Summer Learning Experience

 

 

 

A GOOD READER’S FRAMEWORK (2010)

 

Like writing, reading is a recursive activity.  Students make progress unevenly.  Students may read several paragraphs and/or chapters with insight and understanding and then they come to a tougher section where they might decode words without understanding or without their having any insight about what it is they have read.  Therefore, it is helpful if teachers can help students by giving them a process framework with which they can help students strengthen their reading capacity.

 

The layout of the Dialogue Journal that follows, which students will use to interact with the assigned summer reading text for the whole school, will provide students with a process for skill building that follow the framework outlined below.

 

1. Good readers pause occasionally to take stock of (summarize, paraphrase) what it is they have read.
2. Good readers create pictures and images in their heads about what it is they have read.
3. Good readers enter the text by asking question:  Who?  Why?  What? How?  When? Where? Etc.
4. Good readers cite specific details from the text to support their ideas about the text.
5. Good readers (and reflectors) make reasonable predictions and inferences based upon what they have read.

 

Good readers link ideas, themes and characters from one text with ideas, themes and characters from another text or another media form (e.g. art, film, drama, etc).

A The Dialogue Journal

 

A Dialogue Journal enables you, the reader, to respond to an article, book or other piece of writing in a personal and analytical way.  Furthermore, it forces you to pause and reflect on what the author has communicated, thereby strengthening your reading comprehension ability.  This is what good readers do naturally.

 

Directions:

 

1. Draw a real or an imaginary line down the middle of each page in your journal.  Label the left-hand side of the page, What the Book Says, and the right-hand side of the page, What I Say. 
2. Use the left-hand side of the page to record something from the book that interests you or that puzzles you.  Copy the passage exactly as it is written.  You may use ellipses (…) if the passage is very long.  Remember to write the page number in parentheses after each passage.  Using some of the attached questioning and/or interactive reading strategies, use the right-hand side of the page to respond to your selected passage.  This will indicate your feelings about the passage.  Then write a more analytical response to the passage.  To do this, closely examine the text and briefly write about it insightfully.  (See the example of a Dialogue Journal entry below.)  Remember to respond with clear and complete sentences.

 

Below is a sample Dialogue Journal that a student wrote to John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me:

 

            What the Book Says                                                     What I Say

“It was unlike anything I had imagined.  I became two men, the observing one and the one who panicked, who felt Negroid even into the depths of his entrails.  I felt the beginnings of great loneliness…I tampered with the mystery of existence and I lost the sense of my own being.” (16)     “Here hips, drew the eye and flirted with the eye and caused the eye to lust or laugh.  It was better to look at hips than at the ghetto.”  (22)

This is Griffin’s first experience as a Negro.  The change for him seemed traumatic but he knew he had to adjust to it.  It must have been frightening because it was like losing all of his security and self-confidence.  He did not know the self he was as a Negro.  It was an identity he could not recognize.   I liked the use of repetitive words.  Also it describes one of Griffin’s opinions about the ghetto and how he’s trying to adjust.

 

            Brandvik, Mary Lou.  Writing Process Activities Kit.  West Nyack, N.Y:  The Center For Applied Research Education, 1990.

Suggestions for Journal Entries

1.  Ask yourself questions about the characters and the action.  Begin a journal entry with, “I don’t understand why …” or “I was surprised when…” or “I’m confused about…”

2.  Imagine that you are speaking to the writer.  What do you like/dislike about the book?  For example, were you satisfied by the ending?  Disappointed?  How would you have liked to see the book end?

3.  What is the most memorable scene in the book and why?

4.  What quotation stands out in your mind and why? (First note the context of the quotation—when or where it happened, and the speaker.)

5.  How does the book’s structure (how it is put together) contribute to the theme of a journey?  Look especially at the beginning and the ending as well as major divisions. 

6.  Do any unusual techniques help you understand the book? Are certain actions, imagery, or phrases repeated? Write down words, phrases, or details that strike you.  Why did you notice them?  Why do think they are there?

7.  From whose point of view is the story told? How does this influence your knowledge of what happens?  How does it influence your sympathy for certain characters? 

8.  What effect does setting(s) have on the characters? Consider both place and time period.

9.  Did you ever question a character’s motivation for his/her actions? When?  Why?

10.  Which character is the hardest to understand and why?  

11.  How does the title reflect upon character, conflict, and theme? What else might it suggest?

12.  Can you empathize with a particular character?  Why?

13.  Did you personally connect with this book for some reason? What does it make you think about? 

 

SECOND TEXT LIST:  All School Book (required of all students):  The Gospel According to Larry by Janet Tashian

Book List (For 2^nd option selection):   Summer Reading 2010~Technology And/Or Science in our Lives:  For Better or Worse!?

  

God’s Debris, by Scott Adams:  Take a metaphysical journey into man’s first science, the search for meaning, as you try to deliver a package to the smartest man in the world who won’t take it until you understand.

 

Super Crunchers: Why Thinking by the Numbers is the New Way to be Smart,  by Ian Ayres:  With real life examples from sports, medicine, online dating, and airline pricing, Ayres describes how data about all of us is collected and crunched  by statisticians and computers to profile consumers benefiting both the consumer and the companies interested in selling to them.

 

Damned Lies and Statistics:  Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists, by Joel Best:  Confused by all the conflicting statistical data being bantered around by advertisers and the media?  Best explains how these statistics are created and their social implications, which will help you distinguish truth from hype.

 

Smart Mobs by Howard Rheingold:  Smart Mobs takes us on a journey around the world for a preview of the next techno-cultural shift. The coming wave, says Rheingold, is the result of super-efficient mobile communications-cellular phones, wireless-paging, and Internet-access devices-that will allow us to connect with anyone, anytime, anywhere.Rheingold offers a penetrating perspective on the new convergence of pop culture, cutting-edge technology, and social activism. He also reminds us that the real impact of mobile communications will come not from the technology itself but from how people use it, resist it, and adapt to it.

 

Here Comes Everybody by Clay Smirky:  "Clay Shirky may be the finest thinker we have on the Internet revolution, but Here Comes Everybody is more than just a technology book; it's an absorbing guide to the future of society itself. Anyone interested in the vitality and influence of groups of human beings -from knitting circles, to political movements, to multinational corporations-needs to read this book."
-Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad Is Good for You and Emergence

 

The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury:  Bradbury addresses many themes in this book including, how does the invention and introduction of technology into a society affect the lives of the people in that society?  How do emotions and/or faith affect the way people live or do not live their lives?

 

Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury:  Set in a grim setting ruled by a tyrannical government in which firemen as we understand them no longer exist; here they don’t douse fires, they ignite them and particularly in homes that douse the most evil of evils:  books.

 

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes:  This is a highly original text about a mentally challenged man named Charles who yearns to be smart.  After a group of scientists select him for an experimental operation that will raise his intelligence to genius level, Charlie finds himself, and his life forever changed.

 

Alas Babylon by Pat Frank:  Survival after a submarine nuclear attack is the focus of this story of a small group of people in Fort Repose, Florida.  Rationing food, reestablishing law and order, and pondering whether there will be any future for the survivors are some of the concerns…

 

Hard Times by Charles Dickens:  Condemning the Industrial Revolution, this 19^th century novel novel shows the power of imagination over facts.

 

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley:  The story of the doctor’s revolting creation teaches lessons about life that will be of interest to those who are wrestling with contemporary issues of Bioethics.

 

Childhood’s End by Arthur Clarke:  Earth is overtaken by a race who eliminates disease and poverty, but then mankind begins to end…

 

A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr:  Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction in 1955, this book depicts the courtroom drama that ensues when two of the nation’s largest corporations stand accused of causing the deaths of children.

 

Hiroshima by John Hersey:  The story of those who survived the bombing of Hiroshima poses many ethical and moral dilemmas.

 

Laying Waste by Michael Brown:  The poisoning of America by Toxic Waste

 

1984 by George Orwell

  

The following two books are extremely challenging but thought provoking and well worth the effort:

 

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig:  A challenging philosophical treatise that examines the Metaphysics of Quality in a technological world.

 

 Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution is a 2000 book by the American cell biologist and Roman Catholic Kenneth R. Miller.  In this book Miller argues that evolution does not contradict religious faith.  In fact, Miller suggests that it is in the quantum world of science (a world that Darwin didn’t know) that the idea, not only of God, but an interactive God in the Judeo-Christian tradition, can be supported.

 

Films for THE Summer lEARNING Experience:

NOTE TO PARENTS: Several of the films listed below have an R rating due to their language, violence, and/or mature subject matter. We do feel that the subject matter of these movies is important enough to warrant their placement on this list. We do, however, want to inform you of the rating and suggest that if your student would like to choose one of these films - please consider watching it with them.

Students should watch one of the following films and answer the questions on the accompanying worksheet.

 

             

Summer Reading Film List 2010: Technology and Science in our Lives for Better or Worse!?

 

Day One PG

 

The history of the atomic bomb--its conception, creation, and deployment--gets an impressively complex yet propulsive treatment in this compelling docudrama. Day One balances human drama, scientific history, and political machinations with uncommon skill and considerable smarts. From the moment that General Groves (Brian Dennehy, Presumed Innocent) is appointed to drive the Manhattan Project, the movie has a driving force; Dennehy presents a brusk and demanding man who never questions whether he is right or wrong. In contrast comes J. Robert Oppenheimer (David Strathairn, Good Night, and Good Luck), a fundamentally decent man whose conflicts about the consequences of the atomic bomb eat at him--Strathairn captures Oppenheimer's qualms even as his will to succeed drives him forward. Day One cunningly juxtaposes political meetings with scientific discussions, subtly comparing different paths of thought. The compressed script distills enormous debates without simplifying them and--even more striking--making the discussions feel like actual conversation, with irrational and expedient factors as significant as the weighty ideas. The story builds to considerable tension as the bomb is tested and, with highly debatable justification, used on a civilian population. Day One presents history at a breakneck pace, using human detail to keep the broad sweep of events grounded, without losing sight of that big picture. Rarely have momentous decisions been so well interlaced with human fallibility. --Bret Fetzer

 

Dr. Strangelove directed by Stanley Kubrick PG

 

SYNOPSIS: “Arguably the greatest black comedy ever made, Stanley Kubrick's cold-war classic is the ultimate satire of the nuclear age. Dr. Strangelove is a perfect spoof of political and military insanity, beginning when General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), a maniacal warrior obsessed with "the purity of precious bodily fluids," mounts his singular campaign against Communism by ordering a squadron of B-52 bombers to attack the Soviet Union. The Soviets counter the threat with a so- called "Doomsday Device," and the world hangs in the balance while the U.S. president (Peter Sellers) engages in hilarious hot-line negotiations with his Soviet counterpart. Sellers also plays a British military attaché and the mad bomb-maker Dr. Strangelove; George C. Scott is outrageously frantic as General Buck Turgidson, whose presidential advice consists mainly of panic and statistics about "acceptable losses." With dialogue ("You can't fight here! This is the war room!") and images (Slim Pickens's character riding the bomb to oblivion) that have become a part of our cultural vocabulary, Kubrick's film regularly appears on critics' lists of the all-time best.” -- Jeff Shannon

 

I, Robot PG-13

 

Science fiction thriller set in 2035 about a technophobic Chicago cop (Will Smith) whose investigation into the apparent suicide of a renowned scientist leads him to suspect that the dead visionary was actually murdered by a member of the swelling robot population he helped create, and which is supposed to be programmed to serve and protect mankind. Inspired by the short works of Isaac Asimov, director Alex Proyas underpins dazzling special-effects sequences with philosophical musings about artificial intelligence, our relationship to technology and what constitutes a soul.

 

Minority Report PG-13

 

Engrossing murder mystery set in 2054, when future crimes can be detected before they are committed, in which a pre-crime police detective (Tom Cruise) is accused of an imminent murder and in attempting to prove his innocence, discovers a flaw in the system. Seeped in futuristic atmospherics, director Steven Spielberg combines thrilling action sequences with a thought-provoking narrative which confronts the issue of personal freedom versus national safety as well as the value of each human life.

 

Gattaca – PG

 

Sci-fi yarn of a future in which genetic engineering has created a master race that treats those conceived naturally as inferiors, one of whom (Ethan Hawke) carries off an elaborate masquerade to become a trusted member of the genetic elite until a murder investigation threatens to reveal his true identity. Writer-director Andrew Niccol sets up the premise of a regimented world ruled by dispassionate logic but succeeds too well in showing how dull such a place would be, even with all the scientific subterfuge used to fool computerized identity checks and the disruptions caused by swarms of investigators on the trail of an impostor.

 

 

The Day the Earth Stood Still PG

 

Competent but inferior science-fiction remake about an alien (Keanu Reeves) who lands on Earth to warn of the planet's doom, and gains the assistance of a top-flight scientist (Jennifer Connelly), escaping from government custody to continue his mission, despite the initial hostility of the scientist's distrustful young stepson (Jaden Smith). Director Scott Derrickson's version of Robert Wise's 1951 genre classic, which also features Kathy Bates as the wary U.S. secretary of defense, substitutes global warming for the threat of Cold War annihilation (both worthy themes).

 

Avatar PG

Among the most expensive and highly anticipated films ever made, director James Cameron's visually arresting science-fiction adventure sends a paraplegic soldier (Sam Worthington) to a planet called Pandora where he falls in love with a native princess (Zoe Saldana) and must choose between her ecologically enlightened culture and his own violent, rapacious species. Amid passages resembling a Vietnam War movie, a western -- pitting bellicose interlopers against spiritual natives in harmony with their natural environment -- and a Disney animated musical, Cameron marshals impressive resources to tell an entertaining story, though whether the aliens' pantheistic religion is meant to be a model for humanity or merely an indigenous cult remains unclear.

 

WARGAMES PG

 

An early eighties film introducing viewers to the dangers of computer hacking.  (starring Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy)

 

Trinity and Beyond Documentary

 

A documentary presenting mankind’s most ambitious effort of perfecting the means to its annihilation. (directed by Peter Kuran)

 

Wall E (G)

 

Beautiful and deeply touching futuristic fable about a soulful-eyed waste removal robot (voice of Ben Burtt), the last on an abandoned, garbage-strewn earth, who falls in love with a visiting search robot (Elissa Knight) and follows her onto a spaceship manned by an ineffectual Captain (Jeff Garlin) and populated by earth's passively sedentary obese refugees. Using Pixar's breathtaking animation techniques, director and co-writer Andrew Stanton has concocted a canny mix of sharp humor, honest sentiment and surprisingly potent romance with (for those adults looking deeper) an underlying indictment of our consumer-oriented society and a timely environmental warning. An instant classic

 

Jurassic Park --  (PG) A bizarre theme park featuring genetically re-created dinosaurs becomes a potential deathtrap when the carnivorous monsters break loose, endangering some visiting scientists (Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum) and two very frightened young children (Joseph Mazzelo and Ariana Richards). Director Steven Spielberg's monster fantasy downplays plot and characterization in favor of spectacle and horrific special effects in which the realistic-looking creatures hunt down their human prey 

 

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein --  (R) Opulent version of the horror classic in which the obsessed Dr. Frankenstein (Kenneth Branagh) lives to regret his reanimation experiment when the hideous but intelligent creature (Robert De Niro) sadly but savagely wreaks revenge on his creator -- with some surprising, if gruesome, departures from the original. Also directed by Branagh, the suspenseful treatment alternates the horrific with the doctor's impassioned love for his beautiful adopted sister (Helena Bonham-Carter), thereby adding a human dimension to the old science-tampering-with-nature story, a cautionary fable of continuing relevance in an age of genetic engineering.

 

Silkwood --  (R) Fact-based story of Karen Silkwood (Meryl Streep), a worker in a plutonium processing factory who died in a 1974 auto accident, on her way to tell a reporter what she knew about unsafe conditions in the plant. The movie does not confront the question of whether this was indeed an accident or a murder committed to prevent her evidence from being revealed.

 

Back to the Future – (PG-13) Above-average entertainment about a teenager (Michael J. Fox) who is transported back through time and obliged to serve as matchmaker for his parents or face retroactive non-existence. A major problem is that his mother-to-be finds him far more attractive than she does his father-to-be. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, it is funny and clever with a bit of genuine sentiment.

 

Multiplicity – (PG-13) In this highly imaginative comedy, Michael Keaton stars as Doug Kinney, an overworked family man who is in desperate need of a vacation. When pressures mount at a job site, he is noticed by a slightly deranged scientist who offers him an intriguing solution to his problems: cloning. Doug agrees and finds himself with an exact replica to do all of his dirty work at the office. But there's just one problem…

 

Charly- (PG) The film version of Flowers For Algernon

 

ARTWORKS FOR THE SUMMER LEARNING EXPERIENCE:

Look over the artworks here and choose one that speaks to you- there are paintings, illustrations, prints, industrial design and sculpture.   Be sure to look at all of them before making your choice.   Notice there are several images for one of the artworks.

After you have chosen the artwork, spend at least one minute really looking at it before you begin to write.  Answer the first two questions that apply to all the artworks, and then answer the specific questions for the artwork you have chosen.

For all artwork please the thumbnail pics to see a full picture:

 

1. Identify the art work- Title, artist, year
2. After you have spent a full minute just looking at the artwork to see all the details, take an inventory and describe EVERYTHING you see in the image in as much detail as you can.

 

Specific Questions by artwork- answer in 1-2 well developed paragraphs.

 

 

 

WORKSHEETS FOR THE Summer Learning Experience – Service to Others:  The worksheets for the second book; the film and your music selection are below.  If you'd like to type your answers, simply copy/paste the information into a Word Document.

 

 

 Report Form to be used with 2^nd book chosen from the list

 

{This form may be completed on the computer or printed out and filled in by hand. Please bring it to school on the first full day for all classes.} 

 

 

Your Name_______________________________________

 

I read the book__________________________________   by_____________________________________

 

1.         Identify and Describe two of the main characters in this story:

 

 

 

 

2.       What do you see as the central conflict in the story and how is it resolved?

 

 

 

 

3.    Describe the element of service to others that you see in the book and talk about an important effect it had on one of the characters.  (If you don’t think there was an element of service to others in the text, tell why not…)

 

 

 

 

 

 4.       One thing I really liked about this book was … (e.g. imagery, dialogue, style, characters, etc.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Report form to be use with Film chosen from choice list

 

 

Your Name: _____________________________________________________

 

I watched the film ________________________ director___________________________

 

 

1.    Identify and describe two of the main characters in the film …

 

 

 

 

 

2.  What is the central conflict in the film and how is it resolved?

 

 

 

 

 

3.  Describe an element of service to others in the film and talk about an important effect it had on one of the characters  (If you don’t think there was an element of service to others in the film, tell why not…).

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. The best part of this film was when...

 

 

 

 

 

Music Worksheet

 

Report form to be use with Music chosen:

 

 

Your Name_______________________________________

 

I listened to the song:  ________________________________By: _____________________________

 

1. The style of music is considered (ex: rock, country, pop…)

 

 

 

2. My favorite line or image from the song was… and it struck me because…

 

 

 

 

3. In this song I see a connection to the idea of “service to others” because…