Reading makes a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.

Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

AP SUMMER ASSIGNMENT DUE 9/2/14

Students will submit by email to patgar1@gpsk12.org:

1. (Two) double-entry journals with attached vocabulary lists.
2. A document with the ten links to their submissions to the NYTIMES Summer Reading Contest.

While all AP Language students were required to get a Summer reading handout, the details below are excerpted from that handout.

"A.  Required Reading- All Titles are available through the Greenfield Public Library (http://www.greenfieldpubliclibrary.org/) and the C/W Mars interlibrary loan program (http://www.cwmars.org/).

Each student will be required to read TWO of the following titles:

American Childhood by Annie Dillard



Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
by Erik Larson

The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan

Consider the Lobster and other essays by David Foster Wallace

Flag of our Fathers by James Bradley

The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore

The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

A long way gone : memoirs of a boy soldier by Ishmael Beah.

Midnight in the garden of good and evil : a Savannah storyby James Berendt

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell

Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman by Jon Krakauer

Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin

Endurance by Alfred Lansing

1776 by David McCullough

Nickled and Dimed in America by Barbara Ehrenreich

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
by Christopher McDougall

Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Foreverby Bill O’Reilly

The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley

Outcasts United: an American town, a refugee team, and one woman's quest to make a difference by Warren St. John

The Devil's Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea

Funny in Farsi : a memoir of growing up Iranian in Americaby Firoozeh Dumas.

Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl

Basketball Junkie: A Memoir by Chris Herren and Bill Reynolds

Fall River Dreams by Bill Reynolds

Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover

The Routes of Man: Travels in the Paved World by Ted Conover

B. Double Entry Journals
In preparation for the AP Test, we will be reading a variety of nonfiction as part of our
summer reading. Students will complete a reader's response journal of thoughts and
reactions as they read. This journal will be a double-entry journal that will contain (15) significant passages from each of the books. The passages can be of various lengths, but each
must be a minimum of three sentences and will be written on the left-hand side of your
page. The passages should be reflective of the entire text.

A significant passage can illustrate: insight into the author or character, prominent themes, or the use of tone, imagery, symbolism, or irony or other rhetorical devices.

*Why is it significant?
Reading and reflection helps you become a better writer and increases your
vocabulary!! Please analyze the passages you find relevant in your reading. Also
include vocabulary words that seem unfamiliar to you by making a vocabulary list. Look
up these words.

The right side of the page is the student response to the passage.

Some questions you may wish to consider in composing these responses are:
What is the author trying to tell you that is not written on the page?
How does the passage make you feel?
Can you predict what might happen next?
What insight have you gotten from this particular book?
What tone does the essay contain? Why?
What rhetorical devices are creating this tone?
What purpose is the purpose of the writing ... expository, persuasive, personal
narrative?
What specific devices can you pick out that this author tends to use in these to
shape the tone and style?

Students will turn in a Double Entry Journal and Vocabulary list for each book they choose. Each journal response should be a minimum of 50 words. THESE MUST BE TYPED!
All unknown vocabulary words students encounter in the reading should be listed and defined as part of the reading journal."
C.
Participation in New York Times Annual Summer Reading Contest.
Students will submit the ten links to their ten responses to the Contest. **See attached rules
The submission below is an exemplar.
  1. June 28, 2012 2:54 pm Link
I, like many of my fellow adrenaline pumped and easily excitable Americans, look forward to the Olympic games every year. The energy of competition and revelry of global rivalry does its job of tugging at my patriotic heartstrings. But the topic of grass? Not so many feelings there. What interested me in “Wimbledon’s Guardians of Grass Face a Challenging Summer” was the dramatization of the critical role grass really does, in fact, play. Grass, in its general context, is considered among the most mundane of subjects, a topic of some jest within the article.
However, as I continued to read, the dull stereotype of “watching the grass grow,” transformed into a story of adversity and growth (even if the adversity was a struggle between different varieties of rye grass- it’s irrelevant). This change evidences the real appeal of journalism: real life story telling in which any topic can become relevant and moving. I was also very interested to read about the environment of care and consideration going into the grass. The Trueness meter, for example, proved to me that grass enthusiasts (or greenskeepers, as they’re conventionally called), are willing to pay $18,700 in order to maintain a constant and level ground. Or on the other hand, how the construction of the retractable roof had to be altered in order to fit the grass’ needs.
In other words, the grass, in fulfilling its role as a modern botanical diva, thrives under careful care, just as any other living being must also be nurtured. And, even world-class experts on grass have trouble with that task. So, as the Olympic Games draw closer and closer, let the grass be a symbol of universal human effort. Someone will win that turf, and crowds will cheer, inevitably. But in the end, as Eddie Seaward puts it, “It’s just grass,” and we’re all just human.(309 words)
— Lainie_GHS_2012
     *NOTE: submission should use the format  LASTNAME_GHS_2014, see above
 The contest rules are linked below:

Please refer to the  following important information regarding copying the links which need to be submitted on a Word document:

"How do I prove to my teacher that I participated?

 Within 24 hours of posting to the blog, check back to find your entry in our comments section and make a note of the unique URL for your comment. That can be found by right-clicking the time and date stamp that appears next to your name and then looking under properties. The Address(URL) will take your teacher directly to your work.

For example, here is Noah W’s comment posted on March 17, 2014, at 4:58 p.m.

 His unique URL is http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/06/student-contest-write-an-editorial-on-an-issue-that-matters-to-you/comment-page-183/#comment-1560601.

NOTE: A Google search of a string of text from your post will also lead you to it easily — but that means keeping a copy for yourself somewhere so you remember what you wrote. "