UPPER School Summer Reading

English and History:

PART 1: Over the summer, read three books of your choosing. Each selection should fit a description in the boxes below, and one of your books must fit the description in the central gray box. Your other selections may be from any other box (in other words, you don’t need to go for a “BINGO”).

PART 2: Write an annotated biography to turn in upon arriving at school.

The Annotated Bibliography has two parts--

Accurate MLA Entry for each book (ALPHABETIZE entries by author last name):

Last Name, First Name. Title of Book. City of Publication, Publisher, Publication Date.

Write one paragraph describing your experience reading the book:

Each citation is followed by a brief descriptive paragraph, which should include the student's evaluation of the text rather than a summary of it. Explain which of the characteristics on the Bingo card the book aligns with (even though there may be multiple, pick just one). Rate the book 1-5 (5 being best), say why you ranked it this way, and identify the difficulty of the text (easy, just right, hard).

Example entry:

Doerr, Anthony. Cloud Cuckoo Land. New York, Scribner, 2020.

Cloud Cuckoo Land is an ambitious epic novel spanning 1453 A.D. to the future (2100 or so). Although it follows five different main characters, the protagonist actually seems to be a book. It’s really about the unlikelihood of any old text surviving. Diogenes apparently wrote a comedy titled Cloud Cuckoo Land, which we know existed but it has since been destroyed. This is a story imagining how a book like that might have survived. Although we do not have the original text, the book makes me wonder what all went into the survival of Homer’s writings, Shakespeare’s writings, writings we find in the Bible and the Koran. In my bingo card, I categorize this book under “book that references a text written before 1800,” not only for the references to the long lost Cloud Cuckoo Land, but also because it quotes sections from The Odyssey at length. And it didn’t just reference it, but it made me curious about the Odyssey. I give this book a solid 5/5 because it manages to weave together plot lines in a surprising and satisfying way, and also because even though it looks long, it goes really fast. I give this the difficulty of “just right,” because even though I came across words I didn’t know and had to force myself to focus, I could also read it at the beach.

Turn in an alphabetized list of the books you read over the summer. This list should include a minimum of 3 books, be alphabetized by author, but not numbered. Notice that the annotation for the book is a reverse indent.

Here are some helpful lists to consult as you make your selections (you may use books not the list as well):

Pintz award winners and finalists
National Book Young Readers award winners and longlist/ shortlist
YALSA Non-Fiction award
80 YA Books set around the world

Dear (soon-to-be) 10th grade student, 

The week we return to class ,we will be using our summer independent reads for one of our first in-class essays, so come back prepared with your annotation completed. As the bingo card indicates, your books you select for the Annotated Bibliography must be written by American authors.The idea here is that you’ll be reading with an intentional variety while still giving you plenty of room to choose something that interests you.

PART 1: Read at least three books over the summer, completing all three before school starts. While we want you to select your own American texts that interest you, we ask that you use this bingo chart to help you instill a bit of variety in your choices.

PART 2: Write an annotated biography to turn in upon arriving at school. The Annotated Bibliography has two parts -

Accurate MLA Entry for each book (ALPHABETIZE entries by author last name):

Last Name, First Name. Title of Book. City of Publication, Publisher, Publication Date.

Write one paragraph describing your experience reading the book:

Each citation is followed by a brief descriptive paragraph, which should include the student's evaluation of the text rather than a summary of it. Explain which of the characteristics on the Bingo card the book aligns with (even though there may be multiple, pick just one).

Rate the book 1-5 (5 being best), say why you ranked it this way, and identify the difficulty of the text (easy, just right, hard).

Example entry:

Doerr, Anthony. Cloud Cuckoo Land. New York, Scribner, 2020.

Cloud Cuckoo Land is an ambitious epic novel spanning 1453 A.D. to the future (2100 or so). Although it follows five different main characters, the protagonist actually seems to be a book. It’s really about the unlikelihood of any old text surviving. Diogenes apparently wrote a comedy titled Cloud Cuckoo Land, which we know existed but it has since been destroyed. This is a story imagining how a book like that might have survived. Although we do not have the original text, the book makes me wonder what all went into the survival of Homer’s writings, Shakespeare’s writings, writings we find in the Bible and the Koran. In my bingo card, I categorize this book under “book that references a text written before 1800,” not only for the references to the long lost Cloud Cuckoo Land, but also because it quotes sections from The Odyssey at length. And it didn’t just reference it, but it made me curious about the Odyssey. I give this book a solid 5/5 because it manages to weave together plot lines in a surprising and satisfying way, and also because even though it looks long, it goes really fast. I give this the difficulty of “just right,” because even though I came across words I didn’t know and had to force myself to focus, I could also read it at the beach.

 

Turn in an alphabetized list of the books you read over the summer. This list should include a minimum of 3 books and be alphabetized by author, but not numbered. Notice that the annotation for the book is a reverse indent.

Here are some helpful lists to consult as you make your selections (you may use books not the list as well):

Pintz award winners and finalists
National Book Young Readers award winners and longlist/ shortlist
YALSA Non-Fiction award
80 YA Books set around the world

Chapters 1-4 of Campbell Biology, 11th Edition
ISBN 10: 0-134-09341-0

All rising seniors must read these for College Counseling Seminar in the fall.

1.  Teen Vogue: The In Between—Fall College Counseling focuses on the transition from the college application process to making a decision about where to attend. We will reference this article early in the semester while editing the Common App.

2.  My Little Ikigai Journal (Worksheets will be distributed during advisory) - Fall College Counseling will continuously reference personal values throughout the first semester as it relates to connecting institutions to the goals of 12th-grade students. We will reference this journal to help solidify connections between missions and values.

Students entering Algebra 2 must complete the Algebra 1 Review Packet, which will be collected on the third day of class—your teacher will collect it. This packet will help you review critical Algebra 1 skills that we will build on in Algebra 2. This way, we will have the time to get to the really cool stuff in Algebra 2!

• You can find the review packet in the folder at this link: https://tinyurl.com/ycx6j8hv
• There is an additional document in that folder that provides resources if you forget how to do any of these skills.
• You must show all of your work for each problem in order to earn credit. The packet will be graded.
• You must do your own work. Feel free to work with a friend or a family member, but you must write down who you work with as an acknowledgement on the packet. You may only collaborate verbally as you are figuring things out, but you may not copy down what someone else writes. Do not rely on someone else’s effort – this will only make your own work harder in the future.
• There will be a pretest at the beginning of the year to measure your proficiency on the skills and ideas in this review packet. This test will not count as a grade, but it will help us to know if you have any knowledge gaps that you need to address. This may require meetings with your teacher and extra practice work at the beginning of the year, so try your best to review over the summer to avoid extra work in the fall.

How to show your work in math:

1. Read this to understand why it matters to show my work. We don't make you do this because we like it: it is based in neuroscience and helps you to develop stronger communication and critical thinking skills.
2. Please write out all your work either in the printed packet or clearly on notebook paper
   • If using the packet, feel free to use extra space in the form of notebook paper that you will attach. Be sure to clearly reference each problem and note in the packet that you are finishing on another sheet.
   • If using notebook paper, write out the question again (be sure to transcribe clearly!) and mark it clearly with the problem number. Aim for 2-3 problems per side of the paper maximum. This will give you lots of space.
3. Write out every step - if you find yourself automatically doing a computation mentally, figure out how you would write it down to make sense to the reader. This includes things that you might be able to easily do in your head. Avoid going from x + 2 = 3 directly to x = 1. You must show what you are doing to both sides of the equation, in other words you must prove that you are obeying the most important rules of algebraic manipulation (in this case, the properties of equality):
   𝑥𝑥 + 2 = 3
   −2  − 2
   𝑥𝑥 = 1
4. Show each step on a separate line.  Avoid the temptation to do multiple steps in one step of your work.
5. Be careful with notation. If you say x = 3 and then want to add 4 to that in a subsequent step, do not write: 𝑥𝑥 = 3 + 4 = 7  because this implies that 𝑥𝑥 = 7 which was not true!
6. If you don't know how to show something in math symbols, you may instead write a sentence explaining what you are doing. For instance, solving for x in this equation:

As you see, solving this requires the symbolic notation of taking the square root of both sides and adding the ± symbol before the square root. However, if you don't know how to write that symbolically, it is sufficient to explain your reasoning. For instance you could write, "there are two numbers that when squared equal 4, they are +2 and -2 since squaring a number takes away the negative." But your reasoning must be detailed and specific.

7. If you make a mistake in your work, cross out that work clearly. Crossing out work is preferable to erasing since you might want to go back to it (maybe you were actually on the right track) and later you can look at it to learn from your mistake. Mistakes are our best teachers :-)