English II 2025-2026

Semester I: Check your email for help with the

Grading plan for Catcher essays — the grade you have after the exam on 1/15/26 will be your exam grade (maybe you will get an extra weekend; we’ll see where we are on that Thursday); please CALL ME as you write each paragraph to discuss your ideas. You may not write the next paragraph until the previous one has the grade listed below. See your assignment list at right to see where you are after class each day:

¶ 1 (introduction with THESIS) >> D
¶ 2 (Holden traits) >> C-
¶ 3 (Catcher symbols OR Holden development) >> C
¶ 4 (The villagers/atmosphere OR Holden Dream/Inner Child) >> C+
¶ 5 (The Lottery symbols OR Mrs. Miller traits before Miriam arrives) >> B-
¶ 6 (Mrs. Miller traits OR Mrs. Miller development) >> B
¶ 7 (Miriam symbols OR Mrs. Miller Dream/Inner Child) >> B+
¶ 8 (conclusion) >> A-

Sophistication = A or A+
+1 point for every correctly-used vocabulary word
-1 for every missed skill that we have discussed, whether it’s on your skills list or not


Start three-paragraph essay: Compare Frost’s Mending Wall and cummings’ Space Being (don’t forget to remember)/Curved…

Paragraph 1: Mending Wall — analyze poem & answer: What “doesn’t love a wall” and “wants it down”? (4 quotes)

Paragraph 2: Space Being — analyze poem & answer: Why does cummings mention Frost’s poem in his? (4 quotes)

Paragraph 3: Compare poems — answer: Do the two poems communicate similar ideas or attitudes about something? AND What role do science and “Billiard Balls: seem to play in this for cummings? (2 quotes from Frost; 2 quotes from cummings)

Ari Nevala
by Georgia Spilotros

            "I’m him," reflects fifteen-year-old Ari Nevala, imagining scenarios in his free time. "I like to think I’m the hero sometimes." Being unafraid gives him more control over situations. Freedom, when you are fifteen, is hard to get. "Maddie and I got lost at Brundage while back country skiing," says Ari, "and I felt an odd sense of freedom." By the time he returned to the parking lot, he felt happy to be safe, but also felt a strange sense of freedom, which is odd because his biggest fear is getting stuck in the backcountry while skiing and being killed by bears. Ari likes challenges. This random new-found freedom, as well as overcoming his fears of heights, are special goals, says Ari. "If I climbed a mountain and didn’t look down I would be good." When he is bored he thinks about skiing and being in nature because, "It’s scenic and I like a change from my house."

Max Silverson
by Scout Weiseth 

“Starting on a simple story can kind of take you into more interesting places,” says Max Silverson. He would know. As editor-in-chief of The McCall Star-News, Max has written countless pieces about weird, ordinary, and important moments in the small town of McCall, Idaho over the years. Max is a deeply curious person, and wishes everyone could possess journalistic skills, especially “curiosity and being able to tell truth from fiction.” His desire to learn and figure things out led him to report on a story that he was “just dreading” at first, about a man who takes horses and donkeys into the wilderness. Max says, “I got a whole life story of this one donkey that's been out to the Frank Church River of No Return wilderness dozens, possibly hundreds of times.” He reflects, “Strangely enough, the stories I've liked the most are the ones I don't want to do.”

Max has been in news long enough to know the media needs some changes, especially: “the pace of it all. Some news media tries to fill twenty-four hours of news cycle, and there's not always that much news,” Max says. “I feel like that leads to a lot of blurring the lines between news and opinion. It sort of erodes the basis of what makes news important. Then your news becomes more opinion than it is fact. And I think that's what's kind of caused a lot of distrust of the media in the last few years.” 

Journalism is changing no matter what journalists do. Max believes artificial intelligence will make a positive and negative difference. He reflects, “the way A.I. will really change journalism by making things a little muddy in terms of what is real and what isn't real. It'll be more difficult to confirm things as true.” A.I. is changing journalism so much that Max believes young journalists will have “to be able to tell what is real and what isn't real, and keep that line where it is. Because that's something we never had to deal with in the past.” A.I. is continuously developing, sparking interest among reporters in how to use it as a positive tool.

Max’s own mistakes have sparked his curiosity, making him a better writer. One time, reporting on a story about the new Heartland High School building, he misquoted one of the students, and had to issue a correction in the paper the following week. “So basically I messed up a quote,” Max says. “And I think that was a good lesson: to not just fact-check with the head person you're talking to, but fact-check with all the sources.” Max is no longer afraid of making mistakes. He says, “I think it's just important to say we messed up. Printing a correction is a really good thing, as opposed to just pretending that everything was fine. It's not important that I'm right, it's important that the story's right. So you kind of need to take your ego out of that whole business. It's not about me, it's about putting the facts out there.”

Max cannot run the news by himself: “We need the community's help in reporting the news,” Max says. “We get a lot of people telling us, like, oh, why didn't you cover that thing that happened? People assume we know everything, and we don't.” In October 2025, he recalls: “We reported on the No Kings protest. But we didn't report on the Charlie Kirk Memorial candlelight vigil. And the reason is, the people who organized the No Kings protest told us about it in advance.” Some readers assume the newspaper takes one political view, but not the other. Max explains, “it's not that I agree with one or the other, it's that we didn't know about that, and why don't you tell us next time, please?” 

Max is the guy who keeps Valley County informed, but he is curious about travel and writing in other locations: “Travel is such an interesting experience that if you could do that as a job and write about it, that would be fantastic. But I guess I'm at a point in my life now where I can't just go everywhere. Well, at least not all the time.”

Georgia Spilotros
by Everett Lingle 

             “I laid on the beach, dreaming, and I saw what looked liked my soul floating away,” says Georgia Spilotros. She was six then and is a tenth grader now. Attending both the public McCall-Donnelly High School, and the private North Fork School, Georgia believes she does not stand out among her peers at first glance, but is uniquely creative and intellectual. Identity is really important to Georgia. At night, when she has profound thoughts, she asks herself if she is really happy: “I believe you can’t be forever happy,” Georgia says, “but you can be satisfied in the moment.”  At night she reflects on her emotions. She wonders if she truly knows who she is. “People know the answer but cannot explain it,” she says. In her future, Georgia wants to go to college, but not just to eventually sit in an office all day. “I would want to do something I want to pursue,” she says. If she were rich with no rules, she would: “First take care of my family, and then travel and focus on passion rather than be focused on making money. Like if I wanted to be a barista, I would become a barista.” 

Everett Lingle
by Winston Gelardi

            “If I could say one thing, it would be that I won the Skier’s Olympics Gold or that I went professional in soccer.” Everett Lingle is an adventurous person. In the Spring of 2024, Everett travelled to France as a foreign exchange student. He described his adjustment there by saying, “I hated and loved France at the same time since I didn’t know what I was doing the first two months and I didn’t know anyone.”  His travels have taken him across the globe to: “...almost all of North and South America, France, and all of the UK, like Ireland.”

Hypothetically speaking, if Everett were to go back to visit one of the countries where he vacationed in the past, he says: “I wanna go back to Thailand because the food is great and I love spicy food. I really like their beaches and lush mountains.” Of all the places he has visited, Thailand holds a one-of-a-kind appeal to Everett. Because he has been to many countries before, he notes that: "It's not that different, but there are a lot of things happening at once which would keep me entertained if I went.”

US History I Zoom code: 842 7571 1368 passcode: 927076
English I/II Zoom code: 828 5560 7845 passcode: 226526
US History II Zoom code: 828 3636 0462 passcode: 217607

Vocabulary >>> Part IV Elements of Style: Words and Expressions Commonly Misused learn ALL WORDS/ERRORS +

sanguine, sardonic, insidious, euphemism, cogent, paradigm, august, vortex, quixotic, arable, hectare, potable, anthropogenic, salinization, reticent/reticence, rhetoric, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, consonance, simile, metaphor, homophone, hyperbole, anaphora, enjambment. caesura, antecedent, chiasmus, abstract (noun), utopia, renaissance, explicit, incessant, assimilate, precipitous, lucid, rudimentary, anachronism, fecund, temerity, furtive, ephemeral, itinerant, philistine, profligate, tenet, charisma, chimera, agnostic, static, panacea, ephemeral, itinerant, philistine, profligate, tenet, charisma, chimera, agnostic, static, panacea, parochial, taciturn, unctuous, vitriolic, hypothetical, emulate, bane, ambivalent, solicitous, soporific, colloquial, blank verse, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter + from EOS Glossary (in the back of the book): adverbial phrase, appositive, complement, colloquialism, conjunction, indirect object, nominative pronoun, predicate + ODYSSEY WORDS: agora, megaron, archetype, dissemble, venerate/venerable, prodigious, tantalize, guile, protagonist, antagonist, bane, chimera, charisma, philistine, vainglory, improvise, amulet, protean, epithet, timé, pandemonium, anon, asphodel, titanic, hekatomb, panacea

Grammar, key terminology, and vocabulary items that we have discussed in class are on the AP Language & Composition Vocabulary Archive. While most of you will not take the AP Language exam until next year, it always helps to become familiar with these terms now (rather than cramming next year). The sooner you get started, the sooner (comparative degree) you will know all your terms.

Find Honors World Literature vocabulary HERE OR play to study on Quizlet!

Student Resources: English II

Check every piece for THESE SKILLS before turning anything in for an edit.
Check ALL CITATIONS (quotes) with these formatting rules before turning anything in for an edit.

Click HERE for directions for email editing

Summer reading list for High School students

Access English II class writing archives to see what our readings and assignments are for this year, and to read sample pieces written by previous English II students.

QUARTER GRADING:

Participation = 30% (purely subjective, based on my perceptions of your initiative, interest, self-motivation, & tenacity)

Assignments = Revisions (20%)
Edits (20%)

Vocab/Multiple Choice tests= 15%
Timed essay grades= 15%

SEMESTER GRADING

Participation = 30% (purely subjective, based on my perceptions of your initiative, interest, self-motivation, & tenacity)
Assignments = Revisions & edits (20%)
Vocab/Multiple Choice tests = 15%
Timed essay grades = 10%
Exam = 25%

“The great skill of a teacher is to get and keep the attention of his scholar... To attain this, he should make the child comprehend...the usefulness of what he teaches him and let him see, by what he has learned, that he can do something which gives him some power and real advantage over others who are ignorant of it.”

— John Locke (1632-1704), on Education

Unfinished Pieces: Semester 1
(updated 1/13/25)

Everett
Revisions = 100%
Edits = 9/12

Semester I:
Exam Catcher essay: Dreams C-
DUE by TH 1/15: Syntax, Tone, Diction Handout
Frost/cummings essay
interview piece: Adam Summerfield

Semester II:
Opinion piece: No Banned Books
Blue Poetry: Ballad, Narrative
published piece OR 3 rejection letters

Winston
Revisions = 67/72
Edits = 8/12

Semester I:
Exam Catcher essay: Symbols C-
DUE by TH 1/15: Syntax, Tone, Diction Handout
Frost/cummings essay — start
interview piece: San Diego Commercial Fisherman

Semester II:
Opinion piece: Plastics in the Oceans
Blue Poetry: Ballad, Narrative
published piece OR 3 rejection letters *** 1 entry (Idaho Scholastic Writing Awards)

Ari
Revisions = 71/72
Edits = 7/12

Semester I:
Exam Catcher essay: Symbols C-
DUE by TH 1/15: Syntax, Tone, Diction Handout
Frost/cummings essay — start
interview piece: Dayna Kunkle

Semester II:
Opinion piece: AI in Schools
Pink Poetry: General to Specific; The Right Words
published piece OR 3 rejection letters *** 1 entry (Idaho Scholastic Writing Awards)

Georgia
Revisions = 100%
Edits = 10/12

Semester I:
Exam Catcher essay: Inner Child C
DUE by TH 1/15: Syntax, Tone, Diction Handout
Frost/cummings essay
interview piece: Tabitha (My Father’s Place)

Semester II:
Opinion piece: What Teachers Teach
Pink Poetry: General to Specific; The Right Words
published piece OR 3 rejection letters: *** 1 entry (Idaho Scholastic Writing Awards)

Scout
Revisions = 100%
Edits = 8/12

Semester I:
Exam Catcher essay: Dreams B-
DUE by TH 1/15: Syntax, Tone, Diction Handout
Frost/cummings essay
peer interview: Winston

Semester II:
Opinion piece: School Start Times Ignore Student Needs
Pink Poetry: Poem of Feeling
published piece OR 3 rejection letters

Scout
by Ari Nevala

“I found myself proud when I put a lot of effort into getting my work done, and I felt relief leave my body when I got an A,” says Scout Weiseth, a seventh grader at Payette Lakes Middle School in McCall, Idaho. In spring of 2025, she had worried about North Fork School grades. She had put a lot of hard work into her homework, so she did not want to get a bad grade on something that she had put so much time into. Although she enjoys McCall, she would like to have a movie theater there, because the nearest one is two hours away, and she loves movies. Scout believes that every amusement park needs a roller coaster, because they are fun. “I went to Disneyland with my cousin and one of the rides was short with lots of spins and drops,” she says. “Another ride was jerky with a few sharp turns and some drops. It was thrilling.” As a small town, McCall may seem boring. Scout says, “You know almost everyone around you, and there is a lake right in town.” This makes McCall a cool place for her. “I was riding my bike with some friends, and we got ice cream and then swam in the lake,” Scout recalls. She always regrets when she was at Disneyland, and her cousin told her not to go on a ride that she really wanted to.