English 2: Notes for 9/10-9/21

Mythology: stories told to help people understand the rules of the universe and our place in it.

The Norse: warrior people who raided and conquered any groups touching the Atlantic ocean; their myths were strongly their religion until the rise of Christianity. 

• Major Gods and Goddesses
• Odin: King; Poetry, battle, and death
• Erda: earth, fertility; mother of Thor
• Frigga: seer, mother of seven children w/Odin; Queen of the realm
• Thor: God of sky; Associated with law (sort of sheriff)
• Sif: Wife of Thor
• Balder: Wisdom & Knowledge; Son of Odin and Frigg; killed by Hod (thanks to Loki)
• Freya: fertility, love, lust;; Goddess of the Vanir
• Hel/Hela: Helheim; God/Goddess of the Dead
• Loki: Trickster; At least half giant; becomes increasingly evil over the course of the mythic stories
• Realms
• Asgard: Where the gods live
• Vanaheim : the Vanir home; connected to Asgard
• Alfheim: the light elves home; connected to Asgard
• Midgard: Land of Humans (Earth)
• Nidavellir: Land of dwarves; connected to Midgard
• Jotunheim: Land of giants; connected to Midgard
• Svartalfheim: Land of dark elves; connected to Midgard
• Hel/Helheim: Realm of the dead
• Niflheim: World of the dead
• Valhalla: Where dead heroes are taken by the Valkeryie to feast and train until Ragnarok
• Ragnarok: the end of the world; all creatures fight on the side of light or dark, no one survives from Elder Edda

The Celts: early people who lived in Ireland and parts of Greater Britain
Choose one of the cycles to look up. Write a paragraph about it. Turn in the paragraph (7-10 sentences).

• The Cycles
• Mythological Cycle: the stories of The Dagda, The Morrigan, and the other gods of Ireland
• The Book of Invasions: records the five waves of "invaders" to Ireland; the Tuatha (children of Danu) became The Fae
• Finean Cycle: records the adventures of Finn Mac Cool and his warriors, the Fianna
• Ulster Cycle: records the adventures of Cuchulainn, The Cattle Raid of Cooley (The Tain) and the hero's misadventures with Queen Meave and The Morrigan
• The Cycle of Kings: records the major events of various Irish kings and nobles; each set of stories focus on a different clan
• A Few Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes
• The Dagda, god of earth and treaties; ruler over life and death; leader of the Tuatha; master of magic, fearsome warrior, artisan; married to The Morrigan; the never-empty cauldron, harp, club of life and death
• Lugh of the Long-Spear; sun god, warrior, full of energy; son of Clan and Ethlinn; a classic hero and High King of Tara
• The Morrigan, battle goddess; shapeshifter including crow, wolf, and cow; also goddess of strife and self-rule (sovereignty) 
• The Brigid, three-faced goddess; healing, poetry, technology; fertility, home and hearth; daughter of Dagda; wife of Bres of the Fomorians; the three-faced goddess (crone, mother, maiden); mother of Ruadan; sometimes she is mixed in with Saint Brigid, the only woman to ever become a Bishop in Catholic Church
• Epona, horse goddess; fertility and earth; farmers will often name their best horses after her; shapeshifter; takes the dead to The Summerlands; one of the only Celtic gods/goddesses to have her own feast in ancient Rome

The Hero's Journey

• Leaves Home/Recieves Quest
• Meets Company
• Faces Trials
• Separates from Company
• Final Trial: Win, Lose, or Die

The Screw-up's Journey
The Anti-hero's Journey
The Interior Journey


Folk Tales: oral stories to teach teenagers in the Middle Ages how to live in the world, how society worked and how to get along in life.

Fairy Tales: stories written by the literate for the literate to examine "modern society" and how to best survive in it. Connected to much folklore in that it was meant to help young people navigate a dangerous world

Honors 4: Homework 9/21

Read and annotate "Give Genetic Engineering Some Breathing Room".

Practice Paragraph

• Pick any of the GMO articles to write a practice analytical paragraph for.
• Pick one sentence from the 3-sentence summary to use as the topic sentence (include the article's title). Don't forget to use two examples from the text (explain each example)

GMO Questions

• Are GMOs an international issue? Explain fully.
• How do GMOs affect American food? Explain fully. [If the questions was "What effect do GMOs have on American food?" then affect would be effect.]
• Do GMOs need activism for or against? Explain fully.

Honors 4: Vocab for 9/11 Quiz

• Classic Archetypes: in Jungian psychology, a collectively inherited unconscious idea, pattern of thought, image, etc., universally present in individual psyches. 
• Hero: puts the well-being of his people above his own safety and from beginning to end, he learns important skills and changes as a person 
• The Catalyst: an event or person who causes significant changes in others
• Mentor or Guide: teaches and protects the hero; gives the hero magical gifts to help complete the quest; often tied to nature or religion; could be a failed hero who is trying to help the next generation 
• Gatekeeper: person who guards a gateway or task; sometimes they are part of the villain’s company or sometimes they can become allies or members of the hero’s group 
• The Villain: the evil opposing the hero 
• Trickster: element of chaos, curious to know how and why, practical joker; often causes problems for everyone by accident; comic relief  
• Thief: generally a reformed criminal who is part of the group to redeem himself/herself 

English 4: Vocab for 9/11 Quiz

Alley: a roadway between buildings that is smaller than a street and often used for deliveries, garbage, shortcuts, and nefarious activities
Ally: a person(s) that will help, not harm

Antagonist: the opponent of the protagonist (not always the “hero”)
Protagonist: the main character, sometimes called the hero (not always the villain)

Are: form of “to be”
Hour: measurement of time equivalent to sixty minutes
Our: possessive pronoun includes self and others

Bourgeois: affluent, middle-class folk who are conventional, conservative, or materialistic
Proletariat: low-wage earning folk who often struggle to afford the basics (food, shelter, clothes)

English 2: Vocab for 9/11

• Allusion: a historical or cultural reference to something outside the piece of literature
• Ambiguity: uncertainty of intended meaning
• Atmosphere: mood, ambience, or emotional tone of a text
• Cacophony:  the use of words and phrases that imply strong, harsh sounds within the phrase (these words have jarring and dissonant sounds that create a disturbing, objectionable atmosphere)
• Characterization: creating and establishing specific individuals (characters) in a story, poem, or film
• Conflict: a resistance the protagonist of the story finds in achieving his aims or dreams
• Connotation: secondary or associated meanings for a word (contextual usage sometimes)
• Denotation: dictionary definition of a word

Honors 4: 2015 Summer Assignments

• Rationale
• I need to know how you think, collect information, and write. This assignment will give me a feel for all of those things. It will also help me know which areas need to be addressed to help you do the best you can on the Personal Research Project (which can be used in the WR121 portfolio).
• Pre-reading Information
• Fairy Tales: Stories written by the literate for the literate to examine "modern society" and how to best survive in it. Connected to much folklore in that it was meant to help young people navigate a dangerous world. To truly understand these stories, the reader/listener must know the coded language of the stories. 
• Restoration Tales: the dispossessed noble has trials, adventures, and with help gets a better situation
• Rise Tales: the poor rises to greatness through trials, adventures, and rescue/ing
• Actual Fae (Tuatha): beings from a dimension next to ours where time and reality run differently
• The Rule of Threes 
• Three trials, three people, three chances to change 
• Each seemingly needy person or animal has the potential to help later on down the line 
• There are always three obstacles to overcome or three tries at the big obstacle (sometimes both) 
• The Forest 
• Where chaos reigns 
• Where the jaded warrior becomes the green man 
• Where people see the self through the mirror of nature 
• Everyone enters the forest, not everyone exits 
• No one comes out of the forest the same 
• Symbolism 
• The  language of fairy tales is metaphor to lead to misdirection 
• Don’t eat or drink when taken out of the world, it’ll get you stuck where you don’t want to be 
• Old people have power, be nice to them. 
• Poor people might be rich, be nice to them 
• The Metamorphosis (1915)
• Read the book and determine if it fits the definition of a fairy tale using the information above and any information you can gather from other sources (keep those sources close).
• It might be helpful to find out a little about Franz Kafka.
• The Essay
• The Questions: Is The Metamorphosis a fairy tale? OR How does Kafka’s life feed into the characterization and themes in The Metamorphosis?
• The essay must have two quotes (cited) and two paraphrases (cited). It must include direct references to The Metamorphosis and to two articles the student finds to support his or her thesis.
• Minimum of four well-written paragraphs with a bibliography for sources used in the essay.
• The articles and the essay (with a bibliography) must be emailed to mthouvenel@pendletonsd.org by August 20, 2015 (for any student who is registered for Honors 4 before July 1, 2015) or by August 27, 2015 (for any student who is registered for Honors 4 after July 1, 2015).
• Failure to complete the assignment or a failure to turn in original work will result in the student being removed from Honors 4. Please feel free to contact me at the above email address or to check my school blog (phs242.blogspot.com) for information or help.

English 2: Wrap Up

Read articles on the Pistons and write 3-sentence summaries.

Watch Bad Boys documentary, write daily synopsis, write a 3-sentence summary, write an analytical paragraph and turn it all in.

3-sentence summary

• What was it about? (name it)
• What was the message?
• Was the source/information reliable?

Analytical Paragraph

• What was it about? (name it)
• What was the message?
• How do you know? (two examples explained)
• What did you learn?
• Why does it matter?