I had summer reading from middle school up through my junior year of high school, when one of the books we could choose from was Jack by A.M. Homes, which is about a teenage boy whose father comes out of the closet. Parents complained, and the following year there was no summer reading.
My sister’s going into seventh grade, and she has summer reading, but I’m not sure if they’ve reinstated it at the high school yet.
Edit: I graduated from high school in 2004.
Every year up up to the sixth-to-seventh grade summer, I had no formal reading list but we were each given an assignment to bring two book reports to the first day of school. Starting in the seventh-to-eighth summer we received individual lists from our teachers for the next year.
In my school, AP English was offered on a very limited basis, competition was necessary to get a slot, the same teacher taught it every year, and she issued a reading list of 4 books to read over the summer (with a test the first week of school). This is typical for students in the advanced classes because there isn’t enough time in the school year to prep for AP classes and do all the other silly stuff that comes with school, like taking dumb No Child Left Behind tests.
Anyway, good students are already readers, and reading 4 books in 10 weeks is not a hardship. I read that and more my senior summer.
I graduated high school in the mid-nineties, and we had summer reading every year. Probably starting at middle school (6th grade). Everyone was required to read books, not just honors/AP kids. Until the last years of high school (where there were more stratifications of honors, regular, remedial, AP, . . .), everyone read the same 3-4 books over the summer.
We always had assignments the first week of school that pertained to the books- usually in history and literature classes. The assignments ranged from essay tests to making posters- really just depended on the teacher. I remember most of my summer reading was done in the 5 or so days before the school year began.
My kids had summer reading assignments from first grade on. For the first couple of grades, they just had to read a certain number of books from a list and write a very simple book report. Then from 3rd or 4th grade up until 8th, there was an assigned book, and “pick three others from the following list” .There was a test on the assigned book at the beginning of the year, and book reports for the others. In high school it was different. For certain classes, all incoming students in a certain grade read the same book, while for others different levels had different assignments. My daughter even had summer reading before her first year of college, for an English course she was required to take her first semester.
It didn't matter that in high school, the kids wouldn't know their schedule or teachers until the first day of school. ( They had an idea in June, but there were sometimes changes over the summer). The reading wasn't assigned by individual teachers.That reminds me. The University in my hometown added a required book for the incoming freshman this year, for the first time. They all have to take a UNI 101 course, called “Intro to the University”, and read The Things They Carried{/U]. Oddly, it’s what my niece is reading for 11th grade too!
I grew up in the West Sububs of Chicago and like a few other posters we didn’t even know what classes we were going to take. In August a course schedule was mailed to your parents and then you (the student) picked out what classes you wanted (five classes and two alternates, you had six courses but the sixth was gym and you had no choice you had to take that) then your parent had to sign off on your choices.
Then on first day of school you picked up your schedule. So you had no idea what teacher or even what classes you had cause you often got your alternates.
That was also the book I had to read as an incoming freshman. Tim O’Brien came and did a talk during orientation weekend.
My book club read The Things They Carried and we really liked it. His In the Lake of the Woods is also excellent - an atmospheric thriller about a maybe-murder.
I moved to Fl in my senior year of high school, and apparently they had some kind of summer reading that obviously I hadn’t done, being in another state in all. Fortunately for me, at least in the 80s, Florida high school students were on average about as smart as algae, and were reading at a bacteria level, so I was able to knock out whatever the hell they needed to read in a weekend. It was the latest issue of ‘People’ IIRC. (Just kidding, it wasn’t that bad, but I do remember it only took me a couple days).
I was never in any advanced English/Lit courses, but I remember summe rreadign* being standard from (Catholic) grammar school on through (Catholic) high school.
*-I was going to edit & correct this, but I guess it’s funny in context within that sentence.
I would like to refute this. But I can’t. I think our teachers were just happy if we were able to read at all.
My daughter has a summer reading list. This summer it was Jeanette Walls’ The Glass Castle, Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, and another book that had me wondering, “Aren’t these basically all the same story?”
I asked her what the deal was with summer reading, and she said that last year, the teacher found that almost no one had read the books, so she gave the students some other assignment.
Linky no worky.
My kids were both in Honors English, and I don’t remember a reading list. Is there any work associated with the list? If someone reads a book in July, are they supposed to remember the details in September, or is this just a ploy to get the kids to read something?
There was certainly no such thing when I was in high school. though back then the only stuff available to read were cave paintings and John McCain’s autobiography.
Hmph. That’s not literature; that’s just chicken-scratches. What are they giving kids these days, En-me-barage-si’s shopping list?
I graduated in 2005 and always had “summer reading lists” or “summer work” for all of my classes. We got packets of math problems for math, duh, an at home science experiment for science and what have you. None of it was actually summer work though, as some parents took offense to the school stealing their precious children’s vacation time, we always had 2 weeks into the school year to do the work, or copy it from the one person who did it, or read the summary of the book rather than the actual book.
work smart, don’t work hard. 
My kids were expected to write book reports in the lower grades. As they got older, there were fewer choices involved in the reading- by high school, there was no choice. They were expected to take notes as they read the mandatory book(s) and be prepared to discuss the book during the first week or two of classes. Then there was a test on the book.
Unless you read cuneiform, it probably doesn’t matter…
I never had any summer reading (graduated in 2006), but there were only 43 in my graduating class and the school had no Honors classes nor did it offer any AP classes.
It was so bad that in English class my senior year the teacher read Tarzan and Beowulf to us aloud in class. Welcome to the wonders of No Child Left Behind in rural Ohio, a.k.a Teach To The Dumbest Kid In The Room. :rolleyes:
