Juniors

Welcome to a new school year. We will begin with a review of Grammar: the 8 parts of speech, phrases, clauses, direct objects, indirect objects, predicate nouns, predicate adjectives, gerunds, participles, and infinitives, diagram sentences and conjugate verbs. We will be reading novels by American authors along with our daily assignments. Your goal will be to earn 25 AR points every 9 weeks.

In literature we will be reading stories and poems by American authors. American Literature begins with the oral literature of the Native Americans; then will continue into the explorers, colonists and Puritan's stories. Each group came to America for very different reasons. Next we will look at some of the historical literature which was written to help persuade Americans to form a united government. Romanticism finally reaches our shores and authors such as Washington Irving, James Cooper Fenimore, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Jack London, Herman Melville, Edgar Allen Poe, Arthur Miller, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman graced the pages of our literature books. America went through many growing stages to become the great nation we are today, and the literature of each era was instrumental in helping America grow.

You will need a notebook in which to keep notes on literary terms and authors backgrounds., as well as a red pen. We will learn how to write your essays in MLA format, with in-text citing and a reference page. There is an example of this in the File Cabinet. I look forward to seeing you in the fall and having a great year of reading, writing and discussions. There is a list of books for summer reading in the Filing Cabinet. I hope you will continue to read this summer!