English II 2025-2026

New words: dissemble, venerate/venerable, prodigious, tantalize, guile, protagonist, antagonist, bane, chimera, charisma, philistine, vainglory, improvise, amulet, protean, epithet, timé, pandemonium

For Thursday 12/4:
DUE d#1 Interview Piece

Reverie 
by Ari Nevala

Silence, louder than thunder,  
rumbles as I sit, bored, at home. 
Silence controls me; tells me to “GOLF!” every time. 
Clubs glow, inviting me into the garage, a present  
wrapped in gold. I might make millions  
on tour, or may golf with friends. 
I dream daily: striding to the tee box before  
thousands of people, nervous and excited. 
Dreams exist to become reality. 

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."

The Gymnast
by Scout Weiseth

A solid cedar branch
hovers over dying, yellow-green autumn grass.
Hard wind blows: an athlete’s breath 
mid-race.
Forceful gusts, built to break
strong, durable branches. Still,
this evergreen stretches, bends:
flexible, an agile gymnast
relaxing, surviving each devastating gust.

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.” 

Crash
by Winston Gelardi

            As my dad drives to the ski resort in the middle of summer, I remember this mountain as my favorite, since it is almost all downhill bike riding. Excited, I gear up in the car, which is simple since all I need are some shoulder pads, knee pads, a helmet, sunglasses, and gloves. Exiting the car, I smell dust in the air.

 While I ride up the lift, I feel a brisk wind whirling around me. I drink water because the person attending the lift says that my water bottle will fall out of the cupholder. My dad and I discuss where on the lift we would survive falling from. As I leave the lift, I veer toward the left and down a bumpy path.  My bike violently rocks up and down and knocks my foot off the bike. As I manage to put my foot back on my pedal, I realize that this rocky path sends me to the dead center of a tree.  I turn sharply to the left and avoid the tree.

            After the misleading rock path, I go down Elk Trail as it’s my favorite run on the mountain. As I start moving along the trail, my dad tells me to hurry, therefore I lose caution to move along faster. Further down the trail, my dad tells me to go off a jump. However, saying this late, he distracts me. I take the jump, instead of landing both tires even, I land on my front wheel and lurch forward off the bike, straight on the trail, which is layered with dozens of rocks on the ground.

            Needless to say, I used prudence riding to the end. The crash hurt, but that did not stop me from taking Elk Trail again. The next time, I sailed down the trail safely. Though my crash was painful, I did not regret going down because it was fun to go fast.

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: dissemble, venerate/venerable, prodigious, tantalize, guile, protagonist, antagonist, bane, chimera, charisma, philistine, vainglory, improvise, amulet, protean, epithet, timé, pandemonium

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 12/1/25)

Everett
Revisions = 59/72
Edits = 9/12

Happiness paragraph(s)
interview piece: Adam Summerfield
Catcher essay: Dreams
Opinion piece: No Banned Books

Blue Poetry: Ballad, Narrative
published piece OR 3 rejection letters

Winston
Revisions = 47/72
Edits = 7/12

Happiness paragraph(s)
interview piece: San Diego Commercial Fisherman
peer interview: Everett
Catcher essay: Symbols
Opinion piece: Plastics in the Oceans

Blue Poetry: Ballad, Narrative
published piece OR 3 rejection letters

Ari
Revisions = 49/72
Edits =6/12

Happiness paragraph(s)
interview piece: Dayna Kunkle
peer interview: Scout
Catcher essay: Symbols
Opinion piece: AI in Schools

Pink Poetry: Pictures w/words: free verse poem; General to Specific; The Right Words
published piece OR 3 rejection letters

Georgia
Revisions = 56/72
Edits = 9/12

interview piece: Tabitha (My Father’s Place)
Catcher essay: Inner Child
Opinion piece: What Teachers Teach

Pink Poetry: General to Specific; The Right Words
published piece OR 3 rejection letters

Scout
Revisions = 44/72
Edits = 7/12

Happiness paragraph(s)
interview piece: Max Silverson
peer interview: Winston
Catcher essay: Dreams
Opinion piece: School Start Times Ignore Student Needs

Pink Poetry: Pictures w/words; Poem of Feeling; General to Specific
published piece OR 3 rejection letters

Injured
by Everett Lingle

This summer I was injured for the first time in my life. I was playing soccer with the high school team at the MDHS alumni fundraiser game, as I was soon to be finishing middle school. Playing with seniors and alumni, I was doing great for being the youngest at the event. As striker, the player at the front of the attack, I had already scored a goal. It was three/two in our favor, and the game was in full swing. 

Near the beginning of the second half, a defender raced towards the ball around the edge of the goal box and sent a wild pass in the air right in front of me. I fearlessly sprinted towards the goal as the ball sailed above. Landing twenty feet in front of me, the ball was still rolling as I chased. Right away the goalie recognized the situation, and he also sprinted towards the ball. We met at the ball: neither of us feared anything, both in full sprint. I knew I was going to get it. I had been in this situation thousands of times before. I stuck my leg out, hoping to take the ball right before we collided. The goalie continued to charge straight through my leg.

Right away I knew something wasn’t right. I fell down and attempted to stand up, only to then realize my pain. I dropped to the ground and sat there in silence as I took in what had just happened. Some of the parents of other players who were at the game rushed me off the field to urgent care. My leg was screaming with pain. It felt like I had a needle stuck in my kneecap poking at me from all sides. I was hoping for just a sprain, but almost my whole summer was going to be spent in crutches. 

Surgery was imminent, as I had fractured my tibia. My family and I were horrified. I did not know what to think: this was my only serious injury ever. I could not play soccer for a while, and since it was my first year in high school soccer, I was severely disappointed. My family and I went to Boise a week later for my surgery. Staying at home during my injury was very boring because I love to be moving and with friends. I could not do either with a fractured tibia.