Summer Assignments

English 9 Assignment/PDF 

Throughout the English 9 course, we will learn to “read like a writer” and develop our own voices in our writing. During the year, we will read a variety of mentor texts that will help us practice and develop analysis skills, as well as understand and emulate examples of effective writing. As we begin the year by reading narrative essays and working to develop our own narrative writing style, we will read a selection of essays that will help us to identify specific writing skills and techniques.

“Fish Cheeks” by Amy Tan (see attached pdf above)

“Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie (see attached pdf above)

“Only Daughter” by Sandra Cisneros (see attached pdf above)

As you read each of the works, pay attention to the following questions. There is no formal writing assignment due upon arrival in August, but we will use your notes and answers to these questions as the basis for a writing assignment shortly after you return to school:

1. Notice how the writer uses descriptive language in each of the essays. In what ways does the author utilize sensory imagery (details that relate to the five senses—taste, touch, smell, sight, sound)?

2. Consider the author’s purpose. What is the author trying to communicate to the reader through this piece of writing? What is the moral of the author’s story and/or what life lessons can be learned by reading?

Honors English 9 Assignment/PDF

Honors English 9 – Jill Daly

Throughout the Honors English 9 course, we will learn to “read like a writer” and develop our own voices in our writing. During the year, we will read a variety of mentor texts that will help us practice and develop analysis skills, as well as understand and emulate examples of effective writing. As we begin the year by reading narrative works and focusing on developing our own narrative writing style, we will read a selection of essays and a novella that will help us to identify specific writing skills and techniques.

“Fish Cheeks” by Amy Tan (see attached pdf above)

“Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie (see attached pdf above)

“Only Daughter” by Sandra Cisneros (see attached pdf above) 

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (selections only as listed below) (Students must purchase the novel for use during class, ISBN: 9780679734772):

• “The House on Mango Street” – pages 3-5
• “Hairs” – pages 6-7
• “Boys & Girls” – pages 8-9
• “My Name” – pages 10-11

As you read each of the works, pay attention to the following questions. There is no formal writing assignment due upon arrival in August, but we will use your notes and answers to these questions as the basis for a writing assignment shortly after you return to school:

1. Notice how the writer uses descriptive language in each of the essays. In what ways does the author utilize sensory imagery (details that relate to the five senses—taste, touch, smell, sight, sound)?

2. Consider the author’s purpose. What is the author trying to communicate to the reader through this piece of writing? What is the moral of the author’s story and/or what life lessons can be learned by reading?

English 10
All English 10 - Please review

English 10 – Anne Monsalve

“The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria” by Judith Ortiz Cofer (see attached pdfs above)

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson (see attached pdfs above)

As you read, please consider the following questions. These questions will be used in class discussion and toward a final writing assignment.

1.     Why do you suppose Cofer wrote “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria”? Does she have a purpose beyond changing readers’ perceptions of Latina women? Explain and provide examples.

2.     Consider the outcome of Jackson’s “The Lottery.” What might she be saying about tradition and conformity in a society? Explain and provide examples.

Honors English 10
All English 10 - Please review

Honors English 10 – Anne Monsalve

“Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan (see attached pdfs above)

“How It Feels to Be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston (see attached pdfs above)

“The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin (see attached pdfs above)

As you read, please consider the following questions. These questions will be used in class discussion and toward a final writing assignment.

1.     Why do you suppose Tan wrote “Mother Tongue”? Does she have a purpose beyond changing readers’ perceptions of her mother’s “broken” English? Explain and provide examples.

2.     What is the realization Hurston comes to by the end of “How It Feels to Be Colored Me”? How does this influence the way she views herself? Explain and provide examples.

3.     Consider the significance of Mrs. Mallard’s heart trouble mentioned in the first paragraph. How is this symbolic? Explain and provide examples.

English 11 (Yeats) PDF

English 11 – Andrew Hopkins

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (ISBN: 0385474547) (Student purchase)

“The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats (see attached pdf above)

Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart, will frame our conversation to begin the school year around literary approaches to xenophobia and otherness.  Students will be expected to read the first of three parts in the summer; parts two and three will be assigned at a later date. Achebe’s novel and the poem to which the novel’s title alludes will act as weathervanes for their respective literary periods.  We’ll follow the direction of these literary works to begin the year and see why they are watershed moments of unrest between colliding cultures. 

Consider, as you read, Achebe’s attitude toward Okonkwo in particular and toward Umuofia in general.  Also, read Yeats’s poem, “The Second Coming,” and try to imagine what Achebe saw in the poem that struck him as relevant to what he was writing about in Nigeria. 

Honors English 11 – Andrew Hopkins

The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen (ISBN: 0385720149) (Student purchase)

[NOTE: The novel is divided into three sections.  Students should only read the first section titled “The Arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Montmorency” which spans eight chapters. The remaining two sections will be read in September.]

If there were only a novel written by an Irishwoman who lived during the final years of the Irish War of Independence and could depict life as it was experienced by the Anglo-Irish who were being pushed out of Ireland by the Irish resistance.  Oh, right, there is: The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen, an Anglo-Irish woman herself who lived through this experience first-hand.  Her novel attempts to capture the “sensations” around the final period of the Irish War of Independence in the 1920s.  Published in 1929, Bowen’s novel is a slice of the end of a decades-long struggle between Irish Nationalists, Anglo-Irish society, and Britain. 

We’ll use this novel to understand a culminating point in the struggle between two colliding ideologies in Ireland from the late 19^th century to the early 20^th century.  As you read, get a sense of Bowen’s perspective of the struggle as it is conveyed through her characters.  Which characters are the targets of her sympathy?  If you could interview Bowen about her novel, what questions might you ask her?  We’ll use your notes and questions as jumping-off points when you return in September.

English 12 – Brian Baillie

Becoming by Michelle Obama (ISBN: 1524763144) (Student purchase)

Over the summer, we will begin Michelle Obama’s Becoming. Please read the first two sections, “Becoming Me” and “Becoming Us.” Note the manner in which she tells her life story in its beginning stages, and how it changes over time as she becomes a public figure. We will write about these sections, but also finish the memoir soon thereafter.

Honors English 12 – Brian Baillie

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (ISBN: 0679745580) (Student purchase)

Capote’s In Cold Blood was the first of a genre, the “non-fiction novel.” Its composition brought into question the veracity of this type of text, but it serves as a great foundation for the fiction and non-fiction we will read during the year.

When we return in the fall, please read the first three sections: “The Last to See Them Alive,” “Persons Unknown,” and “The Answer.” We will begin by writing about these sections, but also finish the text soon thereafter.

I highly recommend reading Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City, too. This text is optional, but it is an easy and compelling read that will help contextualize other works we will encounter during the year.

AP Literature and Composition – Brian Baillie

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (ISBN: 9780141439518) (Student purchase)

Over the summer, read Volumes I and II in Pride and Prejudice. While reading, make sure you have a working understanding of the Regency period in England. Take the time to research the important of primogeniture, entailment, and preferment. Pay close attention to how Austen utilizes setting and characterization in the novel, too.

We will pick up with Volume III when school begins and write about the novel shortly thereafter.

Also, please choose one of the following novels to read individually. When we return, we will crowd source information for these texts (since there are many possible titles on the AP exam):

Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Invisible Man, Howards End, The Poisonwood Bible, Atonement, All the Pretty Horses, The Color Purple, The Awakening, Great Expectations, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Beloved, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Heart of Darkness, Crime and Punishment

AP Language and Composition – Andrew Hopkins

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell (ISBN: 015626224X) (Student purchase)

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich (ISBN: 0312626681) (Student purchase)

In these unique works of Orwell and Ehrenreich, you will discover life at or below the poverty line through the eyes of two writers who lived it.  Orwell’s book, published in 1933, takes you to the dregs of Paris and London and drags you through the desperate world of many people he encounters there.  Ehrenreich’s book, published in 2001, is a kind of Down and Out update, exposing life in America for house cleaners, retail workers, and restaurant servers who work long, stressful hours for minimum wage pay.  Both books are not strictly exercises in journalism, but rather expositions of deeply personal convictions about the state of welfare that permeates their respective societies during their respective historical periods. 

As you read, consider the language (the actual choice of words themselves) that each author uses to construct particular moments of strife, despair, and suffering.  How would you describe Orwell’s and Ehrenreich’s writing styles in these moments?  Select a few passages from Orwell that complement a few passages from Ehrenreich.  We’ll use these passages as jumping-off points when you return in September.