Name ________________________________________

Gaithersburg High School’s AP Literature and Composition Summer Assignment

Dear AP Lit Students, We’re very excited about working with you next fall. AP Literature and Composition is all about reading great books and writing about them. To get a jump start on the course, we’d like to complete the following four tasks:

1. Read the book of your choice from the attached list of “Works of Literary Merit.” Complete the Dialectical Journal assignment for the book you chose—6 entries.

2. Read The Awakening by Kate Chopin and fill in the attached charts. 3. Read your GHS Summer Reading Choice Book. 4. Write a draft of a college essay (See the prompts below).

Feel free to contact Mr. Green at Roger_P_Green@mcpsmd.org or Mrs. Wannen at Samantha_W_Wannen@mcpsmd.org if you have questions over the summer. You may also contact the English Resource Teacher, Mrs Jennifer Bado. College Essay Draft As you know, the fall of your senior year is the time to complete college applications. In addition to the reading assignment, we’d like for you to complete at least one working rough draft of a college essay. Choose at least one prompt from the Common Application or from the Coalition Application.

2017-2018 Common Application Essay Prompts (Word Limit is 650) 1. Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. 2. The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience? 3. Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome? 4. Describe a problem you've solved or a problem you'd like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma - anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution. 5. Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others. 6. Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more? [New] 7. Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

2016-2018 Coalition Application Essay Prompts. 1. Tell a story from your life, describing an experience that either demonstrates your character or helped to shape it. 2. Describe a time when you made a meaningful contribution to others in which the greater good was your focus. Discuss the challenges and rewards of making your contribution. 3. Has there been a time when you’ve had a long-cherished or accepted belief challenged? How did you respond? How did the challenge affect your beliefs? 4. What is the hardest part of being a teenager now? What’s the best part? What advice would you give a younger sibling or friend (assuming they would listen to you.)

Works of “Literary Merit” AP Literature and Composition Summer Reading Assignment

Read one work of literary merit in addition to The Awakening and your School-Wide Summer Reading book. In addition to your GHS Summer Reading choice and The Awakening, read one book over the summer from the list below. The only stipulation is that you select a work that you have not already read. You will most likely find a title on the list that you’ve wanted to read and will take this opportunity to do just that. If, however, you have another idea in mind, you may choose a text not on the list if it is a work of comparable literary merit. Please get approval from Mr. Green or Ms. Wannen before reading the book, if you want to choose a book not on the list. Feel free to contact Mr. Green at Roger_P_Green@mcpsmd.org or Mrs. Wannen at Samantha_W_Wannen@mcpsmd.org. As you pick a book, feel free to consult reviews at Amazon.Com or www.Goodreads.com, to talk to friends and relatives and teachers. All of these novels are works of literary merit, but some are much more challenging than others. On the first day of school, be prepared to talk about the book you read. If you read the book early in the summer, please review it prior to the first day of school. If you read more than one book off the list, be prepared to talk about one of them. (This list is adapted from an original list by Norma J. Wilkerson and Sandra Effinger of works that have appeared on the open question of the AP Literature exam.)

A Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner Adam Bede by George Eliot The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy America is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser The American by Henry James Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy Another Country by James Baldwin Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer Atonement by Ian McEwan Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson

B A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul Billy Budd by Herman Melville Black Boy by Richard Wright Bleak House by Charles Dickens The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison Bone: A Novel by Fae M. Ng The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan Brighton Rock by Graham Greene The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevski

C Catch-22 by Joseph Heller The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood The Centaur by John Updike

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko The Chosen by Chaim Potok Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier The Color Purple by Alice Walker Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje

D Daisy Miller by Henry James David Copperfield by Charles Dickens The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler The Diviners by Margaret Laurence The Dollmaker by Harriet Arnot Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia E East of Eden by John Steinbeck Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

F Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry Fifth Business by Robertson Davis The Fixer by Bernard Malamud For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

G A Gesture Life by Chang-Rae Lee Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck Great Expectations by Charles Dickens Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

H Hard Times by Charles Dickens The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes House Made of Dawn by N Scott Momaday The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

I The Iliad by Homer

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O'Brien Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

J Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

K Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

L Light in August by William Faulkner Little Women by Louisa May Alcott Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad Lord of the Flies by William Golding The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich

M Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert Main Street by Sinclair Lewis Mansfield Park by Jane Austen The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy Middlemarch by George Eliot Middle Passage by V. S. Naipaul The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West Moby Dick by Herman Melville Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe Monkey Bridge by Lan Cao The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

N The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri Native Son by Richard Wright Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee No-No Boy by John Okada

O Obasan by Joy Kogawa Old School by Tobias Wolff One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia

Marquez One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey O Pioneers! by Willa Cather The Optimist's Daughter by D. H. Lawrence Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens Out of Africa by Isaak Dinesen

P Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov Pamela by Samuel Richardson Paradise Lost by John Milton Père Goriot by Honore de Balzac Persuasion by Jane Austen The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde The Plague by Albert Camus Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov Pocho by Jose Antonio Villarreal Portrait of a Lady by Henry James The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall Push by Sapphire

R Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow Redburn by Herman Melville The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf A Room with a View by E. M. Forster

S Sent for You Yesterday by John Edgar Wideman The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx Silas Marner by George Eliot Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence The Street by Ann Petry Sula by Toni Morrison Surfacing by Margaret Atwood The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

T A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf Tom Jones by Henry Fielding Tracks by Louise Erdrich Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne Typical American by Gish Jen

U Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

V Victory by Joseph Conrad

W The Warden by Anthony Trollope Washington Square by Henry James The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys Winter in the Blood by James Welch Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

Z Zoot Suit by Luis Valdez

AP Lit Dialectical Journal

The purpose of a dialectical journal is to identify significant pieces of text and explain the significance. It is another form

of highlighting/annotating text and should be used to think about, digest, summarize, question, clarify, critique, and

remember what is read. It is a way to take notes on what is read using the actual text, so that when you are asked to write

an essay about or utilize the information from the text you do not have to re-read the entire piece. Instead, you can search

your notes for direct quotes to use as supporting evidence for your opinions. A dialectical journal is also an effective way

to assess your comprehension. It can be used with any form of writing: textbook, short story, novel, essay, poem,

newspaper article, scientific journal, or any piece of writing students choose.

To set up a dialectical journal, you may simply fold a piece of paper in half. On the left hand side of the page, title the

column, Note Taking. On the right hand side of the page, title the column, Note Making. The left hand column is where

you will write the sentence/s or phrase/s from the text that you believe illustrates a significant idea. You should put

quotation marks around the sentence/s to show that they are someone else’s words. If the passage you use is more than

one or two sentences, you may abbreviate it in the following manner, using ellipses (three dots in place of the words that

are missing at the end):

“Like the keeper of the lighthouse, she regarded it as a mooring, a checkpoint, some stable visual object that assured

her that the world was still there; that this was life and not a dream…” Song of Solomon, p. 11

(The above information was taken directly from:

http://www.esubjects.com/curric/general/supplements/DialecticalJournal.pdf)

Dialectic Journals in a Nutshell!

1. You need a minimum of six entries. These entries are minimally one to two paragraphs in length

2. You can either use the attached sheets, or create your own Dialectical Journal on a computer.

3. For the TEXT (“note taking”) column, your entries may include the following:

Meaningful or striking quotations or paraphrasing of important passages

Confusing or difficult quotations or passages

Evidence of theme, tone, mood, character development, plot complication, setting significance, etc.

Vocabulary work in context

Figurative language such as metaphors, similes, personification, etc.

Effective &/or creative use of stylistic or literary devices

Passages that remind you of your own life or something you’ve seen before

Structural shifts or turns in the plot

A passage that makes you realize something you hadn’t seen before

Examples of patterns: recurring images, ideas, colors, symbols or motifs.

Passages with confusing language or unfamiliar vocabulary

Events you find surprising or confusing

Passages that illustrate a particular character or setting

4. For the RESPONSE (“note making”) column, you have several ways to respond to a text:

Raise and answer questions about the beliefs and values

implied in the text

Give your personal reactions to the passage

Discuss the diction (vocabulary) used

Discuss what makes the quote or passage meaningful,

striking, or important

Discuss how theme is shown

Discuss the meaning and/or effect of figurative language

Discuss the character’s role and/or the values of the

character

Discuss the importance of setting

Tell what it reminds you of from your own experiences

Write about what it makes you think or feel

Argue with or speak to the characters or author

Comment on the relevance of a passage to its historical

context or to the present

Identify recurring symbols or images

Example Dialectical Journals

Note-taking

(exact sentences or phrases from the

text, page number stated at the end of

the passage)

Note-making

(My original ideas about the significance of the text. This is my conversation with

the novel or the author of the novel)

From The Things They Carried by Tim

O’Brien

“-they carried like freight trains; they

carried it on their backs and shoulders-

and for all the ambiguities of Vietnam,

all the mysteries and unknowns, there

was at least the single abiding certainty

that they would never be at a loss for

things to carry.” (15)

From The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

(R) O’Brien chooses to end the first section of the novel with this sentence. He

provides excellent visual details of what each solider in Vietnam would carry for day-

to-day fighting. He makes you feel the physical weight of what soldiers have to carry

for simple survival. When you combine the emotional weight of loved ones at home,

the fear of death, and the responsibility for the men you fight with, with this physical

weight, you start to understand what soldiers in Vietnam dealt with every day. This

quote sums up the confusion that the men felt about the reasons they were fighting the

war, and how they clung to the only certainty - things they had to carry - in a confusing

world where normal rules were suspended.

From To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper

Lee

“…as I read the alphabet a faint line

appeared between her eyebrows, and

after making me read most of My First

Reader and the stock market quotations

from the Mobile Register, she

discovered that I was literate and looked

at me with more than faint distaste.

Miss Caroline told me to tell my father

not to teach me any more, it would

interfere with my reading.” (21)

From To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The novel takes place during the Depression, a time when kids like Scout had almost

nothing to look forward to and no prospects for a better future. Scout speaks often of

how dirty the kids are, how poor everyone is (so poor that no one notices that anyone

else is in any better or worse shape than they are). Miss Caroline does not seem to

understand that she is probably one of the few things standing between the kids of

that era and total disaster. Her job is so important because she can give them the

entire key to a better life. Instead, she singles kids out for mistreatment, demeans the

children in front of each other, and does not try to inspire the kids in her class.

Adults during the Depression had to have been afraid, afraid of starvation, afraid

of losing their jobs. Perhaps Miss Caroline is so harsh partly because she is

inexperienced, but maybe she is afraid that if she does not run her classroom like

factory (everyone doing the same thing at the same time) that she will lose her job.

Maybe she thinks the kids genuinely need her to be so critical and rigid. Fear makes

people react to their surroundings instead of acting rationally. Perhaps fear is a

theme in this book, fear of poverty, fear of failure, fear of other races. I will use fear

as a purpose for reading as I continue through the chapters, noting who is acting out

of fear and who is acting rationally. Perhaps those conclusions will lead me to the

theme of the novel.

Name ___________________________________ English Period ____

Note-Taking

(exact sentences or phrases from the text,

page number stated at the end of the

passage)

Note-Making

(My original ideas about the significance of the text. This is my

conversation with the novel or the author of the novel)

Note-Taking

(exact sentences or phrases from the text,

page number stated at the end of the

passage)

Note-Making

(My original ideas about the significance of the text. This is my

conversation with the novel or the author of the novel)

Name ____________________________ English Period ___

Summer Reading Chart: Characterization in The Awakening

Directions: Select a character from the text and complete the questions below. Character: __________________

Method

Page # Evidence (Write quote)

What the evidence shows

INDIRECT CHARACTERIZATION

1) The character is revealed through

his/her own speech. (Quote must be stated

by character.)

2) The author

describes how the character physically looks. (Age,

gender, race, attractiveness.)

3) The character's

private thoughts are revealed. (Cannot be something character

says to another character.)

4) The author reveals what other characters

say/think about the character.

5) The author shows what the character

does and how he/she acts. (Actions done by

the character)

DIRECT CHARACTERIZATION

6) The author/narrator directly states what kind of person the

character is

Summer Reading Chart: Analyzing Quotes The Awakening by Kate Chopin

Directions: Select three quotes that you find significant to the text’s theme(s). Next, use this chart to analyze the meaning of each quote.

Quote Citations

page #

Significance

Explain what this quote tells you about a character or theme.

1)

2)

3)