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=Welcome to the Internet home of Miss Vernon's English II at Piggott High School! =

media type="custom" key="28369191" align="left"The I nternet home of our class will serve as a place for students to discuss works throughout the year and obtain make-up work when they are absent. It will also serve parents by providing them with information about what students are studying in class and what assignments are due so on. Users can also ask Miss Vernon questions through the site via private message. The instructor hope s t hat this will provide an outlet for meaningful discussion about student learning and help improve student achievement. Throughout the year we will be studying numerous works. Students will be assigned reading assignments, which will be discussed as a group in class. Each of these discussions (known as Socratic Seminars) will be graded based on a rubric, which will be provided to the students in advance. These grades along with tests and posts to the discussion forum here will make up the bulk of assessments in the class. Students will also be asked to write MLA papers and essays from time to time throughout the year. At the beginning of the year, Miss Vernon will spend time discussing reading comprehension strategies and writing strategies. These skills will be very important to the students as we go through the year. They will be expected to analyze the literature we read instead of merely being able to summarize what happened in the stories. Due to implementation of the Common Core State Standards, we will be moving away from simple matching, true or false, and multiple choice tests. The tests will ask students to identify a device or to generate an example of it (For example: Write a simile. Write a metaphor.). They will be expected to apply this knowledge to the works we study and student writing assignments as we proceed through the class. Students will be expected to read one novel independently off of Miss Vernon's reading list each nine weeks. A book project or an AR Test will be completed at the end of each nine week's for a grade. It will be a 100 point grade. Students may read as many books as they please. The book project will be due the Tuesday of the last week of each nine weeks. It is the instructor's hope that students will also read something of their own choosing each nine weeks purely for enjoyment. Statistics show when a student reads more that carries over to improve his/her writing ability. If a student does not know a word, he/she should use context clues to try to figure out the meaning of the unknown word. This is a reading comprehension strategy, and it will be expected. Sometimes in class we have a designated "Dictionary Person" for the day. Students are encouraged to keep a dictionary handy (or use an online one) when they come across words they do not know while reading if they cannot figure out a word through use of context clues. While Miss Vernon encourages the use of available technologies, she takes a hard line against plagiarism. Plagiarism means taking someone else's thoughts or ideas and presenting them as your own without giving them credit. Any assignments found to contain plagiarized material will automatically be given a zero. __//**Students are also not allowed to use Wikipedia as a source on any research project.**//__ When papers are assigned, proper citations will be expected. MLA (Modern Language Association) format will be covered in class. If time allows, we will also discuss APA format, since some professors prefer it. //"I forgot my book at school,"// is not an acceptable excuse anymore due to the fact most books can be found online, including our literature textbook (www.mirrorsandwindows.com). A link to a useful site for finding books can be found on the helpful links page. Works that will be studied in English II include: "Orpheus" by Robert Graves "Tree Telling of Orpheus" An excerpt from The Iliad by Homer "Getting it Right at Ground Zero" by Rudy Giuliani "Land of the Living" by Lucy Kaplansky and Richard  <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">"On This Day in 2001" by Garrison Keillor  <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;">__Antigone__ by Sophocles  <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5; text-align: justify;">"The Monkey's Paw" by W.W. Jacobs  <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;">"The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe  <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;"> "Arthur Becomes King of Britain" (from __ The Once and Future King __ ) by T.H. White   <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;">An excerpt from __Morte d'Arthur__ by Sir Thomas Malory  <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;">An excerpt from __Don Quixote de la Mancha__ by Miguel de Cervantes  <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14.4444px; text-align: justify;">__<span style="font-family: 'times new roman',times,serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 1.5;">Anthem __<span style="font-family: 'times new roman',times,serif; font-size: 110%;"> by Ayn Rand   <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">The French Revolution and __A Tale of Two Cities__ by Charles Dickens  <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: 1.5;">and  <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 110%;">__A Midsummer Night's Dream__ by William Shakespeare