/ In the Garden of Beasts
James McBride – The Color of Water
Herman Melville – Moby Dick
Arthur Miller – The Crucible
Margaret Mitchell – Gone with the Wind
Toni Morrison – The Bluest Eye/ Song of Solomon
Tim O’Brien – Tomcat in Love
Ayn Rand – Anthem/ Fountainhead
Karen Russell - Swamplandia
David Sedaris – Me Talk Pretty One Day
John Steinbeck – East of Eden/ Cannery Row
Henry David Thoreau – Walden/ On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
Mark Twain – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Kurt Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse Five
Alice Walker – The Color Purple
Jeannette Walls – The Glass Castle
HG Wells – The War of the Worlds
Edith Wharton – Ethan Frome
Tennessee Williams – The Glass Menagerie/ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Virginia Woolf – A Room of One’s Own
Richard Wright – Native Son/ Black Boy