Horizon High School Pre-AP English 1-2H: Summer Reading Assignment Pre-AP
Welcome to English 1-2H, an introductory course to the Advanced Placement English Program that covers a wide range of
literature from around the world! Throughout the year, freshmen study various themes in works of literary merit and develop their
skills in literary critique and persuasive/argumentative analysis.
To prepare for this class, you will be expected to read one novel over the summer, ​Ender’s Game​ by Orson Scott Card. With this
novel:
● You will take an objective test (i.e., true or false, multiple choice, matching, etc.) at the end of the first week of school.
● There will be a series of discussions and activities the first weeks of school.
● During summer, you will complete a dialectic journal that ​you will submit on the first day of class.
○ This needs to include 15 entries.
■ Quotes need to be equally distributed throughout the novel; therefore, pull quotes from the
beginning through the end of the novel. Pull one quote approximately every 22 pages.
○ This needs to be completed digitally as a Google Doc via your PV Learners account.
○ This needs to be completed with the journal template found on Mrs. Parizek and Mr. Cerne’s websites.
○ You will also need to have ​both ​a ​printed​ and a ​digital copy​ of your dialectic journal ​by​ ​our first class​.
○ The attached rubric will be used to score your dialectic journal.
Note: Students are strongly encouraged to read ​Ender’s Game​ in July rather than June. This way you will have better recollection
of the novel, its content and structure. It’s also discouraged that you wait until the final week of summer because it will be hard to
cram in diligent reading and do an exemplary job on the dialectic journal!
How to Create a Google Doc for Your Dialectic Journals:
1. Go to the following web site: ​h​ttps://tinyurl.com/HHSfroshDJ
2. At the bottom of the page, please download the DialecticJournalTemplate.docx.
3. Once the document opens, you will need to make a copy of it for your own use. To do that, Look at the upper menu in Google
Docs, and choose File—> Make a Copy.
4. You will then be asked to create a new name for your journals. Please do so, and choose a name that you will easily remember.
Click the blue box that states OK when you’re done. Leave the box Share it with the same people UNCHECKED.
5. You will now have your own personal dialectic journal document to work with. Now, follow the writing directions below.
How to Write Your Dialectic Journals
In the left-hand column, you will type a quotation from the novel that strikes you as being particularly noteworthy in some way.
This does NOT have to be a dialogue but should be something that gives insight into the plot, characters, setting, themes, or other
literary elements of the novel. Be sure to include the author’s last name and the page number on which you found the quotation.
In the right-hand column, you will add your own commentary about why you chose this quotation, how it fits with the rest of the
book, what it made you think about, what it shows about characters, setting, themes, or what literary terms you think it especially
exemplifies.
Note: Y​our commentary should be 2-3 times longer than the quote you chose; we are interested in what YOU are thinking
about the novel more than the words of the author.​ You should have a minimum of 15 journal entries, and each commentary
must have a minimum of 100 words. Be sure to complete a word count; the Google doc already has the d.j.’s numbered for you.
Commentary must show honesty, integrity, quality of thinking, and maturity of original thought as well as completion of the entire
novel (divide total pg. numbers by 15 to ensure that quotes extend evenly throughout the novel).
Study the example on the following page from ​Ender’s Game​.
Quotation
Commentary
1. ​“’Ender,’ Graff said, ‘if you come with me, you won’t be back
here for a long time. There aren’t any vacations from Battle School.
No visitors, either. A full course of training lasts until you’re sixteen
years old – you get your first leave, under certain circumstances,
when you’re twelve. Believe me, Ender, people change in six years,
in ten years. Your sister Valentine will be a woman when you see
her again, if you come with me. You’ll be strangers. You’ll still love
her, Ender, but you won’t know her’” (Card 21).
1. Shortly after attacking Stilson to protect himself, Ender is visited
by Colonel Graff. Ender believes he is in trouble for his actions, but
learns that it was his choice to protect himself that shows the
International Fleet he has the skill and temperament for Battle
School. Graff explains the difficulty of choosing to attend the
school and uses Ender’s guilt of being a Third and his capacity for
violence to convince him to attend. Ender ultimately fulfills the
archetypal role of the loner or outcast in that he is separated from his
family and the world that he knows to go to Battle School. It is this
separation and his role as the outcast even once he reaches Battle
School that allow him to mature into the leader he becomes later in
the novel. [134 Words]
(Note: The period follows documentation; however, quotes
ending with exclamation points and question marks go inside the
quotation marks.)
Part of your commentary can be personal -- a reader's response.
A student example is as follows:
I have a step sister that lives in Europe, and I only see her every five
or six years. I understand what the speaker means when he says that
Ender will still love his sister but will not really know her. This is
going to be hard on him. [49 words]
It is fine to add a reader's response to commentary, but you
should ALSO analyze the passage from the novel. It is not a
good idea to have a journal response that is ONLY reader
response.
A​ll commentaries need to show how many words you used in a
single response, as shown above. If you can, shoot for 100 to 150
words per journal response. Please place the word count in
brackets.
Correct MLA Parenthetical Documentation:
Notice from the example journal entry:
●
The author’s last name and page number go ​inside ​the parentheses that directly follow the last quotation mark; if there is
more than one page number, use a hyphen. Ex.: (Dickens 345-346).
●
The period follows the entire citation and goes ​outside​ the final parenthetical punctuation mark (notice where the arrow is
pointing).
●
If your quote ends in a question mark (?) or an exclamation point (!), place ONLY those marks directly after the last word
in your quote, then place the quotation mark, followed by the correct parenthetical documentation and STILL place a
period outside the final parenthetical mark.
●
If you are quoting dialogue, use single quotes ( ‘ ‘) for the actual words that a character is speaking, but use double quotes
(“ “) for the ENTIRE quote. Also, be sure to place a space between each type of quote. (Closely study the example
above).
Pre-AP/AP Scoring Rubric
A Pre-AP Honors 1-2 student is expected to receive an overall score of “6”or better.
9-8: ​A 9 essay is above the pack--fresh, sophisticated, marked with stylistic finesse.
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Excellent use of thoughtfully chosen, apt, and specific concrete details and references to the text.
Response to the prompt and/or topic is cogent (convincing); insightful, and perceptive commentary and interpretation –
free of plot summary, ideas are expressed with clarity and skill; skillfully addresses the “what,” the “how,” and the “why”
in the prompt.
Well organized with careful development; excellent thesis; logically ordered, strong conclusion; smooth transitions (not
First​…​Second​…).
Well-written, with pleasing sentence variety, sound sentence structure (no fragments, run-ons), precise and fresh
diction (word choice). Uses third person (if necessary) and few “to be” verbs.
Virtually no errors in conventions such as spelling, grammar, usage, and mechanics.
7-6: ​A 7 paper will have more developed analysis and have better control over sentence structure, diction, and
conventions; a 6 is a “safe” that is crafted carefully but needs more than written.
● Effectively uses well-chosen and specific concrete details and references to the text.
● Commentary and analysis are thoughtful and convincing, but less insightful and less developed than 9-8.
● Effectively addresses the “what” and the “how,” but may miss the “why.”
● Well-written, with some sentence variety; good sentence structure, high-level and varied diction. Uses third person
(if appropriate).
● Few errors in conventions – spelling, grammar, usage, and mechanics.
5: ​A paper that meets the assignment, but seems generic and mechanical.
● Contains and uses concrete details and textual references correctly, but it may be superficial, obvious, and/or vague.
● Commentary is generic, but contains some analysis. Writing displays writer’s ideas in an overly generalized fashion.
● Paper is organized, adequate thesis, but may not address the complexity of the question; logically ordered,
adequate conclusion, contains transitions.
● Little sentence variety, but adequate sentence structure; diction is adequate and correct, but may be repetitive or generic.
May lapse into inappropriate voice (ex: going from 3​rd​ person to 1​st​).
● May have some, but not serious, errors in conventions – spelling, grammar, usage, mechanics.
4-3: ​A 3 paper compounds the weakness of a 4: weaker writing skills, less organization, misinterpretation, inadequate
development and serious omissions
● Contains some supporting evidence, but is weak, paraphrased, vague, or inaccurate.
● Analysis and commentary are weak, misguided, and/or inaccurate and unclear. Response paraphrase and plot
summary opposed to analysis. Writing does address the topic and conveys the writer’s ideas, but is underdeveloped.
Response fails to address the question adequately.
● Paper shows some sense of organization, imprecise thesis or merely a restatement of the question; ideas may drift from
or are not connected to the thesis; weak conclusion; may lack transitions and topic sentences.
● Little sentence variety; sentence structure errors, generic and/or repetitive diction – overuse or misuse of “I” and/or “you.”
● Weak control over conventions – spelling, grammar, usage, mechanics.
2-1: ​A 1 paper is unacceptably brief or incoherently long, full of mechanical errors, and/or missed the focus of the topic.
● Very little, if any, concrete detail and textual support, if present, it is unacceptably vague.
● Plot summary and/or paraphrase substitute for commentary and analysis; some attempt to answer the question, but with
very little clarify or coherence.
● Lack of control over organization and development; may ramble; thesis is weak or nonexistent; a restatement of the
question or absent altogether.
● Little sentence variety; may have distracting errors in sentence structure and diction.
● Weak control and distracting errors in conventions – spelling, grammar, usage, mechanics.
0​: ​A response that is no more than a reference to the task. It translates to an F.