News

As part of the educational program at Holy Cross High School, all students who are entering the 9th grade in September 2021 are required to read the following books during the summer recess:

• Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

• I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai (Full text version, not young reader’s version.)

Students who are enrolled in an English 9 Honors class must also read:

• Graceling by Kristin Cashore

There are three basic reasons for this activity:

1. to improve reading skills
2. to increase the student’s knowledge base
3. to prepare students for their English teacher’s introductory lessons

Please note:

• All students will take the Summer Reading Exam in English class within
  the first few days of school. The exam will incorporate explicit elements of theme and author intention, so students should take responsible and thorough notes on the texts while they are reading.
• The Summer Reading Exam grade counts as a significant percentage of all students’ first quarter grade in English class; therefore, all must take this assignment seriously.
• Students will find during the course of the year that the above texts will be valuable as response material for work incorporating the Common Core State Standards and for practicing the skills needed for the Regents Exam in English.

As part of the educational program at Holy Cross High School, all students who are entering the 10th grade in September 2021 are required to read the following books during the summer recess:

• And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

• Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat

Students who are enrolled in an English 10 Honors class must also read:

• In The Lake of The Woods by Tim O’Brien

There are three basic reasons for this activity:

1. to improve reading skills
2. to increase the student’s knowledge base
3. to prepare students for their English teacher’s introductory lessons

Please note:

• All students will take the Summer Reading Exam in English class within
  the first few days of school. The exam will incorporate explicit elements of theme and author intention, so students should take responsible and thorough notes on the texts while they are reading.
• The Summer Reading Exam grade counts as a significant percentage of all students’ first quarter grade in English class; therefore, all must take this assignment seriously.
• Students will find during the course of the year that the above texts will be valuable as response material for work incorporating the Common Core State Standards and for practicing the skills needed for the Regents Exam in English.

As part of the educational program at Holy Cross High School, all students who are entering the 11th grade in September 2021 are required to read the following books during the summer recess:

• A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

• My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor

Students who are enrolled in an English 11 Honors class must also read:

• A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

There are three basic reasons for this activity:

1. to improve reading skills
2. to increase the student’s knowledge base
3. to prepare students for their English teacher’s introductory lessons

Please note:

• All students will take the Summer Reading Exam in English class within
  the first few days of school. The exam will incorporate explicit elements of theme and author intention, so students should take responsible and thorough notes on the texts while they are reading.
• The Summer Reading Exam grade counts as a significant percentage of all students’ first quarter grade in English class; therefore, all must take this assignment seriously.
• Students will find during the course of the year that the above texts will be valuable as response material for work incorporating the Common Core State Standards and for practicing the skills needed for the Regents Exam in English.

As part of the educational program at Holy Cross High School, all students who are entering the 12th grade in September 2021 are required to read the following books during the summer recess:

• The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells

• A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah

Students who are entering College English in September 2021 must instead read the following three different books:

• A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawkings

• The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

• Shakespeare – The World As Stage by Bill Bryson

There are three basic reasons for this activity:

1. to improve reading skills
2. to increase the student’s knowledge base
3. to prepare students for their English teacher’s introductory lessons

Please note:

• All students will take the Summer Reading Exam in English class within
  the first few days of school. The exam will incorporate explicit elements of theme and author intention, so students should take responsible and thorough notes on the texts while they are reading.
• The Summer Reading Exam grade counts as a significant percentage of all students’ first quarter grade in English class; therefore, all must take this assignment seriously.
• Regardless of which senior English course(s) students are taking, the above texts all cover the breadth of contextual and thematic elements that all courses and electives have in common. Those enrolled in genre-specific electives should pay particular attention to the authors’ execution of genre expectations and detail. The AP classes reading lists are separate and different from those above.

Seniors registered for AP Literature and Composition: There are three books that you will be required to read. These books will form the core of the class work and discussions for the first semester. This list is necessarily different from College English and the AP Language and Composition class lists.

Summer Reading required books:

• 1984 by George Orwell

• A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

• Between The World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

There are also books that you’ve read in past English classes that you should review to re-familiarize yourself with specific themes. The themes explored in these works will come up in class discussions as well as (possibly) the AP exam itself.

• A Raisin in The Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

• King Lear by William Shakespeare

• The Lord of The Flies by William Golding

Please note:

• The Advanced Placement test is a challenging exam. Naturally, reading is an important part of the test. The most significant purpose for reading to prepare for the AP Lit test is for the student choice free-response question.For this question you’ll be asked to examine how a specific theme works in one novel or play that you closely read both in class and independently with an to increase your familiarity with literature from different eras and genres and to improve your critical close-reading skills; the more books you have time to read, the better.
• You’ll want to critically read them for comprehension and analysis, but you don’t necessarily need to focus equally on every book you read.
• Students will find during the course of the year that the above texts will be valuable as response material for work incorporating the Advanced Placement Standards.

In order to become more informed citizens and to gather evidence for your argument essays, you will complete a REHUGO portfolio. Each of the sections will be graded separately. The type of evidence you are collecting is exactly the type of information you will need to knowledgeably defend your position in an argument essay on the AP exam, so the work product must be thorough and meet the standards of the AP exam readers (in other words, don’t bring in evidence from unreliable sources or that deal with trivial matters).

ORGANIZATION: You will be sharing 6 separate Google Docs each titled with the following with one of the following six terms:

R – Reading E – Education H – History U – Universal Truths G – Government O – Opinion

SUBMIT: You will be asked for multiple examples for some of these categories. Please refer to the chart.For each researched example of evidence, you will include the following:

• a written précis paragraph
• a link to a professionally published piece that’s NOT written by you (a news article that summarizes events, a brochure for a museum exhibit, a review of a book from a respected publication, a printed page from an online encyclopedia).
• 3-5 sentence personal commentary

Model Précis:
Sentence one: Name of author, (optional—a phrase describing the author), genre and title of work, date in parentheses, a descriptive verb such as “assert,” “argue,” “imply,” “suggest,” “claim,” etc., and a “that” clause containing the essay’s main assertion or thesis statement
Sentence two: An explanation of how the author develops and/or supports the thesis, usually in chronological order
Sentence three: A statement of the author’s apparent purpose, followed by an “in order” phrase
Sentence four: A description of the intended audience and/or the relationship the author establishes with the audience and possibly an identification of the tone the author takes.
You will be producing some version of this project each quarter throughout the 2020-2021 school year