Ms. Edwards' Class Page

Welcome to Ms. Edwards' West Carteret High School website. I am utilizing Google Classroom and Remind 101. Please click on the respective class to find information on how to join Remind101 for assignment date reminders. If you have questions about assignments posted on Google Classroom, please feel free to contact me using the information below.

Teacher Information:

The best way to reach me is via email: amanda.edwards@carteretk12.org

You may also reach me via phone: (252) 726-1176 Extension: 344608

Summer Reading Assignment:

Ninth Grade Honors English I - Lord of the Flies- William Golding

Tenth Grade Honors English II - Life of Pi - Yann Martel

Please see below for extra information regarding the summer reading assignment for Honors English I.

Test Note: The exam will be given on the first day of school for all students enrolled in Honors English I. First semester students will take the exam during class. Students enrolled in Honors English I second semester will need to make arrangements for transportation to pick them up around an hour and a half after school the first day.

Schedule:

First Semester - Second Semester -

First Period: Honors English II First Period: Planning

Second Period: SLA Honors English I Second Period: English II

Third Period: SLA Honors English I Third Period: Honors English I

Fourth Period: Planning Fourth Period: Honors English I

Honors English II Summer Reading Assignment 2019-2020

Title: Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Copies are available with Ms. Fulford and Ms. Edwards if you get the novel before you leave for summer break. You should purchase your own copy if you prefer to make notes and annotations.

Amazon.com Review

Yann Martel's imaginative and unforgettable Life of Pi is a magical reading experience, an endless blue expanse of storytelling about adventure, survival, and ultimately, faith. The precocious son of a zookeeper, 16-year-old Pi Patel is raised in Pondicherry, India, where he tries on various faiths for size, attracting "religions the way a dog attracts fleas." Planning a move to Canada, his father packs up the family and their menagerie and they hitch a ride on an enormous freighter. After a harrowing shipwreck, Pi finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean, trapped on a 26-foot lifeboat with a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, a seasick orangutan, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker ("His head was the size and color of the lifebuoy, with teeth"). It sounds like a colorful setup, but these wild beasts don't burst into song as if co-starring in an anthropomorphized Disney feature. After much gore and infighting, Pi and Richard Parker remain the boat's sole passengers, drifting for 227 days through shark-infested waters while fighting hunger, the elements, and an overactive imagination. In rich, hallucinatory passages, Pi recounts the harrowing journey as the days blur together, elegantly cataloging the endless passage of time and his struggles to survive: "It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion."

As you perform a close reading of the text, consider the following…

• Plot

• Setting

• Characters

  • What does Pi want more than anything else?

  • What motivates him, and how does this change?

  • How does Pi’s behavior reveal his character?

  • What choices are available to him, and which does he choose?

  • Is Pi a reliable narrator-- why or why not?

• Tone and mood

• Imagery- the pictures within a piece of writing that helps the reader to see what they are reading, and elements of the text that have symbolic meaning

  • Consider religious imagery, circle imagery, water imagery, the color orange, opposites/contradictions/paradoxes, food imagery

• Theme- the ideas that run throughout the story

  • What is Martel trying to communicate about religion, survival, humanity’s role and place in the animal kingdom, and reality/truth?

  • What is the point of the two stories?

• Genre (fiction, sea tale, adventure, magic realism)

Be prepared to take a test on the first day of class. The test will assess your knowledge of the book. It will contain identification (of people, places, objects). You will be asked to identify how it appeared in the novel and the role it played throughout by identifying a specific detail related to it. There will also be quote identification. You will be asked to tell who is speaking, who is being spoken to or about, and what is taking place in the novel.

Optional Reading: Read as much as you can this summer. Studies prove that students who read

frequently for pleasure score higher than non-readers on standardized tests. Books you may want to consider...

World Literature Titles:

• The Kite Runner

• The Count of Monte Cristo

• Kaffir Boy

• What is the What

• All Quiet on the Western Front

• Candide

• The Book Thief

• Memoirs of a Boy Soldier