DPAC English I Summer Reading Assignment

Dear Parents and Potential Students of DPAC English I,

You have requested English I Pre-AP for the upcoming school year. According to the College Board, the purpose of DPAC courses is to prepare every student for college, AP courses, and AP exams. Such preparation entails mastering advanced academic skills through challenging work and appropriate support from the classroom instructor.

Students at Deer Park High School who enroll in the DPAC English I course are expected to read a book from the list below and complete a summer reading assignment. Summer reading assignments provide several advantages for students, including maintaining skills over the summer, fostering independent learning, understanding course expectations, establishing a common framework for discussion and study, and promoting lifelong learning.

Besides reading one of the five novels listed, all incoming DPAC English I students must also complete the accompanying dialectical journal assignment, which will be due by the end of the third week of school. Students should come to class prepared to discuss and write about the text they selected, using their notes and personal observations. The dialectical journal assignment will serve as pre-writing for the essay portion of the summer reading assessment and will be part of the overall grade. The In-class assessment over summer reading will occur during the fourth week of school.

DPAC English I (9th Grade) Summer Reading Assignment

Choose one text to read from the list below and complete a dialectical journal that shows how an author develops believable characters in a text. In particular, your journal entries should focus on answering the following question:

What do the characters’ actions, reactions, thoughts, and words reveal about them? What lessons do they learn throughout the book?

• The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
• A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah
• The Pearl by John Steinbeck
• Scythe by Neal Shusterman
• Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad by M.T. Anderson

For additional information and resources pertaining to the suggested texts and the dialectical journal assignment, access the link below.

Sincerely,
DPAC English I Teachers