Dear Incoming Sixth Grader --
Your assignment is to read THREE books this summer. One is required for all students, the second and third will be chosen from a larger group.
This is not to say that you can ONLY read three books – in fact, I think it would be really great if you read more books, and/or more widely! Newspapers, magazines, blogs, graphic novels, and other forms of reading are all great ways to maintain and develop your reading skills – but those should be in addition to the three books I’m assigning you, instead of in place of those three books.
Can you use audiobooks? Sure! – if they help you. I do recommend that you have a “hard copy” of each book, though, as you may need to refer to it later.
Middle-school students should read 1,000,000 words a year. Sounds like a lot – but, if a typical novel has about 300 words per page, that works out to approximately nine pages per day, all year round. This is a good guideline to keep in mind as you read during the summer. I understand that you may have activities and responsibilities that occasionally won’t allow daily reading, so plan ahead. I recommend that you make up missed reading days within the same week, to avoid a “snowball” effect of overwhelm right before school resumes.
Most of all, I want to make sure that you aren’t spending the last week before school in a miserable time-crunch, as that kind of stress will ensure both that you won’t remember what you read and that you won’t enjoy the process.
During the first few weeks of school, you will be working with some of the books that you read over the summer, and situations and characters may serve as reference points for discussions throughout the year. So, while you won’t need to remember every single detail from every single book, you’ll need to have a solid understanding of the plot and the main characters. If taking notes or summarizing helps you, please do so. Take some time before you return to refresh your memory. Also, bring all three books that you read to school when you arrive on the first day!
If you have any questions about the summer reading assignment, feel free to send me an email at lortiz@theberkeleyschool.org. Enjoy your summer and your reading! I’m looking forward to seeing you next year and talking about the books with you.
Sincerely,
Loa Ortiz
Everyone gets to read this one!
The Giver by Lois Lowry (If you read it a while ago, read it again! If you read it recently, read one of the sequels: Gathering Blue, Messenger or Blue.)
Everyone gets to read at least TWO of these titles!
Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson
Red Kayak by Pricilla Cummings
The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages
The Storyteller’s Beads by Jane Kurtz
The Batboy by Mike Lupica
Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life by Wendy Mass
Wonder by R. J. Palacio
Storm Runners by Roland Smith
Zen and the Art of Faking It by Jordan Sonnenblick
Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
So B. It by Sarah Weeks
No comments:
Post a Comment