2010 Cambridge AICE Academy
Summer Assignments
One of the greatest abilities we possess as humans is the ability to read. Reading opens our minds
to many different worlds- worlds we otherwise might not have the opportunity to explore. One of
the objectives of the Cambridge Academy is to help enrich and further develop students’ reading
skills.
Summer Reading Lists change every year based upon the requirements of the course syllabi as
presented to us by the University of Cambridge. Please be aware that novels, plays, and poetry
collections used in Pre-AICE and AICE courses at Ronald W. Reagan/Doral Senior High School
are determined by the University of Cambridge. Every student enrolled in an AICE program
throughout the world will be required to read the same set texts. Every text selected by the
University of Cambridge has literary merit, but on some occasions a parent or student may object
to a given literary work. Making accommodations is next to impossible since AICE students are
tested on only the specific literary works that are designed as set texts for a particular syllabus.
Please understand that by agreeing to take a Pre-AICE or AICE course, your child has
demonstrated academic potential and intellectual maturity and should be able to handle the
challenging texts set by this program.
*Please Note: Students will be tested on the material in the novels during the first week of the
school year and the grades will be averaged into students’ first nine weeks’ grade. Therefore,
please realize that the Summer Reading Assignments are not optional.
Academic dishonesty will not be tolerated! All work must be your own. Do not make use
of spark notes or any other novel guide. Any paper which is plagiarized will receive
Zeroes. You must cite when quoting or paraphrasing from the novel.
Ronald W. Reagan/Doral Senior High School
9th Grade Pre-AICE Cambridge
Summer Reading Assignments
Assignment deadline:
Project: Due on the second day of class.
Papers: Due on the third day of class.
You must complete all assignments. Late work will not be accepted!
Academic dishonesty will not be tolerated! All work must be your own. Do not make use
of spark notes or any other novel guide. Any paper which is plagiarized will receive
Zeroes. You must cite when quoting or paraphrasing from the novel.
Novels:
1. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
2. Anthem by Ayn Rand
Missing Cartoons from The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
by Sherman Alexie
By drawing cartoons, Junior feels safe. He draws “because I want to talk to the world. And I
want the world to pay attention to me.” His drawings are sometimes whimsical, sometimes
humorous, and sometimes crushingly tragic. His drawings (for example, “Who my parents
would have been if somebody had paid attention to their dreams” and “white/Indian”) also
showcase his understanding of the ways that racism has deeply impacted his and his family’s
lives.
Now you will draw four additional cartoons that never made it in the final printing of the novel.
Think of it as the deleted scenes found in the DVD release of a film. Choose 4 moments/scenes
from the novel that are not illustrated and create four cartoons in a style similar to Junior’s
(although you will not be graded on the quality of your drawing but how the content of your
cartoon mirrors the themes, tone, and the character’s understanding of the world). Your cartoons
should vary from whimsical, humorous, and tragic. They also need to be complex and not
simply the drawing of a single figure (again, don’t worry about the quality but the content of
what you’re trying to get across). Under each cartoon include a quote from the scene of the
novel you are illustrating. Make sure to include a citation, for example: (Shemin 93).
Place all four cartoons into a neatly and creatively bound book and title it.
Written Responses for Anthem by Ayn Rand in the Format of Pre-AICE Questions
1. Pre-AICE Paper 3, Question 1
Directions: Read the following prompt and respond in a typed speech.
Imagine that after the end of the novella, more and more citizens join Prometheus in his home he
found in the uncharted forest. Learning of these disappearances, the council of scholars becomes
worried that their way of life is threatened. To prevent any more people from joining
Prometheus, they write a speech to be given at the theater to explain the disappearances. They
will claim that those who have disappeared have died horrible deaths in the uncharted forest.
Write a typed response of several paragraphs about 1 1/2 to 2 pages in length. Feel free to use
creative invention but also use events and quotes from the novella. Remember to include
citations for your quotes, such as (Rand 33).
You will be graded according to the following Pre-AICE Rubrics.
2. Pre-AICE Paper 2, Question 2
Directions: Read the following questions and respond in two typed paragraphs, one for each
part.
Summarize:
(c) The scholars’ ideas of human achievement and thought, in the form of the collective, as
they explain it to Equality/Prometheus in Chapter 7.
(d) Equality/Prometheus’ understanding of human achievement and thought, in the form of
the individual ego, as he explains it in the final chapter of the novella.
You will be graded according to the following Pre-AICE Rubrics.
Ronald W. Reagan/Doral Senior High School
10th Grade AICE Cambridge
Summer Reading Assignments
Assignment deadline: Due on the second day of class.
You must complete all assignments. Late work will not be accepted!
1. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Following reading, students will write an essay (approximately 3-5 pages, Times Roman, double spaced,
MLA format) that clearly responds to the following question:
Explore the ways in which Aldous Huxley presents the “brave” and “the new” of the plot. Pay close
attention to the tone, diction, and syntax, as well as any other rhetorical and literary strategies the author
uses to connect with the audience via the narrator/speaker.
2. 1984 by George Orwell
Following reading, students will write an essay (approximately 3-5 pages, Times Roman, double spaced,
MLA format) that clearly responds to the following question:
Assume the role of Winston Smith; taking into consideration his position in the Ministry of Truth, as well as
his social standing in Airstrip One, describe the events that have shaken his otherwise monotonous
experience. Make sure to capture the voice of this character, keeping in mind the context of the novel.
Ronald W. Reagan/Doral Senior High School
11th Grade AICE Cambridge
Summer Reading Assignments
Assignment deadline: See individual assignment
You must complete all assignments. Late work will not be accepted!
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer – Due first week of school.
The following words come to us from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-Reliance
For non-conformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know
how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the
friend’s parlor. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might
well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces,
have no deep cause,--disguise no god, but are put on and off as the wind blows, and a
newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the
senate and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage
of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid as being very
vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added,
when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the
bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to
treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment.
The following words come to us from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life,
and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had
not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise
resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of
life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath
and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to
be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to
the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it
in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it,
whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end
of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."
Many readers believe that Chris McCandless viewed himself as a modern day Emerson or
Thoreau, someone who blazed his own path and lived deliberately. He certainly offered no
excuses, nor accepted any concessions. But everyone, including Chris should be offered the
opportunity to explain, if not justify, the choices and decisions made in life. To that end, you are
to create a document that follows Chris McCandless through the last stages of his life and offers
an explanation as to why he made the choices that he did.
You are to assume Chris’s voice and write a letter to his mother offering her insight as to why he
chose his particular path in life. This letter is to be a minimum of 300 words and incorporate
elements from the text that reflect his point of view, his attitudes and his beliefs.
Additionally:
You are to create a scrapbook for Chris McCandless. The scrapbook is a collection of
memorabilia and journal entries that document his travels. The first six chapters of Into the Wild
deal heavily with Chris McCandless’s travels throughout the U.S. after graduating from college
in Atlanta. Using data from the book (maps, dates, journal entries, quotes, etc.), construct a
“map” that clearly communicates his movements, dates, people he meets, and what significant
happenings occur at each point. When you quote the book, you must include the page #. This
“map” should be well constructed, creative, and colorful. This should span at least two pages in
your scrapbook.
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams – Due third week of class.
Imagine the characters from THE GLASS MENAGERIE ten years into the future. Tom is now
back from the Merchant Marines and finds himself once again in Amanda’s presence; write a
dialogue in which they discuss Laura’s fate. Model your dialogue after those found in scene
three of the play. Your dialogue should be a minimum of 400 words (200 words for each of the
two characters).
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath – Due fourth week of class.
"I was supposed to be having the time of my life."
As it turns out, Esther Greenwood--brilliant, talented, successful, and increasingly vulnerable
and disturbed--does have an eventful summer. The Bell Jar follows Esther, step by painful
step, from her New York City June as a guest editor at a fashion magazine through the
following, snow-deluged January. Esther slides ever deeper into devastating depression,
attempts suicide, undergoes bungled electroshock therapy, and enters a private hospital. In
telling her own story--based on Plath's own summer, fall, and winter of 1953-1954--Esther
introduces us to her mother, her boyfriend Buddy, her fellow student editors, college and hometown acquaintances, and fellow patients. She scrutinizes her increasingly strained relationships,
her own thoughts and feelings, and society's hypocritical conventions, but is defenseless
against the psychological wounds inflicted by others, by her world, and by herself. Pitting her
own aspirations against the oppressive expectations of others, Esther cannot keep the airless
bell jar of depression and despair from descending over her. Sylvia Plath's extraordinary novel
("witty and disturbing," said the New York Times) ends with the hope, if not the clear promise, of
recovery.
Write a magazine article of 400 words in length in which you discuss Esther’s experiences with
mental illness and electroschock therapy. Your article should assume Esther’s point of view
and contain language that is consistent with that of Sylvia Plath’s masterpiece.
Ronald W. Reagan/Doral Senior High School
12th Grade AICE Cambridge
Summer Reading Assignments
Assignment deadline: Due on the second day of class.
College Essays: Due the first week of class.
You must complete all assignments. Late work will not be accepted!
1) Read Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga (the novel is part of the prose set text for the 2011
AICE Literature Exam). You will keep a two-column dialectical journal that will be due on the second
day of class (no exceptions). In the journal you will track details, diction, imagery, quotes and actions
from the novel that relate to the themes and major topics of the novel: gender inequality, tradition versus
progress and the influence of colonialism.
You must have at least 25 entries for the novel. In the left hand column you will write the quote or a
summary of the action and the appropriate chapter and page number from the novel. In the right hand
column you will reflect on the entry and its significance to one of the themes or topics and to the overall
meaning of the novel.
2) College Application Essays:
Almost every college requires applicants to submit personal essays as part of their application process.
Some colleges limit the essay to 250 words and others allow 500 or more words. To prepare you for this
process and to help me get to know you even better, you must submit one 250-word essay and one 500word essay on the topics below, on the second day of class. The essays must be word-processed, with 1”
margins, 12pt font and double spaced. Do not exceed the word length.
250 Words
OR
Why is (college of your choice) a good college choice for you?
Tell me about yourself, your reasons for applying to (college of your choice), and your reasons
for seeking a college education.
500 Words
OR
Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to
you.
How has your family history, culture or environment influenced who you are?
Supplies you will need for the class:
 Binder or folder to keep notes, handouts and other assignments
 Blue/black ink pens
 Highlighters
 USB drive