Welcome to a new school year. It will be a busy year beginning with a quick review of Grammar. We will start the year by reading some stories from Mythology, Antigone, The Trojan War, Fall of Troy, and finish up with Adventures of Odysseus. This year we will try to focus on learning how to give a variety of enthralling speeches: persuasive, informational, demonstration, and special event. Our preface to this will be reading Julius Caesar, in which we will find many great speech makers as well as speeches. We will also read some great essays and speeches given by famous people. The class will read some fiction and nonfiction such as Fahrenheit 451, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, some Edgar Allen Poe, O' Henry, Mark Twain, and James Thurber. We will also do a unit on Poetry, learning the words and terms that are used in poetry. We will finish out the year with some great classics such as King Arthur, Morte d' Arthur, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Don Quixote. We will be reading novel studies along with our daily assignments. Your goal is to earn 25 AR points every 9 weeks.
You will need a notebook in which to keep notes on literary terms, authors' backgrounds, as well as a red pen. You will also need some small note cards to use when preparing your speeches. We will continue to learn how to write your essays in an MLA format, with in-text citing and a reference page. There is an example of the format 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!