English 9 Honors Summer Reading Allusion Cards and Stories

May 2, 2020

Dear English 9 Honors Students and Parents/Guardians:

Welcome to Golden High School! We are looking forward to working with you over the 2020 - 2021 school year. By enrolling in English 9 Honors, you are responsible for completing the summer assignments.

Summer Assignment 1 of 2

The required reading for Honors English 9 demands a good background in cultural literacy. A way to acquire this background is to concentrate on common allusions and other referenced stories that arise in literature (as well as in everyday media).

Allusion- (noun) - an implied or indirect reference to another literary work or event in history or in literature. [Webster's Collegiate]

Two basic sources from which writers, especially poets, draw allusions and metaphors, are the Bible and the ancient classical writings (mainly Greek and Roman, but Indian as well). Knowledge of the characters and stories contained in the Bible and in the body of myths and legends will add appreciably to the enjoyment of good literature of all kinds. From the very beginning of the literary canon, writers have borrowed characters, plots, and themes from these sources.

Allusion and Other Stories workshop: We are asking you to research and take notes on some common allusions and other stories. These notes are due the first day of class. Take your notes in a notebook that is solely dedicated to allusions or use oversized index cards. Here is an example:

**Note Requirements: Handwritten. While it is much easier to copy and paste the work of another, we are asking that all work is hand-written as to allow the researched work the opportunity to move into the areas of the mind responsible for memory.

**Use this link to help with clarity. There are videos on this page which were created to help you through this process.**

For STORIES:

1. Name of Story

2. Source (Biblical, Greek, Roman--provide the book title or website title and address)

3. 50 word summary of the story

4. 50-100 word concise commentary on themes and sources of conflict and their significance (man vs. man, vs. god, vs. nature, vs. himself, etc.)

* Be an articulate critic. Identify and explain literary elements (https://literarydevices.net/) you notice being used and what they contribute to the piece. Draw apt connections to other pieces of literature or other genres where warranted.

For Other Allusions:

1. Line, word or phrase

2. Source

3. Approximately 50-100 words explaining the meaning.

Use a form of note cards that are no larger than approximately half the size of a standard piece of printer paper.

Sources for Allusion Workshop Readings

• • Wikipedia is an excellent beginning source for the stories we have assigned. Please note that good research involves consideration of multiple sources, and multiple versions of any story may be found (especially on less-than scholarly websites). Edith Hamilton’s Mythology is a good book for mythology, although many excellent online sources exist, and the Bible is the source for the biblical allusions.

  • phrases, sayings, idioms and expressions can be researched at The Phrase Finder http://www.phrases.org.uk/index.html

*We will continue to add to this list throughout the school year*

Grading Rubric for Allusion Cards

Summer Assignment 2 of 2

The text for your Summer Reading is: The Three Theban Plays by Sophocles (The Penguin Classics version translated by Robert Fagles is the edition of choice).

Please purchase your own copy as you will want to refer back to this text often throughout the upcoming school year as well as subsequent honors and advanced placement English courses.

Please read and annotate Oedipus the King. We will read Antigone during the school year. We will work with this text in the first days and weeks of the school year.

As you read and annotate, consider the following themes and questions. Be ready to discuss these ideas when we start class in August.

Themes

• • Fate

  • Family

  • Free-will

  • Internal vs External struggle

Questions

• • Who is the biggest victim in this play? Oedipus? Jocasta? Their children? The people of Thebes? (You may choose another character). Explain your choice.

  • Oedipus compels Tiresias to “save yourself, the city, and save me” (pp. 225) by sharing his prophecies. Can the truth “save” Oedipus? Or will it serve to seal his fate?

  • Tiresias accuses Oedipus of being “your own worst enemy” (pp. 227). Is this an accurate statement? What would you consider to be Oedipus’s tragic flaw? Provide evidence from the play.

  • Oedipus freely chose to leave Corinth and pursue a journey that led to the three crossroads. Was the murder he committed there an act of free will or fate?

  • What is symbolic about the way Oedipus chooses to mutilate himself?

  • How is Mount Cithaeron an appropriate location for Oedipus’s desired exile?

Required Materials for English 9 Honors Course

• • Chromebook (assigned during Freshman Orientation)

  • Single Subject Notebook for notes

  • A copy of The Three Theban Plays

  • Your collection of story notes and allusion cards

Chromebooks for 9th grade

• • As Golden has moved to the 1:1 initiative and every 9th grade student will have a Chromebook, the expectation is that every 9th grade student comes to every class with their fully charged device. Again, these devices will be assigned and distributed during Freshman Orientation.

Twelve Ways To Mark Up A Book (Annotate)

Books are a fantastic way to gain knowledge. With books, one can learn new techniques, gain new skills, and learn from role models who have been to where one wants to be and can show the way. There are many different ways to read books and just as many ways to remember their salient points. One of the most effective ways to get the most out of a book is to mark it up. There is no standard way to mark up a text, but below are a few ways that students have found effective in marking up a textbook so that one can see the important points quickly, make it more memorable, and make it easy to pick up years later and re-acquaint oneself with the major concepts.

What Not To Do

• • Don’t use a highlighter – Quality marking isn’t done with a fat-tipped highlighter. You can’t write, which is an important part of marking the text, with a large marker. Get yourself some fine point colored pens to do the job.

  • Don’t mark large volumes of text – You want important points to stand out. Although we all know that everything can’t be important, we often highlight all of the text on the page. You want to find the 20% of the text that is important (remember Pareto?) and mark that.

  • Don’t take the time to mark up items that you read on a daily basis – (e.g., magazines, newspapers), unimportant or irrelevant items.

  • Don’t mark the obvious – Don’t waste time marking up things that are already in your knowledge-base or skill set. If you already know it, you don’t need to mark it.

What To Do

• • Mark the text with a pencil, pen, or, even better, colored fine-tipped pens – Remember, you are not highlighting, you are writing.

  • Know your preferences – Some of you have an aversion to mark directly in the text. Books are precious things to many people and they want to protect them from damage and even the wear and tear of everyday use. If this describes you, grab some Post-It brand notes and do your marking and writing on them. This also gives you the advantage to move and re-organize them should you see fit. As for me, I like to mark directly on the page. I find that my books become more valuable to me when I add my contributions to the information that they contain.

  • Underline the topic sentence in a passage – Remember, each paragraph has one topic sentence. The rest is supporting information and examples. Identify the topic sentence to find it easier.

  • Use codes – Flag text with codes (e.g., Question marks to indicate disagreement, Exclamation marks to note agreement or to flag a strong statement, triangles to indicate a change in thinking, or a star for the topic sentence).

  • Write the passage topic in the margin as a reminder – Just a word or two.

  • Write questions in the margin – When you don’t understand something or when you don’t understand the author’s thought process on a particular topic, write the question in the margin as a reminder to settle the question.

  • Circle new and unfamiliar words – Look them up as soon as possible.

  • Add your or other author’s perspectives in the margins – Other authors have surely written on the same subject. What do they say? Do they agree with this author? If not, what do they say? Add these ideas in the margins.

  • Add cross-reference notes to other works on the same topic – Use the author’s name and a shortened version of the other book’s title.

  • Add structure to a narrative text – Use 1, 2, 3, 4…or an outline format I. A. B. C. 1, 2, 3, a, b, c…to add a structure that you understand.

  • Draw arrows to related ideas – Or unrelated ideas…

  • Summarize – Add your own summary after the last paragraph. That simple exercise will crystallize your thinking on the topic. If you can’t write it, you don’t understand it.

Extras

Post-It Brand Notes are a great way to also mark locations within books, much like bookmarks do. With Post-It Brand Notes, however, you can mark on them so you can see where you are turning before you start flipping through the pages. One can also use colored paper clips to identify pages or chapters that are important.

Conclusion

The idea is to enter, by way of your markings, into a conversation with the author so that his knowledge is added to yours so that a synthesis occurs and you gain a new understanding.

A new — or new looking — book is a treasure. In my experience, however, I have found that a well-marked book becomes more like a treasured friend — one that you enjoy seeing again and again. It becomes much more enjoyable than a sterile copy that comes straight from the bookstore. Don’t be afraid to mark up the books that you love.

Posted by Bert Webb in Books | Permalink

http://hwebbjr.typepad.com/openloops/2006/02/twelve_ways_to_.html

*Adapted from Mrs. Weiss and Mrs. Albiniak Naperville Community Unit School District(c)2015

If you have questions regarding this assignment, you may contact either of us via email.

We look forward to seeing you this fall--

Mr. Carpenter Mrs. O’Connor

mbcarpen@jeffcoschools.us econnor@jeffcoschools.us