2015 PHS Voluntary Summer Reading Assignment (Grade 9+10)
Program Overview: The purpose of the PHS Voluntary Summer Reading Program is to give students the opportunity to read and discuss a thought provoking text while earning extra credit in English class. Engaging in summer reading will also help students maintain reading skills during the summer months.
Assignment Due Dates:
Date / Work Due9/1/15 / Summer Reading Assignment (Drop off to Room 2229)
9/11/15 / Summer Reading Assignment Revisions
9/18/15 / Summer Reading Discussion/Celebration
Assignment Options: To receive credit for completing summer reading, students must complete one of the following assignments.
1. Character poster (See attachment)
2. Movie soundtrack (See attachment)
3. Mock newspaper (see attachment)
Receiving Credit: Students who complete the summer reading assignment and create a quality final product will earn a 100 test grade for their 2015-2016 English course. However, if a teacher deems that a student’s work does not meet the established standard (see attached rubric), the student will be asked to revise the assignment before being awarded credit.
Book Discussion/Celebration: Upon returning to school, students will have the opportunity to participate in a fun, book club-style discussion of the text. During this discussion, students will have the opportunity to share feelings about the text with peers, participate in fun activities, and explore the text from different perspectives. Refreshments will be served. In order to attend the book discussion and celebration, students must complete all required assignments, and the student’s work must be approved by his/her English teacher.
Teacher Contact Information: If there are any questions about the summer reading assignment, use the contact information below.
Text / Teachers Responsible / Room / E-MailThe 5th Wave / Mr. Farrish / 2229 /
The Picture of
Dorian Gray / Mr. Greene
Mrs. Wagner / 2107
2103 /
Between Shades of Gray / Ms. Breen
Ms. Lane / 2105
2106 /
Unbroken / Mrs. Maher
Mrs. Stamato / 2109
2104 /
Paper Towns / Ms. Fennelly
Mr. Craig / 2231 /
The Secret Life of Bees / Mrs. Proulx / 2113 /
Text Choices
Science Fiction: The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey
Difficulty level: Moderate
Mature content: Mild language, Mild violence
Synopsis: After the 1st wave, only darkness remains. After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd, only the unlucky survive. After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: trust no one.
Now, it’s the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth’s last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker.
Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie’s only hope for rescuing her brother—or even saving herself. But Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up.
Non-fiction: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
Difficulty level: Moderate
Mature content: Graphic depictions of violence and torture
Synopsis: On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.
The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he’d been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.
Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.
Historical Fiction: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Difficulty Level: Easy
Mature content: Mild language, mild violence
Synopsis: Set in South Carolina during 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of a fourteen year old white girl, Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily’s fierce-hearted “stand-in mother,” Rosaleen, insults three racists in town, they escape to Tiburon, South Carolina—a town that holds the secret to her mother’s past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters, Lily finds refuge in their mesmerizing world of bees, honey, and the Black Madonna.
Lily starts a journey as much about her understanding of the world, as about the mystery surrounding her mother. The Secret Life of Bees is a major literary triumph about the search for love and belonging, a novel that possesses a rare wisdom about life and the power and divinity of the female spirit.
Teen Issues: Paper Towns by John Green
Difficulty level: Easy
Mature content: Mild language, mild suggestive content
Synopsis: Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life–dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge–he follows.
After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues–and they’re for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees of the girl he thought he knew.
Historical Fiction (World Literature): Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
Difficulty level: Moderate
Mature content: Graphic depictions of violence and suffering
Synopsis: In 1941, fifteen-year-old Lina is preparing for art school, first dates, and all that summer has to offer. But one night, the Soviet secret police barge violently into her home, deporting her along with her mother and younger brother. They are being sent to Siberia. Lina's father has been separated from the family and sentenced to death in a prison camp. All is lost.
Lina fights for her life, fearless, vowing that if she survives she will honor her family, and the thousands like hers, by documenting their experience in her art and writing. She risks everything to use her art as messages, hoping they will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive.
It is a long and harrowing journey, and it is only their incredible strength, love, and hope that pull Lina and her family through each day. But will love be enough to keep them alive?
Literary Classic: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Difficulty level: Challenging
Mature content: Violence
Synopsis: Oscar Wilde brings his enormous gifts for astute social observation and sparkling prose to The Picture of Dorian Gray, his dreamlike story of a young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty. This dandy, who remains forever unchanged—petulant, hedonistic, vain, and amoral—while a painting of him ages and grows increasingly hideous with the years, has been horrifying, enchanting, obsessing, even corrupting readers for more than a hundred years.
Taking the reader in and out of London drawing rooms, to the heights of aestheticism, and to the depths of decadence,The Picture of Dorian Gray is not only a melodrama about moral corruption. Laced with bon mots and vivid depictions of upper-class refinement, it is also a fascinating look at the milieu of Wilde’s fin-de-siècle world and a manifesto of the creed “Art for Art’s Sake.”
Assignment Option 1: Create a Movie Soundtrack
Directions: Imagine that you are hired to compile songs for the soundtrack of a film based on your text. Choose ten songs for the soundtrack. You may use songs from any time period or genre of music. Avoid explicit lyrics. Using the chart below, explain why each song is chosen, which scene from the text this song pairs with, and how the lyrics of the song match the content of the scene. If a film version of the text has already been made, do not use any song that appears in the real film’s soundtrack.
Title/Artist / Describe the scene from the text that you would pair with this song. / Record one line from the song that directly relates to the scene. Explain the meaning of this line and how it relates to the scene, / Record a 2nd line from the song that directly relates to the scene. Explain the meaning of this line and how it relates to the scene,
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Assignment Option 2: Create a Mock Newspaper
Directions: Imagine that you work for a local newspaper in the area where your text takes place. Create a mock newspaper containing at least five articles related to this text. Each article must be 400-800 words in length. The newspaper should look as much like a real newspaper as possible. Include head-lines, article titles, illustrations, etc. Articles must cover a variety of events and topics from the text. Below are some suggestions for article topics:
Local News: Give a direct report of an plot event from the text. Examine a local newspaper to see how these articles are typically structured.
National/World News: Create a research-based article about a national or world event that impacts the lives of characters in your text. Examine a local newspaper to see how these articles are typically structured.
Editorial: From the point of view of a local resident, give your opinion on an event from the text. Explain what citizens/local government should do in response to the event. Examine the Editorials section of a local newspaper to see how these articles are typically structured.
Sports Column: If the text contains references to sporting events of professional athletes, write a sports column describing these events. Examine the sports section of a local newspaper to see how these articles are typically structured.
Arts and Entertainment: Write an article about an artist, musician, film, or other piece of popular entertainment that is referenced in the text. Examine a local newspaper to see how these articles are typically structured.
Advice Column: From the point of view of a character in the text, write a letter to an advice columnist describing a personal problems. Then, from the point of view of the advice columnist, give a response. Examine a local newspaper to see how advice columns are typically structured.
Assignment Option 3: Character Poster
Directions: Using a large piece of paper or poster board, create a portrait of the protagonist of your text. The portrait may be either realistic or symbolic. (For example, if you wanted to create a more symbolic portrait of a character who behaves like a baby, you could draw the character with a rattle in his or her hand)
In addition to drawing the character, you must also complete the character analysis activity below and attach it to the drawing. For example, after completing the analysis of what the character thinks, record the analysis on the poster near the character’s head. Each of answer must be at least three complete sentences in length. All information for the chart below must appear on the poster.
Head: What does the protagonist think or worry about? Use specific text evidence.
Eyes: How does the protagonist sees the world? What people or things does he or she view positively? What people or things does he or she view negatively?
Heart: Who or what does the protagonist love or feel passionate about? Why?
Mouth: Cite one specific comment that the protagonist makes. What does this comment reveal about his or her personality?
Ears: What do other people say to or about the protagonist? How does the protagonist react when he or she hears these comments?
Arms: What kind of work does the protagonist do? What drives the protagonist to do this work?
Legs: Where does the protagonist want to go? What are his or her goals for the future?
Creative Project Rubric (Response to Literature)
©2012, SKHS English/Language Arts Dept. (Version 12-1a)
Content / Organiz-ation / Style / Creativity and Presentation / Overall
Effectiveness
4
Exceeds
Standard / Shows a high level of understanding and critical thinking.