Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
But I've heard of this mysterious "summer reading list" from others from time to time and it has me curious. I'd love to know what age people were when the were given summer reading lists, and potentially what years it happened in. Were they requirements or extra credit? Were they assigned to everyone or just those on some sort of A.P. track? Were all who had summer reading lists expected to do a book report on one of the books on the list? If so, when was such a report to written? During the summer or first thing back? Inquiring minds (who don't remember any sort of summer homework assignments--suggested or required--during their school years want to know.  |
I went to three different elementary schools, three different middle schools, and three different high schools, in four different states. (California, Nevada, Oregon and Missouri) And we weren't even military. Lol
Most of the reading lists I got were in middle and high school. Some were a shortlist of mandatory books, some a long list we could pick from. Some you had to be ready to answer questions and be ready to discuss in class, (questions that weren't in the cliff-notes versions) and some that we had to write reports on to turn in on the first day of class.
Some were suggested reading, and in those cases I don't remember what work, if any, was assigned.
It really varied. My Romeo and Juliet reading, IIRC, was to read the summary of the story first, then read the book ourselves and be ready to discuss it in class. Then as a class go over the translation in class so we could ask questions about word and phrase usage. At the end of that, when the teacher knew that everyone had caught up, we talked about the history of the time, the politics, the society, what parts of the story were the most important, the build-up to the tragic ending... (Back to the English class stuff). Then a few months later we were all bussed to the local theater to see the play done by high school students, with 'tweaks' to make it more relevant.
(Thus the flipping each other off and smack-talking between the rival gangs when the show started. We could see the gang war going on, and it was so much more emotional and powerful when the one character was killed. But they kept the tweaking to a minimum.)
For my kids, (and we were military for many years when they were younger) it also varied according to grade and school. Shakespear was usually only in high school, and tied in with their other classes on history (of the time period) and getting into the arts (chorus and acting) and then learning languages. (The context and meaning of language change over the years, and why so many languages have common roots.)
So, it just depended on the school, the curriculum, and I suspect if the teachers of various subjects used the one assignment as a learning tool across different subjects.