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scoop
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Posted: Mon Aug 13th, 2007 12:31 pm |
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My daughter is taking her first AP course this year. I think it is Language and Composition, I do know that it is all non fiction work. If your child has taken this class, how much summer reading did they have? I feel badly for her. She is a fast reader yet this is consuming her days and she still has 15 pages of writing to do. She says that she would enjoy reading the books but the copious marking in the book slows it down. I asked a friend why there is so much summer work when college students don't have required summer reading. She said that it was so they started several weeks into the curriculum. I would like her to have time in the summer to read for pleasure and have a break. With work on all school holidays, they never get a chance to just chill out and explore their own interests. I know she would have plenty to do. I realize that it is the way it is...just thinking out loud.
Good luck to all of you sending your loved ones off to college. I am so looking foward to hearing about them.
Last edited on Mon Aug 13th, 2007 12:50 pm by scoop
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limner
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Posted: Mon Aug 13th, 2007 01:48 pm |
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scoop, I asked my son, and he took AP Language and Composition senior year, although he read "Crime and Punishment," "Native Son," and "Macbeth," for it. However, he said that L&C is much more about analyzing writing than literature, but his teacher was heavily into lit, so that's what they read. My son loved that reading list, so he didn't consider that much of a hardship.
However, I'm guessing your question probably had more to do with the general "how much !#@? work do these poor kids have to do?" than with the actual specifics of the class. As you can see from the difference in our kids' reading lists, even though AP classes are structured, the actual content still depends on the teacher.
You hit on a theme that I've harped on for years--ever since I was in high school: that kids don't have time to explore their passions in academia--at least not if they want to make As. I was so happy when I graduated from college and could read anything I wanted. It seemed so, well, decadent. You mean I just have to work 9 to 5 then I can do and read whatever I want? Cool! (Of course, we didn't say "cool" in those ancient days.)
I feel your frustration, but your D will get more academic freedom next year--although she won't be entirely off the leash. My son is really looking forward to taking his first sociology course next year.
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scoop
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Posted: Mon Aug 13th, 2007 03:04 pm |
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| She said she would enjoy the reading if she didn't have to continually stop to write in the book. No way around that though, they are being graded on it. I'm sure she realizes now that yes, she should of done some of the required reading during those first two weeks of summer but she needed a break. She was then at the three week pre-college course and had no extra time with the workload there. That is what is causing her to spend so much time on it now. I see a kid who was doing something construcive and creative with her time and is now paying the price by spending 8 plus hours a day of schoolwork. We just came back from the beach and as I sat reading my novel, she sat reading "Writing Creative Non-Fiction". I just don't feel it should be that way. She will be a junior this year so she still has a way to go before she has more choice.
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DesperateDad
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Posted: Mon Aug 13th, 2007 03:31 pm |
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She said she would enjoy the reading if she didn't have to continually stop to write in the book.
fwiw: Cornell University has a wonderful study skills program based on their own reasearch, and the first thing they tell incoming Frosh is to NOT annotate or highlight while reading, since it: 1) slows them down; and 2) first reads will typically focus on details but not main themes.
Any other parents with college kids with a different program?
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Fireflyscout
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Posted: Mon Aug 13th, 2007 04:16 pm |
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My son will be taking AP English Language this year (Literature next year). This summer he had three books to read:
Ethan Frome (Edith Wharton)
The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
Legends of our Time (Elie Wiesel)
These selections kinda suck all the joy out of summer, don't you think?
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limner
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Posted: Mon Aug 13th, 2007 05:19 pm |
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LOL, fireflyscout--yes, you're right. I can feel the fun being sucked even from this distance.
My son said that his school did the AP English courses backward; he took the lit course first and then the language one senior year.
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jocelynDAD
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Posted: Mon Aug 13th, 2007 06:22 pm |
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AP classes end in May when the year long class test is held. That is 6 weeks before school ends here in New Jersey. Since our classes start after labor day, insted of 36 weeks to teach the AP class there is only 30 weeks.
So the teachers start the reading and yes analyzing during the summer - if not then where do they get the 6 weeks from??????????????/
If the AP tests were held in mid June, - well the need for summer reading would be diminished.
DDad: While I agree that stopping to analyze the author etc is a pain and I personally hate the very idea, IF the purpose of the class is the analyzing not the reading itself, well then you kinda have no choice but to require the students to analyze while reading.
Fun reading is exactly that and Hawthorne, Wiesel and Wharton or Richard Wright, Doetovfky(sp) or a Shakespeare Tragedy will never be considered 'fun' (I still cannot finish Crime and Punishment and I have tried 4 times) - they do address themes and the human (or inhuman) condition in ways that cause our young persons to think IMO.
BTW, our 7th child is entering Senoir year, the last of 28 years of high school, I hated the four years I did in my teenage years and am so glad to be ending any activity with High School come this June.
Naturally, my oldest grandson will be entering HIgh School in September 2008 (I plan to change our address/email and telephone numbers so I will not be contacted by my son with any complaints about High school issues!)
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lfm
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Posted: Mon Aug 13th, 2007 06:52 pm |
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When did all this summer reading start? I am quite sure when I was in HS (class of 74), we left school in June, and really didnt give it much thought until Sept. We didnt even know our classes until closer to the start of school.
We home school, but my dd is taking an online Euro - summer reading included Daughter of Time, Nicholas and Alexander and some bio of some european. She had to write a report on one of the first two and the bio. She wrote how Daughter of Time will make her distrust history from now on :-). She also had to read a chapter and take an online test. Since we started our summer with a trip to DC and are ending it with a 9 day camping trip, plus she was at summer camp for 6 weeks, it really did make her feel like her at home time was more schoolish than she would have liked.
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jocelynDAD
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Posted: Mon Aug 13th, 2007 08:10 pm |
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Ifm:
Josephine Tey's book is an eyeopener on the Tudor's and Richard III, very enjoyable, it is what I call a fun read, yet educational and thought provoking! 
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Canadian
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Posted: Mon Aug 13th, 2007 09:17 pm |
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"These selections kinda suck all the joy out of summer, don't you think?"
I'm with you. My S's AP list is similar. His school always requires summer reading, but other years the boys have had choices within categories. Given the reading list, I really hope he will be able to hack AP.
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frazzled1
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Posted: Tue Aug 14th, 2007 12:20 pm |
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My d is in somewhat the same position as yours, scoop. She needed a few weeks at the beginning of the summer to decompress, then had prep to do for an academic summer program, then the program itself. So now she's squeezing her AP work into the few weeks that are left before school starts (and unfortunately, she has about 100 pages for AP Bio in addition to the English reqs  ).
For our school's AP Lit/Comp summer reading, all students read one required text (this year it's In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O'Brien). Each student must also choose and read two books from a list of 6 20th/21st-century American novels (my d is doing Catch 22 and The Handmaid's Tale). They must also read two other books of "AP quality" (from a suggested list of 50 or so) that are new to them - my d has chosen A Lesson before Dying and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
On the first day of class, they need to bring a list of all their summer reading (AP or not); a tentative thesis for their first paper, to be written on one of the works from the list of 6; a one-page response paper on one of the free choice AP books; a list of specific observations from the O'Brien book.
No wonder my d feels as if all the joy has gone out of life ..... college essays, anyone?
Last edited on Tue Aug 14th, 2007 12:21 pm by frazzled1
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HijinksAndSue
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Posted: Tue Aug 14th, 2007 02:35 pm |
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Frazzled, LOVE your D' s picks ...
I know my D had to read "Scarlet Letter" last year prior to AP Language and I cannot for the life of me remember what the second book was (she had four summer reading books, two for AP Lang and two for AP Environmental -- "Inconvenient Truth" and "Ishmael," which she adored and frequently quoted in her SAT essays.). Now this is going to drive me nuts trying to remember what the second book was. (I will add that I was SHOCKED to find out that on the first day of school she discovered she was the ONLY person who had actually read all four books).
This year for AP Lit she has three assignments: "Poisonwood Bible," 10 poems of her choosing and a book of her choosing (she read "Lovely Bones" and was going to use that but is also in the middle of a wonderful contemporary novel/collection of intertwining short stories that relate very closely to her life and career and MAY use that instead).
ETA: Just wanted to add my kudos on "Daughter of Time." My mom was a member of the Richard III Society so I grew up agreeing very strongly with the theory espoused in that book ... and as a student of English history I still do believe it's much closer to the truth than Shakespeare's version (which of course was written during the Tudor reign so he kinda HAD to make him out to be a villain, with the alternative being to say "Hey Queen, it was really YOUR grandfather that killed the princes!")
Last edited on Tue Aug 14th, 2007 02:37 pm by HijinksAndSue
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HijinksAndSue
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Posted: Tue Aug 14th, 2007 02:35 pm |
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Frazzled, LOVE your D' s picks ...
I know my D had to read "Scarlet Letter" last year prior to AP Language and I cannot for the life of me remember what the second book was (she had four summer reading books, two for AP Lang and two for AP Environmental -- "Inconvenient Truth" and "Ishmael," which she adored and frequently quoted in her SAT essays.). Now this is going to drive me nuts trying to remember what the second book was. (I will add that I was SHOCKED to find out that on the first day of school she discovered she was the ONLY person who had actually read all four books).
This year for AP Lit she has three assignments: "Poisonwood Bible," 10 poems of her choosing and a book of her choosing (she read "Lovely Bones" and was going to use that but is also in the middle of a wonderful contemporary novel/collection of intertwining short stories that relate very closely to her life and career and MAY use that instead).
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Wstrdg
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Posted: Tue Aug 14th, 2007 05:08 pm |
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I see two interests served by requiring summer assignments: first, as jocelynDAD said, the school year isn't long enough to cover the AP syllabus in time for the May exam, especially in those states, like CA, where the year stretches out to mid-June. So my S2's AP US History course requires that students complete the first four weeks' work in the summer and use turnitin.com to submit the work by the first of Auust. That gives the teachers time to grade before school even begins. They will have a unit test during the first week of school, and that's a 4-day week, too.
The other interest bothers me, a bit. I firmly believe that, for the non-AP courses, summer assignments are used as "weeders." Both my soph D and jr S2 had extensive reading and writing assigments, all due on the first day of school and all to be graded and included in the first quarter report card marks. For the sophomore, it was reading one novel and writing 10-15 pages. For the junior, it was reading three novels and writing 8-10 pages. These summer assignments were for lang arts sections designated as "advanced" (soph) and "honors" (jr). Both sections required applications and tests for admission.
Both kids attended month-long summer programs, so it has been a very short summer! This is really only our second week of summer leisure.
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lfm
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Posted: Tue Aug 14th, 2007 05:25 pm |
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| My daughter loved Daughter of Time. She thought it was an odd choice of assignments because she said it made her mistrust history. I explained that I thought it was impressive choice for exactly the same reason. It was a good conversation!
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revkat
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Posted: Tue Aug 14th, 2007 09:46 pm |
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My D is slogging her way through the Torah, the Gospels, and Revelation in the King James Version, along with Paradise Lost. For AP Lit, at a public high school. I don't think she is getting a lot out of it, but all those years of being taken to Sunday School are paying off, because at least she knows the story line of the Bible!
Oh, and we do believe that these summer assignments are used as "weeders" at our HS for both AP and Honors courses.
Last edited on Tue Aug 14th, 2007 09:48 pm by revkat
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Deja
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Posted: Wed Aug 15th, 2007 11:32 am |
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My (rising hs jr) son is taking AP Language & Composition this year, too. He has to read two books this summer and write something...not sure what...he also has assignments in AP CalcAB, AP Bio, but no assignment in APUSH. He's doing an independent study for AP Econ (since our school system doesn't offer econ courses), but of course hasn't assigned himself any work for that (although he likes to read about economics on his own; thinks he wants to double major in college with that being one of the majors).
We also start school after Labor Day, and have less time to cram in the AP material than other parts of the country. I really think this is a gross inequity, and quite frankly don't understand why something hasn't been done about it.
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HijinksAndSue
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Posted: Wed Aug 15th, 2007 02:13 pm |
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Deja, I wouldn't worry too much about the one-week-later start date than most schools being a gross inequity in terms of cramming in the material for the APs ... after all, they're not until May. I don't really think the five days will make a big difference in the long run if the teacher plans properly.
In the case of my daughter's school, at least, where she's taken four AP classes (two more to go this year, her senior year), it's not like every minute and every second of every class has been spent doing absolutely nothing but cramming AP prep down their throats.
Much of it was more about HOW to learn and HOW to study for it.
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Deja
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Posted: Wed Aug 15th, 2007 09:41 pm |
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It's not just a one week later start date than most schools. Schools in some parts of the country started in the beginning of August (Deep South, Florida, Texas).
Do most schools start the week before Labor Day? If that is true, then the AP testing dates should be later. Why indulge a very few schools that actually start in early August? The schools that start in early to mid-August could just put up with a little bit of inconvenience, as far as I'm concerned. They shouldn't be the tail that wags the AP dog.
Interestingly, on another message board a mom whose daughter was in Florida noted that her daughter's class once discussed/debated this very issue. They started school in early August. They thought that rather than make the early starters come back to take AP tests, that the late starters should simply put up with the May testing dates. And the mom actually thought this was a valid decision...LOL...who really thought the kids would have favored the other option, since it would have inconvenienced them?
I do have some familiarity with AP courses, since my college son took a good number of them. Even the rising hs jr took one last year (AP Government & Politics). I found that it was the science lab courses that suffered. It is really hard to cram the required classes and labs into the late-starting school schedule.
Last edited on Thu Aug 16th, 2007 10:24 am by Deja
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hummingbird
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Posted: Wed Aug 15th, 2007 11:56 pm |
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My S has AP English Literature this year, too. His summer reading is Farenheit 451, The Iliad, 1984, and Death of a Salesman. He had already read 451 and 1984; in fact, 1984 is one of his favorite books. He is working on The Iliad right now.
I don't believe he has any writing that goes along with it, except perhaps note-taking.
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