Paper instructions:

SandHoke Early College High School
Rising Freshman Reading Assignment
The 2014 summer reading assignment for rising freshmen sophomores includes
reading and annotating Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front.
Students will annotate the book and should bring the annotated book on the first
day of school, August 6
th
, 2014.
Annotations are simply notes about what the student is thinking while reading. In
the English department, we ask students to write notes to show an understanding
of the elements of literature, such as elements of plot, characterization, setting,
vocabulary, and notes about how the author writes, which is called author’s craft.
Annotations may also include questions, comments, or personal reactions to the
story, but as students of English become more skilled, we expect the annotations
to show growth in the technical aspects of literature and writing.
Students are encouraged to purchase their own books and write notes in them;
however, we have books available at the school for those who would prefer to use
our book and annotate with sticky notes that reflect their thoughts on the pages
of the book. Please see the videos that can be found in Student Resources on our
web page.
Students should follow the attached annotation rubric and consider the following
while reading and annotating:
?  Main thesis (What is Remarque’s number one message?)

?  Themes (the messages a writer sends through the novel): the causes and
attributes of the lost generation; man’s inhumanity toward man; the horrors
of war; and super-nationalism is dangerous

?  Motifs (abstract ideas or literary devices that support a theme):
betrayal, comradeship, nature, pressure of patriotic ideals, carnage/gore;
and animal instincts

?  Symbols (objects, people, animals, or colors that support a theme):
Kimmerich’s boots, butterflies, horses, women, and potato cakes

?  The Impact of Style and Rhetorical Devices (the author’s craft): the
impact of point of view, elements of plot, humor, personification, imagery,
euphemism, repetition,  simile, metaphor, hyperbole, parallelism, rhetorical
questions, foreshadowing, onomatopoeia, appositive, alliteration, and slang

Students may use online resources such as cliff notes or spark notes, but
students must paraphrase and cite such sources. Any project that has
copied information from an outside source that is not paraphrased (in
the students own words) and cited (write down where you found the
information), will receive a grade of zero. These sources can be
extremely useful for the front cover and back cover annotation criteria, but
the inside analysis, which must correlate with the page numbers provided for
the front and back cover characters, key events, setting, themes, motifs,
symbol, and style, must be original.

Please do the best you can. For those annotating for the first time, having
annotations that reflect a basic comprehension of the plot and the
characters as well as specific questions about confusing lines shows
initiative. We appreciate your effort.

The annotation example to the left
shows how students may make notes
as they read about not only what is
happening, but what they notice about
the author’s writing.