English II 2025-2026

What’s up for next year?
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For Thursday 4/30:

Read Zinsser chapters 15 (Science & Technology) and 24 (Write as Well as You Can)

Watch two videos on My AP Classroom:
Unit 6 (DBQ): Skill 3.A:
video 1 Evaluating Sources
video 2 sames source/differing perspectives

For Monday 5/4:
vocab test: all words + assiduous, loquacious, contemporary (n), abstract (n), noxious, dispassionately, arrant, licentious

*********** Contests/magazines now open for submission: ***********

Teen Ink Magazine entries (ongoing)

New York Times: My List Review contest (deadline 2/26/26) & Opinion Letter contest (deadline 4/8/26)

New Pages Guide for Writing Contests for Young Writers (choose deadline months on their calendar)

Memoir contest at Write the World — Opens 5/4/26; deadline 5/25/26. Optional feedback 5/11. Winners announced 6/12/26. $$ prize

The America Library of Poetry contest: $$ prizes. Deadline April 30, 2026

Ocean Breeze 
by Georgia Spilotros

            I wake up to the sound of seagulls. Soft linens cover my face from the sun. I slowly peek above the covers to see my curtains being brushed away from the windowsill by the ocean breeze. I thought it was a ghost last night. With a familiar smell of salt and hot sand, the breeze cools my sunburn and makes me feel a sense of calm I have never felt before. As it caresses my face, sending a chill down my body, the house is oddly quiet. I feel as though I should be scared of being alone in a big house, but instead I feel a sense of happiness just being alone with the ocean breeze swaying softly through the window.

            Out the open door to the front deck, breeze mixes with cedar shingle smell of the hot roof. I spot my grandma and she calls me over. The wood floors are cold and smooth. I scramble to zip up my sweatshirt. She calls, “Come paint with me?” I leap across the porch with excitement, trying to hide it with a subtle “sure” as I pick up a paint brush. We paint the ocean, the seagulls, and the sand, which I have trouble with. Even though this is not my home,  the ocean breeze makes me feel like it is. A few hours later, I leave, so my grandma gives me our painting and says “Think of me when you look at this, ok?” 

            “Ok!” I give her a hug. On the car ride home, I stare at the ocean, smell the breeze, and think about that moment: nothing exactly like that will ever happen again. At home in the city, I try to recreate it with my own paints but it does not work. I am scared of losing that moment.

            Six years later, in San Diego, for my sixteenth birthday, the scent of the ocean breeze invites me to pick up a paint brush again. I paint the ocean and let the breeze calm my shaky hands. I probably will never understand how the ocean inspires my creativity. Vacation feels so relaxing in warm places by the beach, not just because of the warm weather. The breeze calms my nervous system, making days more meaningful, and special. Those feelings remind my old self of little me painting with my grandma and living in the moment, not the future. 

            When I am having a fun time sometimes, I feel so appreciative that I start treating the present like a memory rather than living it. It had never occurred to me until my birthday trip that people waste so much time living in the past or future that they forget to enjoy the present. As that ocean breeze wafted over my 16th birthday cake, I wished on every candle to go back in time. But now I realize that not being able to go back to recreate a memory makes it even more special. 

Altitude
by Scout Weiseth 

The mountains do not ask anything;
sleeping bats in their cave – 
only rising, indifferent and ancient,
while I stand small below them.
I breathe air that tastes like winter pines
scenting steep sledding hills.
At the bottom, 
everything must conclude:
induce stress; add another reason to worry.
Up top, the only sound of life is wind
moving swiftly through solitary pines.
I do not come for the view,
but to disappear from
the world below the clouds.
I soak in everything above 
like a sponge in water.

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, maudlin, disinterested, supercilious, laconic, taciturn, indolent, credulous, reticent, disapprobation, assiduous, loquacious, contemporary (n), abstract (n), noxious, dispassionately, arrant, licentious

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 II
(updated 4/28/26)

Everett
Revisions = 66/72
Edits = 100%

Travel piece: Golf
Memoir — Taste of Thai
Theme poem (insight)
2025-2026 English II Bibliography of all readings
Updated Brag sheet
Inferior argument paragraph

Blue Poetry: Ballad, Narrative
published piece OR 3 rejection letters ** 2 entries (Teen Ink & American Poetry Library)

Winston
Revisions = 64/72
Edits = 100%

Odyssey graph
Chart: EOS rules #1-#11
Travel piece: Hershenow Author Reading
Memoir — “Winnston!!!”
2025-2026 English II Bibliography of all readings
Updated Brag sheet
Inferior argument paragraph
TYPED skills list

Blue Poetry: Narrative
published piece OR 2 more rejection letters *** 1 entry (Idaho Scholastic Writing Awards)

Ari
Revisions = 66/72
Edits = 100%

Odyssey graph
Chart: EOS rules #1-#11
Travel piece: Coffee Shops
Memoir — Ping!
Theme poem (insight)
2025-2026 English II Bibliography of all readings
Updated Brag sheet
Inferior argument paragraph

Pink Poetry: General to Specific; The Right Words

Georgia
Revisions = 68/72
Edits = 100%

Odyssey graph
Chart: EOS rules #1-#11
Theme poem (insight)
2025-2026 English II Bibliography of all readings
Updated Brag sheet
Inferior argument paragraph

Pink Poetry: General to Specific; The Right Words
published piece OR 2 more rejection letters: *** 2 entries (Idaho Scholastic Writing Awards & American Poetry Library)

Scout
Revisions = 100%
Edits = 100%

Memoir — Breaking Ocean Waves
Theme poem (insight)
2025-2026 English II Bibliography of all readings
Inferior argument paragraph

published piece OR 3 rejection letters* ** 2 entries (Teen Ink)