SUMMER READINGS & ACTIVITIES

I selected the readings and activities that we will dig into together this summer so that we can:
  1. establish a shared approach to the work we will do together in the coming the year, one that is dedicated to curiosity, growth, and openness;
  2. forge habits of interaction with a text, including reading carefully and deeply, asking questions (and asking more questions, and more questions, and...), taking time to reflect on what we are reading and to connect it to what we already know through annotating and keeping a commonplace book;
  3. build a shared theoretical framework surrounding the central ideas of AP Lit this upcoming year, adaptation, appropriation, and intertextuality; and
  4. practice digital communication and publication so that we are all comfortable with this component of the course before the year begins.
We all need and want the summer to be restorative, energizing, so I hope that you all will come to our summer work with enthusiasm, taking advantage of the fact that we have the luxury of time and space to interact with and reflect on the ideas in our summer work differently than we are able to during the rush of the school year.  

While I am not assigning summer due dates, I am including a suggested calendar so that you can be sure you're on task.   Putting off this summer work will rob you of the time to grapple with, reflect on, and question the difficult concepts around which our course is structured.  If none of this sounds like fun to you, I would encourage you to reconsider your course requests.  So banish apathy, jump in with both feet, and dig into the summer work with patience, enthusiasm, and, above all, curiosity!

READING:
​the summer section
of our course pack

Pick it up from my room by 1 June 2019.

Read, annotate, question, reflect on, answer the questions about, and finally commonplace about the selections by A.O. Scott, Warren Berger, and Stephen Greenblatt.  Then choose five of Maria Popova's BrainPickings pieces (accessible via the QR code on the appropriate pages) to read and answer the questions in your packet about. (Also, here is a great resource from Harvard University Library on marginalia and annotation).  These selections comprise a little less than half of the entire course pack. Do not read beyond the assigned sections during the summer; we will read the rest together in th school year.
​For each selection in the summer section of our course pack, ask yourself "why are we reading this? how does it connect to or proffer or reject the ideas and questions in and raised by the other pieces we are reading this summer? what do I like about this?  what about it frustrates me? why? what are the writers trying to accomplish here?"  Make connections to the other readings, to things you already know, to pieces of literature you've read, to things outside of AP Lit or literature generally! think expansively!

WRITING:
​your commonplace book

Pick it up from my room by 1 June 2019.

Your commonplace book is a place to practice and collect your wonders and your I-wonders.  Use it, as you read everything for this course, to copy down quotes from your readings, to write down your thoughts, to note connections you make, to ask questions, to doodle and draw and muse: use it to make your thinking visible!  Here's a great page from Harvard University Library on commonplacing, including links to various CPBs.

How you organize your commonplace book and what your it looks like is entirely up to you: if you are an observant reader, a poem will tell you how to read it; if you are an observant and reflective commonplacer, your commonplace book will tell you how to use it.
You will turn in your commonplace books at the beginning of your first day of class.  In your commonplace book, I want to see your in-process thinking from throughout the summer as you read and question and reflect and connect!

WRITING:
your portfolio website

Your portfolio website, along with your blog posts and your visual-symbolic concept map and persuasive-descriptive writing, will be due by the beginning of our first class meeting.  Your portfolio website will serve as your online academic presence and will present an image of you as a thinker, reader, and writer.  Control your digital self.  Write your own digital narrative.

If you already have a website you have used as your portfolio for another class, GREAT!  Take time this summer to reorganize it so that it serves as a professional/academic website that depicts the whole of you as a learner rather than for one course (these guidelines can help). 

If you do not yet have a website, go ahead and make one (here's how), using these guidelines (be sure to incorporate contextualizing writing on the home page and additional pages that explain what the site is and does, why it exists, etc; include an ABOUT page; etc.). 
Create an AP Lit page.  Then, as a subpage to your AP Lit page, create a Formal Writing page where you will publish your your visual-symbolic concept map and persuasive-descriptive writing, explained below, as text, images, links, etc. on a page like these words are included on this one (NOT as an embedded PDF or as a link to another document).  As another subpage to your AP Lit page, also create a Blog page (here's how).  Use this page to publish blog posts at the intervals designated below (here's how).

​WRITING:
sampling a sample, 
​remixing a remix

Sampling a Sample: Three Reflective Blog Posts, feat. Your CPB
Over the course of the summer, you will write three reflective blog posts, the first published in the middle of June, the second early in July, and  the third early in August. These blog posts should contain at least 500 words and should
  • reflect on the reading and writing you've accomplished up to that point,
  • incorporate at least two photographs of pages from your commonplace book,
  • synthesize  how the ideas on each page connect and communicate your thoughts on the images from your commonplace book that you chose to feature, and
  • explain your current thoughts on and speculation about the class and what you imagine we'll accomplish together based on the work you've done to that point in time

Remixing a Remix: A Concept Map and Persuasive Descriptive Piece
Your primary formal writing assignment for the summer will ask you, overall, to analyze and synthesize the central and key concepts within the summer reading, present them visually, and craft a brief written piece that describes and persuades readers of the plausibility of the claims your visualization presents. 

Begin by reviewing your CPB, your blog posts, and your annotations  Once you have a handle on this genre, choose what you deem to be an exemplar of Popova's style.  Then perform a rhetorical analysis of that exemplar to understand precisely how it works visually, intellectually, and rhetorically, how long the longer pieces are, how they incorporate quotes, images, font and layout decisions, etc.  What thinking and communication moves are distinctly Popova?  What kinds of claims does she typically make?  How does she communicate and support those claims?  What do these pieces end up looking like?  Why?

Once you have done this, you will create a concept map that presents your understanding of the key concepts within the summer reading, how the concepts function, how they relate to one another, their significance, etc.  For some hints on approaching concept visualization, check out the following links:

History of and Intros to Concept and Knowledge Visualization
​Example Approaches to Concept and Knowledge Visualization
Examples of Concept and Knowledge Visualization


In addition to the piece itself, write a reflective cover letter that
  • contextualizes the piece for your readers,
  • names and links to the specific BrainPickings pieces you most respected and mostly closely tried to emulate,
  • explains the rhetorical moves you hoped to make, and
  • describes how you incorporated strategies you recognized in Popova's own pieces.

You'll write cover letters like this one for each draft of each major piece of writing.  So think about how you'd like to showcase them on your portfolio website now and publish this first iteration of a cover letter as well as your Remix of Popova. 
Photos used under Creative Commons from FeatheredTar, Pain Chaud, markus spiske Free Public Domain Illustrations by rawpixel