PHS 2015 Voluntary Summer Reading Assignment (Grades 11+12)

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.

Required Assignments: To receive credit for completing summer reading, students must complete both of the following assignments. 1. Double entry journal (see attachment) 2. Create six socratic seminar questions (see attachment)

Assignment Due Dates: Date Work Due 9/1/15 Summer Reading Assignment (Drop off work in Room 2229) 9/11/15 Summer Reading Assignment Revisions Due 9/18/15 Summer Reading Discussion/Celebration

Receiving Credit: Students who complete the summer reading assignment and create a quality assignment 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 Room E-Mail Responsible The 5th Wave Mr. Farrish 2229 [email protected]

The Picture of Mr. Greene 2107 [email protected] Dorian Gray Mrs. Wagner 2103 [email protected] Between Shades of Ms. Breen 2105 [email protected] Gray Ms. Lane 2106 [email protected] Unbroken Mrs. Maher 2109 [email protected] Mrs. Stamato 2104 [email protected] Paper Towns Ms. Fennelly [email protected] Mr. Craig 2231 [email protected] The Secret Life of Bees Mrs. Proulx 2113 [email protected]

Text Options

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.

PHS Summer Reading: Double Entry Journal

Directions: Using the double entry journal below, identify and record quotes from the text that help to illustrate the personality of the text’s protagonist. Provide a detailed, 4-6 sentence analysis of each quote. Analysis should explain what each quote illustrates about the protagonist and how his/her personality evolves over the course of the text. The completed double entry journal must contain at least ten entries. Here are some questions to aid in analysis; these are simply a guide, not all questions need to be answered, the goal is promote analysis. Try to use a variety of the questions below: 1. What mood does the passage create in you? Why? 2. Which words are noticed first? Why? What is noteworthy about this diction? (You may want to underline these words). 3. How do the important words relate to one another? 4. Do any words seem oddly used? Why do you think the author chose to use these words over their synonyms? 5. Do any words have double meanings? Do they have extra connotations? 6. Look up any unfamiliar words. 7. What is the sentence rhythm like? Short and choppy? Long and flowing? What does this rhythm symbolize? 8. Look at the punctuation. Is there anything unusual about it? Why was this stylistic choice made? 9. Is there any repetition within the passage? What is the effect of this repetition? 10. Is there any figurative language used in the passage? If so what affect does this have on the overall meaning of the text? 11. How does the passage make you react or think about any characters or events within the narrative? 12. Are there colors, sounds, physical description that appeals to the senses? Does this imagery form a pattern? Why might the author have chosen that color, sound or physical description? 13. Who speaks in the passage? To whom does he or she speak? Does the narrator have a limited or partial point of view? Or does the narrator appear to be omniscient, and he knows things the characters couldn't possibly know? (For example, omniscient narrators might mention future historical events, events taking place "off stage," the thoughts and feelings of multiple characters, and so on). 14. How might objects represent something else? 15. Do any of the objects, colors, animals, or plants appearing in the passage have traditional connotations or meaning? What about religious or biblical significance?

Below is a sample of a quality journal entry using the novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chomsky:

Page Quote What does the quote illustrate about the protagonist’s personality? 37 “He’s a wallflower…..You The use of the word wallflower is symbolic to Charlie. see things. You keep quiet He stands in the shadows just as the typical about them, And you wallflower does. He is too shy or nervous to be an understand” (Chbosky 37). active participant; he is an observer yet desires to be the opposite. However, he is liked because of this wallflower quality...that he can know the truth and keep secrets. When Patrick shares these words with Charlie, it is a pinnacle moment because through these words Charlie sees that Patrick is his friend. And for Charlie, friends are hard to find.

Student’s Name:______Text:______

Double Entry Journal

Page Quote What does the quote illustrate about the protagonist’s personality?

PHS 2015 Summer Reading: Socratic Seminar Question Worksheet

Directions: Generate six discussion questions about the text. These questions may be used during a Socratic seminar on the text in the fall. A good discussion question should not have one clear, definitive answer. Focus on questions that will generate debate and explore multiple interpretations of the text.

Summer Reading: Double Entry Journal Rubric

Exceeds Standard Meets Standard Approaches Standard Below Standard Quote Student includes at least one Student includes at least one Student includes all or most Student is missing Selection passage per every 25 pages of passage per every 25 pages of of the required passages several passages. the text. the text.

Student consistently chooses Selected passages vary in Selected passages are complex and interesting complexity. Some are rife for limited in complexity. passages that are rife for detailed detailed analysis, while others Some may not be fully Selected passages seem analysis. may have limited depth. relevant, and some may be randomly chosen. too simplistic to yield Passages are irrelevant detailed analysis or too simplistic to yield detailed analysis

All passages explore are Most passages explore are Some passages explore are personality of the text’s personality of the text’s Passages do little do protagonist. Students select protagonist. Students select personality of the text’s protagonist. Passages explore the personality passages that contain detailed passages that contain some of the text’s protagonist evidence of how the evidence of how the contain limited evidence of how the protagonist’s and offer little/no insight protagonist’s personality evolves protagonist’s personality personality evolves over the regarding how the over the course of the text. evolves over the course of the course of the text. protagonist changes over text. the course of the text.

Quality of Students explore the meaning Students explore the meaning Students attempt to analyze Analysis is vague, Analysis and significance of each passage and significance of each the meaning and inaccurate or with 4-6 sentences of passage with 4-6 sentences of significance of each unconvincing. Student detailed,insightful analysis. solid analysis. Students provide passage, but analysis is may provide a partial Students effectively analyze the some analysis of the language vague and superficial. explanation of what language used in the passage, the used in the passage, the themes The student explains what happens in the passage, themes that are being explored, that are being explored, and happens in the passage but but provide little or no and how the passage reflects the how the passage reflects the does little analysis of the analysis of its meaning overall meaning of the text. overall meaning of the text. language that is used used, or significance. the themes that are explored, or how the passage reflects the overall meaning of the text. Spelling, Text is neatly written and easily Text is easily legible. Text is mostly legible. Text is sloppy and Grammar legible. difficult to read. and Mechanics Writing contains few or no Writing contains several minor Writing contains many Writing is riddled with spelling or grammatical errors. errors that do not impact the errors, and the errors have errors that greatly impact overall meaning of the writing some impact on the overall the overall meaning of meaning or the writing. the text.