river oaks [english]

Your assignment this weekend is to set thirty minutes aside for yourself. I want you to go outside for at least thirty minutes, without your cell phone, without a friend, without your ipod...just you and your backyard. If you can go somewhere outside of town, or by some water, or into the woods, even better. I want you to spend that thirty minutes observing nature. Listen, smell, touch. Use your senses. See what you can see. After about the first ten minutes, something odd will happen. You'll start to notice things you haven't noticed since you were a kid. You might want to take a notepad with you (not your laptop) and jot down down some things. When you come back inside, to civilization, write me a page response telling me what you think. What did you see that you hadn't noticed before? What did you hear? Smell? Was it natural or artificial? Were you able to "escape" technology for a bit, or was that all you heard? What were you thinking? Were yo...

I hesitate to say that Walden is one of my favorite works of literature only because I want you to experience it on your own, without thinking of it as something that you have to read. But it is one of my favorite books, and I certainly won't be offended if you don't like it or appreciate it. However, I invite all of you to read with an open mind, and perhaps you'll give the whole book a read, and maybe it will affect you in the same way it has me. It's the kind of book that you can read in chunks or open at random. It's about the big questions, really -- what life is, what life's purpose is, what life's purpose should be. Believe it or not, the book has changed many people's lives. Oh, and here's a link to an annotated version of the whole thing and to The Thoreau Reader , a site from the Thoreau Society about the author and his works.

We are reviewing Part One of To Kill a Mockingbird this week, and I thought I'd recommend a website. One of the best sites I've seen for the book is the Student Survival Guide from Nancy Louise Rutherford (a fellow high school teacher). It is well-researched, geared to the student, and includes sections on Vocabulary , Allusions , and Idioms . Remember that the first vocabulary test is Friday. We'll start reading Part Two this weekend, and we will also watch some more of the film as we progress through the novel.

Your assignment is to write a poem describing a someone from contemporary society. Refer to the " General Prologue " to The Canterbury Tales as your model. The character should be someone who does a particular job or serves some specific purpose in our society. Your poem should be at least 14 lines, in rhyming couplets. Please include the following: description of the person's job/position character traits -- personality, temperament, morals, etc. physical description -- including uniform/clothing The poem is due on Tuesday 1/16.

Overview Your next major assignment is to write a two-three page essay defining "American." The essay's thesis should attempt to answer the question, "What does it mean to be American?" The essay should be typed, double-spaced and formatted according to MLA . Your Topic The word is used to describe our culture, politics, food, style, music -- even ourselves. But what do we mean? Usually the connotation is positive, but the question applies to the negative use of the word, as well; if we call someone or something un-American, or anti-American, what exactly do we mean? What is the "American Dream," and in what ways do we pursue it? Do terrorism and illegal immigration threaten our "American Way of Life"? If so, then how is that defined? Could you make a list of "American Values." What is American food? American music? Process The process for this paper has already begun. First, you read part of de Crevecoeur's essay , a...