Summer Reading and Writing: What Some High Schools Are Doing

Londonderry, New Hampshire
Elizabeth Juster, Londonderry High School

Only the school’s honors level students are required to complete summer reading for English, although other subject areas, like Social Studies, also require summer reading. Non-honors students are encouraged to do some summer reading through informational brochures provided by the town and school libraries.

Juster says for eleventh-grade honors English, students must read two selections from a wide-ranging list of books. They also must select ten passages from each book and briefly explain why they chose those passages. (http://www.mrsjustersvirtualclassroom.com/summer_reading.htm)

Teachers collect and respond to students’ work and decide individually how to evaluate students beyond this. For her part, Juster also reads works from the summer reading list and uses a discussion of summer reading to kick off the school year. She asks students to write a reflection paper about one of the books they read (http://www.mrsjustersvirtualclassroom.com/am_lit_writing_reflect1.htm) and to make a presentation on the other (http://www.mrsjustersvirtualclassroom.com/Am%20Htg%20Presentations.htm).

Juster believes that students don’t have enough chances to choose their own reading material and explains that the academic year includes works such as The Scarlet Letter, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Great Gatsby. “Summer reading, therefore, fills a need these students have—a need for some autonomy in the development as readers.”

Birmingham, Alabama
Jim Palmer, The Altamont School

During the school year, students read three books per month outside class. They read six books during the summer, about half of which are required. Students either write papers about or are tested on their summer reading when they return to school.

“We have tried hard to avoid the dilution of expectations that some schools experience, and to require good work for a good grade,” Palmer explains. “Our students write frequent essays, which has proven very beneficial in college. We try to teach a traditional curriculum (Moby Dick and The Sound and the Fury) enthusiastically. I want ‘to delight and instruct’ (Dryden), to let them feel my passion for words.” (For more information, search for “summer reading” from their homepage at www.altamontschool.org).

Downingtown, Pennsylvania
Nancy Robinson, Downingtown Senior High School

The school’s summer reading assignment is typically related to their Author Lecture Series, which features artists such as Yusef Komunyakaa, Mark Mathabane, James McBride, Mark Salzman, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Rachel Simon.

Students are asked to read a work by the author. If the work isn’t appropriate for all grades, Robinson says, younger students can choose from a list of other options. Choices range from young adult novels such as A Northern Light and Jake, Reinvented to more traditional works such as A Prayer for Owen Meany and Wuthering Heights. Robinson says parents are more supportive if there is some choice.

“The summer writing is personal and reflective as opposed to the formal expository writing often required during the school year. Students simply reflect on the work they chose and tie it to their own lives. Of course we feel that it is vital for a literate society to have people who read and read and read. Our summer program is non-threatening and encourages introspection and creativity.”

Dallas, Texas
Greg Randall, The Episcopal School of Dallas

Students have been required to read four books over the summer for at least the past 25 years.

Randall has tinkered with the “visceral response” for juniors and seniors over the years (http://www.esdallas.org/media/sp/PDFs/SR2004list.pdf); this asks students to craft an essay by answering several questions about the book. Last year he found that asking students to write during the summer about one of the books was a good move. In addition to the visceral response and the book discussion, his students wrote a short review of one book (patterned after film reviews in The New Yorker magazine) and a longer critical analysis.

“The department wants summer reading to be enjoyable,” Randall says. “We require and evaluate the reading, but the extensive lists and variety allow students to make this summer assignment relatively easy or quite difficult. We ask a bit more of students going into the junior and senior AP classes, but even they can follow The Grapes of Wrath or Catch-22 with Timeline or It's Not about the Bike. Many students read beyond the required four books.”

Houston, Texas
Anita Woolley, Cypress Creek High School

The district has a coordinated summer reading list for its eight high schools. Grade-level team leaders from the high schools generate the list of 20–25 annotated titles for each grade, which is sent home along with a letter explaining the advantages of summer reading.

Students are assessed on their reading within the first six weeks of school, with teachers using many methods of assessments, such as journaling, discussion circles, research springboards, story boards, reader response to quotations, and practice essay test writing. Detailed tests aren’t used however, because the emphasis is on building a love of reading.

“The program has proved beneficial for our students,” Woolley says. “They love the wide range of options, and many honors students read multiple books. For those who love to read, the list is just an easy guide for good titles; for those who do not (yet), the list is guaranteed to have something for them to enjoy.”

Nashville, Tennessee
Sheri Johnson, Nashville School of the Arts

This magnet high school is part of the Metro Nashville Public School System, Johnson explains, and adds, “Metro recently began discouraging summer reading (due I believe either to limited access to books for some students or to the mobility of our students between schools with different reading lists), so at NSA we produce a sheet we call ‘Summer/Get Ahead Reading List.’ Tests and/or reading assignments begin about one week into the school year. Therefore, students who don’t want to do summer reading can wait until school has begun and then have a big assignment to complete in a hurry.”

Students in “standard level classes” generally read one book; honors classes read one or two, depending on length; and AP classes read two to four, depending on length. Johnson says that all students take “initial reading quizzes,” and she requires her honors students to write response journals and her AP students to complete “more complex journals.”

Johnson worries that expectations are fading for reading. “We seem to be so test-driven, so focused on easily evaluated (i.e., numerical) accountability that the love of reading is no longer a goal. What a travesty. What good is teaching them to read better forever if we don’t instill in them the desire to actually read forever?”

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
John Manear, Seton-La Salle High School

Students in honors courses are required to read two books during the summer. These texts, such as A Prayer for Owen Meany or The Once and Future King, are usually longer than what can be covered during the school year. Manear explains that they opt for a “classic” and a work that has “classical tendencies” but that is more contemporary and lighter, while still presenting a challenge. 

Recently, Manear has noticed that even students on the honors track seem less interested in spending time on reading, during the summer or otherwise. “As all students become more and more involved with competing alternatives that consume their time, the page by page demand that reading requires becomes less appealing. Students are in disbelief when I tell them I have averaged reading a book every two weeks since high school . . . and I enjoy it.”

But he has proof that “reading is still alive in western Pennsylvania” when he witnesses more than 2000 students from local schools reading six books to participate in the annual reading festival sponsored by his local NCTE affiliate.

Kernersville, North Carolina
Linda Kennedy, Bishop McGuinness Catholic High School

Regular college preparatory English classes must read three books during the summer. Students are assessed on their reading early in the school year, with freshmen and sophomores generally responding to multiple choice questions and essays and juniors and seniors usually completing an essay.

Students in honors English, AP English Literature, and AP English Language must read four books. Generally one of the books is required and the others may be chosen from a recommended list. These students are also tested by essay early in the school year.

In addition to English classes, Kennedy says novels are required reading in biology, history, religion, and French. She says this leaves little time to read for pleasure.

Downey, California
Shirley Stewart, Warren High School

Students in the school’s Honors-AP track have summer reading and projects in many subjects. For example, students read and analyze 14 books for AP English Literature; for AP European History students read, visit museums, and write reports; for AP Science, they complete a variety of assignments such as a lab report or environment study. If they don’t do the summer work, Stewart says, students are bumped out of the AP class.

Students in regular track classes do not have required summer reading, but most English teachers provide lists of recommended books for summer reading that are compiled with help from the school and community libraries.  

Students don’t always react to the requirements with joy, however. “Although most of our students do enjoy reading, they do not like being ‘forced’ to do it,” Stewart says. “Where once upon a time the students saw their summer work as very manageable, today our AP students feel overwhelmed by their summer work. Our competitive students are usually taking multiple AP classes with multiple reading and writing projects. They may also be enrolled in summer school classes at the local community college. Their loads are much heavier than students in the past; but to be competitive for the higher-end colleges, they must take as many challenging classes as possible.”