Posts
Monday, June 23, 2008
Any summer projects to share?
If your child has been assigned a summer project--particularly one that seems excessively complex, open-ended, off-topic, and/or demanding of time and/or "creativity"--I'm currently collecting anecdotes about these. I've just posted two of my own children's summer projects at Out In Left Field; I'd love to post more. You can share them as comments here, or at OILF.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
19 comments:
Kids get assigned summer projects???
That strikes me as an intrusion into the family.
OK, here goes:
This summer, C has to read 2525 pages:
Fahrenheit 451
A Raisin in the Sun
Last Days of Summer
Angels and Demons
Angela's Ashes
Guns, Germs, and Steel (all)
The Odyssey (books 1-12)
Book of Genesis (all)
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens
6 articles from NYTIMES Science section
writing:
ODYSSEY -- answer questions in essay form
BOOK OF GENESIS -- "Answer the following objective questions in the spaces provided" & sign statement of integrity.
BIOLOGY -- Summarize articles in teacher's indicated format.
7 HABITS -- Complete a written activity in one section of book.
In our case, these assignments won't cut into family time.
They will cut into Grand Theft Auto time.
C. had no clue how to figure out a work schedule. NONE!
The best he could come up with was, "Maybe I should read Fahrenheit 451 first."
He has to read 250 pages a week to make it.
He also has to do some math (ALEKS - will post something about that) AND he has GOT to make some headway in the Organize, Analyze, Write book we started last summer.
The English list is fantastic. I'd never read Fahrenheit 451 or Raisin in the Sun -- amazing.
Ed's reading Last Days of Summer & keeping me awake out night laughing out loud.
C. has finished Fahrenheit & Raisin in the Sun; today he began Angela's Ashes. He's tickled because the major term of abuse so far is "Protestant." Any time a kid misbehaves the priest calls him a dirty Protestant, I gather.
I'm reading Angels & Demons.
A friend of Ed's told us to get the CD of Ian McKellan reading The Odyssey, so we did - can't wait! Ed says that's how he studied Shakespeare in college: he listened to the plays being read (or performed) on tape.
I've also discovered that Catholics have a different & far more readable Bible, thank God. I've been slugging my way through the King James Version for lo these many months, and had only made it to page 30 or so.
I've always wanted to have students read Paul's Letter to the Romans and put the arguments in symbolic logic. And prove that the arguments are valid. Or not. D'ya think they'd let me do that in a Catholic school math class?
Well, minus Guns, Germs and Steel, the others are decent. Except for Angels and Demons...but the Jesuits have their own ideas of Catholicism, so maybe that's for levity.
You mean the New Revised Standard bible? Yes, more readable on one level, but much less poetry. Much less literature. Have you been told to get a specific version? Because KJV is the standard for rhetoric classes, I would still think. even for Jesuits.
I'm impressed with the reading list. I only had summer assignments before Junior and Senior year of high school, and even then it was only 4 or 6 novels. nothing as big as what your son is facing. And a good introduction to what he can expect a typical workload to be like. If he can figure it out in the next 2 months, he'll be golden. Of course, that'll be hard, but a lot better than the alternative.
As far as I can tell, the "Catholic" Bible I bought isn't any of the translations Protestants are familiar with. It's called "The New American Bible."
oh, ok -- here's one of the front pages:
"For the faithful in all English-speaking countries the publication of The New American Bible represents a notable achievement. Its pages contain a new Catholic version of the Bible in English, along with illustrations and explanations that facilitate the understanding of the text.
For more than a quarter of a century, members of the Catholic Biblical Association of America, sponsored by the Bishops' Committee of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, have labored to create this new translation of the Scriptures from the original languages or from the oldest extant form in which the texts exist.
In so doing, the translators have carried out the directive of our predecessor, Pius XII, in his famous Encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu, and the decree of the Second Vatican Council (Dei Verbum), which prescribed that "up-to-date and appropriate translations be made in the various languages, by preference from the original texts of the sacred books," and that "with the approval of Church authority, these translations may be produced in cooperation with our separated brethren" so that "all Christians may be able to use them."
The holy task of spreading God's word to the widest possible readership ahs a special urgency today....
On all who have contributed to this translation, and all who seek in its pages the sacred teaching and the promise of salvation of Jesus Christ our Lord, we gladly bestow our paternal Apostolic Blessing.
From the Vatican, September 18, 1970
Paulus PP.VI
........
This version has an interesting history of the various translations of the Bible at the beginning.
The reference to "our separated brethren" means Protestants, I believe. That was pretty funny. I'm Scots-Irish on both sides of the family, and my Great Granddad McCammon, who pretty much raised my mom while her folks were on the road, was a Methodist minister who decked himself out in shamrocks on St. Patrick's day. My mom violently disapproved of Catholics! We kids were raised on a steady diet of bad-stuff-Catholics-do. Every single day, when she was a girl, she had to walk her little sister to school, which involved passing the Catholic school, and the Catholic kids threw rocks at them because they were Protestants.
Naturally, all of the Catholic-Protestant rivalry resulted in us kids developing a fascination for the Catholics and their strange ways. I took piano lessons from the nuns, and each year I spent one school day at the Catholic school in my town.
To me, the whole place was magic, especially the little holy water basins at the doorways to the classrooms.
C's new school is magical, too.
I feel as if I'm shipping him off to Hogwarts. My Muggle child.
I can't read the KJV. I just can't. No way C. is going to manage it.
from The New American Bible:
1: The Primeval History
Chapter 1
First Story of Creation. 1 In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters.
3 Then God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 4 God saw how good the light was. God then separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." Thus evening came and morning followed--the first day.
6 Then God said, "Let there be a dome in the middle of the waters, to separate one body of water from the other." And so it happened: 7 God made the dome, and it separated the water above the dome from the water below it. 8 God called the dome "the sky." Evening came and morning followed--the second day.
Several topics to comment on here, so this will get somewhat rambly.
Summer reading requirements:
That list doesn't look so bad, it's only a book a week, and he's already more than 20% done.
I would suggest, especially if he has trouble prioritizing and other executive skills, that he start with Seven Habits.... I believe it addresses that very topic.
I attended public school for 1-8 (not sure that I did K; it wasn't mandatory back then), then transferred to a private school for 9-12. In high school we had summer reading lists as well, for both English and history. I believe both lists had two (or three) mandatory books, and then a choice of "three (or two) of the following eight books".
As rising juniors, we had to read the first N pages of Michener's Chesapeake (I grew up in Virginia). I loved to read (and still do), but if you've ever seen a Michener novel, you know how daunting they look. The paperback of Chesapeake has 865 pages, is about two inches thick, and although only the first N pages were required, I read the entire thing, and that was the beginning of an obsession for Michener's historical novels that lasted me several years. I probably have about 15-20 of them that I read between junior year in high school and graduation from college.
My alma mater has not posted any reading for history, but here is the summer reading for English for C's cohort:
Rising 9th grade standard:
Speak - Laurie Anderson
My Brother's Keeper - Patricia McCormick
Rising 9th grade honors:
Speak - Laurie Anderson
My Brother’s Keeper - Patricia McCormick
Also, choose one book from the following list:
Tumbling - Diane McKinney-Whetston
Cannery Row - John Steinbeck
Color of Water - James McBride
In addition to English, there are also readings posted for IB Government, AP/IB Chemistry (review problems and lab work), and IB History II (20th c. European History), which are all 10th-12th grade courses.
Catholic Bible:
You can read it online:
http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/bible/
It has the "extra chapters" aka apocrypha, such as 1&2 Maccabees, Sirach, etc.
Although I was raised in a Methodist household by a converted Baptist and a converted Episcopalian, and attended an Episcopal high school, I went to college at a very secular private university. Even so, I took, by choice, two semesters of "Old Testament Taught as Literature" from an M.Div, Ph.D. in Religious Studies. He was Catholic, so we used the NAB. I still have mine somewhere, complete with my "scholarly" scribblings.
I would suggest, especially if he has trouble prioritizing and other executive skills, that he start with Seven Habits.... I believe it addresses that very topic.
oh my gosh!
good point!
I didn't even think of that.
I wish I'd had a Bible as literature course.
I'm going to try to track along with C's course.
OH, I can't believe you have that link!
(New American Bible)
THANK YOU!
That's going to be a help when we're reading at the same time, when Bibles go missing, when we need annotations...
GREAT!
I forgot to ask: Is C's new school 9-12, 8-12, K-12, or other?
My high school was 8-12 (fed by several K-7 feeder schools), but even the rising 8th graders had summer assignments.
I entered in the school in 9th, but most of my classmates had been together since 8th grade, and many of them since Kindergarten. There were a few of us outsiders from the ranks of the public junior highs, though.
Ah, NAB makes sense. That's the Bible that the Gospel readings come from in Catholic masses these days. Not the best translation in terms of scholarly work, but good.
You may want to supplement the Bible with "The Picture Bible".
http://www.amazon.com/Picture-Bible-Iva-Hoth/dp/0781430550
I think highly of it and it makes it very easy to keep stories/actors straight.
-Mark Roulo
Post a Comment