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 interaction, communication, and publication so that we are all comfortable with this component of the course before the year begins, whether we are working together in person or via continuous learning.

We all need and want the summer to be restorative and 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.
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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.  So banish apathy, jump in with both feet, and dig into the summer work with patience, enthusiasm, and, above all, curiosity!  (And If none of this sounds like fun to you, I would encourage you to reconsider your course requests.  Absolutely zero judgment whatsoever for knowing what you need as a learner and making choices that support those needs!)

READING:
​the summer section
of our course pack

Pick it up from my room by 26 May 2021.

Read, annotate, question, reflect on, commonplace about, and complete the two worksheets on the selections by Alan Jacobs, A.O. Scott, Paolo Freire, and Stephen Greenblatt.  These selections comprise a little more than half of the entire course pack. Do not read beyond the assigned sections during the summer; we will read the rest together in the 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!  Have fun!

WRITING:
​your commonplace book

Pick it up from my room by 26 May 2021.

Your commonplace book is a place to practice and collect your wonders and your I-wonders throughout the summer and throughout the course.  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. 

While we're on the topic of commonplacing, take a look at the first couple of pages of our course pack, where you'll find some suggestions for ways to approach the task if you're coming up blank. 
Additionally, here is a great resource from Harvard University Library on marginalia and annotation. And here's another on commonplacing specifically, including links to various commonplace books (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 and at various points throughout the school year.  In your commonplace book, I want to see your in-process thinking as you read and question and reflect and connect throughout the summer!

WRITING:
your portfolio website

Your portfolio website is due by the beginning of our first class meeting.  Through it, you will curate an image of you as a thinker, reader, and writer.  Control your digital self.  Write your own digital narrative.

If you were a Galloway student in 9th grade, you should already have a Weebly website that you created in Freshman Launch.  Students were encouraged to create their sites using their Galloway credentials, so if you don't remember your login info, try that first!  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 a free Weebly site (here's how), using these guidelines. 
Incorporate contextualizing writing on the home page and additional pages that explains what the site is, why it exists, etc. Include an ABOUT page.  Create an AP Lit page.  As a subpage to your AP Lit page, create a static Formal Writing page where you will publish your your concept map, written description, and cover letter (explained below) as text, images, links, etc. (i.e, like these words are included on this page, NOT as an embedded PDF or as a link to another document).  As another subpage to your AP Lit page, create a Blog page using these instructions. Use this page to publish blog posts at the intervals designated below using these instructions.

​WRITING:
three reflective blog posts, feat. Your CPB: sampling a sample

Over the course of the summer, you should write three reflective blog posts, the first published in the middle of June, the second by mid-July, and  the third early in August.

​Your blog posts should be 500 words long each and should
  • reflect on the reading and writing you've accomplished up to that point in the summer,
  • incorporate at least two photographs of pages from your commonplace book,
  • reflect on the images from your commonplace book that you chose to feature and why you chose them,
  • describe how the ideas in the images connect to one another, 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.
If you think about your CPB as a collection of samples embedded in your original thinking, you can think of these blog posts as samples of samples.  If that metaphor doesn't work for you, feel free to ignore it.  :-)  ​

​WRITING:
concept map, descriptive writing, cover letter: ​remixing a remix

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
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 how your visualization works and justifies the decisions you made that led you to visually organize the concepts the way that you did. 

Begin by reviewing your CPB, your blog posts, and your annotations.  Once you have done this, create a concept map that visually presents what you believe to be the key concepts within the summer reading, how the concepts function, how they relate to one another, their significance, etc.  
Picture


I love Canva.com as a tool for creating concept maps!
In addition to the concept map itself, write a description and justification of between 600 and 750 words that
  • contextualizes the piece for your readers by explaining how the ideas in your visualization fit together, where in the summer reading the ideas come from, how the writers' ideas fit together, etc.
  • describes how your visualization works
  • justifies the decisions you made as you connected the concepts together, where you located them on the page, the colors you chose, the fonts you chose, etc.

To accompany both the concept map and written description, you should also write a brief cover letter (of 250-ish words) that tells me the story of how you went about completing this task and what it was like for you in process and that also answers the following questions: 
  • What do you see as your main points?
  • How did you get your ideas?
  • What were some of the choices you made?
  • Which parts went well or badly?
  • Were there any surprises?
  • What questions do you have for me as reader?
You'll write cover letters like this one for each draft of each major piece of writing we do together this year.  So think about how you'd like to showcase them on your portfolio website now and publish this first iteration of a cover letter alongside your concept map and your description and contextualization of it. ​​
Photos from FeatheredTar, Pain Chaud, markus spiske, freeblogphotos, kiatsuda2001 Free Public Domain Illustrations by rawpixel