1. YEAR START ACTIVITIES AMERICAN LIT

2. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE AN AMERICAN & TO HAVE THE AMERICAN DREAM? Brainstorm your ideas about these questions What do these questions mean to you personally?

3. I AM AN AMERICAN What is this poem saying about us as Americans? What does this poem say about American society? What is the theme of this poem (i.e; what are we supposed to learn from it?)

4. YOUR AMERICAN ARTIFACT Free Writing: Describe your artifact. What is it? Why is it significant? Why does your artifact represent American culture? Would it represent American culture to just you or would other people also say it is a representation of American culture? Share: Share your artifact with five people in class. Write the name of their artifact, briefly what it symbolizes to the person and have the person initial your paper Short Answer: (In 2 sentences) What do all of these objects suggest about Americans or American culture itself? Why?

5. SUMMER READING In your table groups: share out the answers to your summer reading assignment and answer the questions below: What does reading these two works together teach us about American society and the American dream? How does the poem also address this topic? What do we learn about American culture from reading works of literature ? Why is it important? Each table will reports out what they talked about and connect it to today's society.

6. ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS HOMEWORK What does it mean to be an American? What is the American dream? What is the American Reality? & How do we define the American spirit? Tonight when you go home, find an object of any sort (it can be a song or a picture) that represents an answer to one of the questions above. Bring the object to school tomorrow along with a few sentences explaining how the object connects to the question. You will need to be able to share both your object and your explanation tomorrow.