7th Grade English Language Arts
Summer Reading Assignments 2015
Required reading for seventh graders:
The Outsiders, by S. E. Hinton
Half Brother, by Kenneth Oppel
Charles Dickens and the Street Children of London, by Andrea Warren
Students should follow these instructions:
1. Read the three mandatory books for your grade level. Students will discuss these books in class during
the first two weeks of school and will be tested on each book.
2. For each of the fiction novels (The Outsiders and Half Brother), students will complete double entry
journals. Templates and instructions are included in this document.
3. For the nonfiction selection (Charles Dickens and the Street Children of London), students will
complete a study guide of chapter questions. Study guide questions are included in this document.
4. These assignments will count as the first three homework grades of the semester. Students should
bring their completed assignments and their personal, paper copies of each book to their first FULL day
of English class.
5. Assignments can be typed in this document or printed and written by hand.
6. Dates of assessments on the summer books will be announced when we begin the school year.
Summer Reading Double-Entry Journal
A double-entry journal is a two-column journal in which a passage from the book is written in the left side
(textual evidence) and a response to the passage is written in the right column (commentary). Responses
might include asking questions of the text, forming personal opinions about the text, interpreting the text, or
reflecting on the process of making meaning of the text.
As you read, you will be taking notes in a double-entry journal to record your thoughts and questions in
response to your reading. You should choose a passage (a sentence, two sentences, a paragraph) from each of
the sections shown on the template. You may respond in these ways:

Write about an experience in your own life that relates to what is happening in the novel.
 Write your opinions about what is happening in the novel.
 Write your questions about what is happening in the novel.
If you are having trouble thinking of what to write, use these response starters:

I really like (or dislike) this part because…
 I wonder why…
 I predict that…
 I think the character should…
 This reminds me of the time when I…
 This reminds me of a book I read (movie I
watched, and so on)…
This is an open word document. You may type your answers directly into this document or you
may print this document and write your answers by hand. Bring a printed copy of your work to
our first class meeting. Please do not wait until you get to class to print your work.
7th Grade English Language Arts
Summer Reading Assignments 2015
Student’s Name:
Half Brother
Chapter
#
Passage from Text
SAMPLE
“Just over a year ago, my
father plucked me up like a
weed and took me and all our
belongings (no, that is not true
– he did not bring the chestnut
tree, the willow, the maple, the
hayloft, or the swimming hole,
which all belonged to me) and
we drove three hundred miles
straight north and stopped in
front of a house in Euclid,
Ohio.”
Page #
Personal Response/Commentary
(3-5 sentences)
SAMPLE
This passage reminds me of when I had to
move away from my old house in the city. I
was really angry that we couldn’t bring the
playground with us. It sounds like she really
likes trees and being outdoors, and that she
will have to give up those things in her new
home. Why is she moving and where is her
mother?
Part One:
Chapters
1&2
Chapters
3&4
Chapters
5&6
Part Two:
Chapters
7&8
This is an open word document. You may type your answers directly into this document or you
may print this document and write your answers by hand. Bring a printed copy of your work to
our first class meeting. Please do not wait until you get to class to print your work.
7th Grade English Language Arts
Summer Reading Assignments 2015
Student’s Name:
Half Brother
Chapter #
Passage from Text
Page #
Personal Response/Commentary
(3-5 sentences)
Chapters
9 & 10
Chapters
11 & 12
Chapters
13 & 14
Chapters
15 & 16
Chapters
17 & 18
This is an open word document. You may type your answers directly into this document or you
may print this document and write your answers by hand. Bring a printed copy of your work to
our first class meeting. Please do not wait until you get to class to print your work.
7th Grade English Language Arts
Summer Reading Assignments 2015
Student’s Name:
Half Brother
Chapter #
Passage from Text
Page #
Personal Response/Commentary
(3-5 sentences)
Part Three:
Chapters
19 & 20
Chapters
21 & 22
Chapters
23 & 24
Chapters
25 & 26
This is an open word document. You may type your answers directly into this document or you
may print this document and write your answers by hand. Bring a printed copy of your work to
our first class meeting. Please do not wait until you get to class to print your work.
7th Grade English Language Arts
Summer Reading Assignments 2015
Student’s Name:
The Outsiders
Chapter
#
Passage from Text
SAMPLE
“Just over a year ago, my father
plucked me up like a weed and
took me and all our belongings
(no, that is not true – he did
not bring the chestnut tree, the
willow, the maple, the hayloft,
or the swimming hole, which
all belonged to me) and we
drove three hundred miles
straight north and stopped in
front of a house in Euclid,
Ohio.”
Page #
Personal Response/Commentary
(3-5 sentences)
SAMPLE
This passage reminds me of when I had to
move away from my old house in the city. I
was really angry that we couldn’t bring the
playground with us. It sounds like she really
likes trees and being outdoors, and that she
will have to give up those things in her new
home. Why is she moving and where is her
mother?
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
This is an open word document. You may type your answers directly into this document or you
may print this document and write your answers by hand. Bring a printed copy of your work to
our first class meeting. Please do not wait until you get to class to print your work.
7th Grade English Language Arts
Summer Reading Assignments 2015
Student’s Name:
The Outsiders
Chapter #
Passage from Text
Page #
Personal Response/Commentary
(3-5 sentences)
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
This is an open word document. You may type your answers directly into this document or you
may print this document and write your answers by hand. Bring a printed copy of your work to
our first class meeting. Please do not wait until you get to class to print your work.
7th Grade English Language Arts
Summer Reading Assignments 2015
Student’s Name:
The Outsiders
Chapter #
Passage from Text
Page #
Personal Response/Commentary
(3-5 sentences)
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
This is an open word document. You may type your answers directly into this document or you
may print this document and write your answers by hand. Bring a printed copy of your work to
our first class meeting. Please do not wait until you get to class to print your work.
7th Grade English Language Arts
Summer Reading Assignments 2015
Study Guide – Charles Dickens and the Street Children of London
Those of you who read Kids on Strike! last summer will see many similarities in the life
style and deprivation (condition of being without or denied something, especially of being without adequate
food or shelter) between the poor children of Dickens’s London and working class children in
early America. I hope that reading about young people in other times and places will lead you
to evaluate your own life and advantages in a new way and inspire in you a concern for those
young people in the world today who suffer deprivation in food, shelter, and education.
___________________________________________________________________________
Introduction
1. p. 2 – What does the author give as a reason why upper class English people in Dickens’s time would not
have taken in a slum or street child?
2. How does the author characterize Dickens’s stories?
3. Was he popular in his own lifetime?
4. What is the author’s stated purpose for what her readers will take with them from this book?
Chapter 1 – “The Man in the Shadows”
1. Summarize the author’s description of London in the early to mid-1800s. Note the smells, sights, and
sounds that a visitor would experience.
Chapter 2 – “The Poor People of London”
Read the chapter and look for information (including text evidence) about the following topics:
A. a poor Londoner’s life span/the value of life/air quality-smells
B. availability of water/drinking of alcohol/alcoholism
C. housing/street living/workhouses
D. cleanliness/health/disease
E. working conditions for children
F. government assistance for the poor/Dickens’s reactions
This is an open word document. You may type your answers directly into this document or you
may print this document and write your answers by hand. Bring a printed copy of your work to
our first class meeting. Please do not wait until you get to class to print your work.
7th Grade English Language Arts
Summer Reading Assignments 2015
Chapter 3 – “The Early Years”
1. When was Dickens born?
2. Until he was 10 years old, Dickens led an idyllic life.
(Idyllic means: serenely beautiful, untroubled, and happy; having a simple, unspoiled, and especially rural charm )
Give some details from the beginning of the chapter to support that description.
3. The last sentence in the second paragraph on page 19 says, “These places, these people, and these events
fed his imagination.”
What “places” does the author refer to?
What “people” does the author refer to?
What “events” does the author refer to?
4. Summarize the description of John Dickens, Charles’s father.
5. Describe the hardships the family suffered when the family moved to the outskirts of London.
6. What does Dickens do to escape these hardships that prepared him to be a great writer?
Chapter 4 – “A Working-Class Boy”
1. How does Dickens get the job at Warren’s Blacking Factory?
2. How do his parents feel about his working rather than going to school? (Look at the last page of the
previous chapter.)
3. Quote a line from the book that expresses Dickens’s dismay (hopelessness, disappointment) at having to
be a working class boy.
4. Describe the working conditions in the factory.
5. What was next disaster to befall the family a few days after Charles went to work?
6. When his family was in Marshalsea Prison, where did Dickens live?
7. What was Dickens’s relationship with his co-workers like?
8. Who was Bob Fagin, and what was like?
(One of the characters in Oliver Twist is named Fagin.)
9. What stands on the site of the old boarding house that Dickens used to live in?
10. What does Dickens learn about the poor through his relationships with the boys at the factory?
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may print this document and write your answers by hand. Bring a printed copy of your work to
our first class meeting. Please do not wait until you get to class to print your work.
7th Grade English Language Arts
Summer Reading Assignments 2015
11. How is his father finally able to get out of debtor’s prison (Marshalsea)?
Chapter 5 – “Growing Up”
1. How does Dickens’s life change when his father is out of prison?
2. What was his next job, and how did it influence his writing?
Chapter 6 – “Becoming a Writer”
1. What was Dickens’s relationship with the theatre?
2. List the several other jobs that Dickens held by the age of 21.
3. What did Dickens learn while traveling through England as a political reporter?
4. Why did Dickens have to borrow money during the time he was a reporter?
5. Who was Boz and what did he do?
6. What are some features of Dickens’s writing?
7. What was the result of the success of Sketches by Boz?
8. What was The Pickwick Papers, and what was it about?
Chapter 7 – “The Workhouse”
1. According to the author, why did the authorities want to make the workhouses miserable?
2. What is proof that the workhouses were dreadful places to be avoided by any means?
3. From the quote from “A Walk in a Workhouse” by Dickens, what kinds of people lived in the workhouse?
4. Why would workhouses be bad places for families (p. 52)?
5. What prompted (motivated) Dickens to write Oliver Twist?
Chapter 8 – “Oliver Twist”
1. The first part of this chapter provides a synopsis (summary) of Oliver Twist. Recall some of the basic information about the character Oliver.
2. How did the public feel about Oliver Twist?
3. What does the author say were Dickens’s objectives in writing the novel, and how did Dickens “break new
literary ground…”?
4. What did some critics say about Dickens and Oliver Twist that was negative, and what was his rebuttal
(contradiction)?
This is an open word document. You may type your answers directly into this document or you
may print this document and write your answers by hand. Bring a printed copy of your work to
our first class meeting. Please do not wait until you get to class to print your work.
7th Grade English Language Arts
Summer Reading Assignments 2015
Chapter 9 – “The Sea Captain Who Rescued Foundling Children”
1. What major change took place in Dickens’s life when he was 25 years old?
2. What was the London Foundling Hospital, and when was it founded?
3. What are the special meanings of “foundling” and “hospital” as they are used here?
foundling =
hospital =
4. What was Dickens’s involvement with the London Foundling Hospital?
5. Thomas Coram –
born (when and where)
career family 6. In what ways was Coram like Charles Dickens?
7. What was Coram’s plan to help abandoned (“dropped”) babies?
8. Who were the “Great and the Good?”
9. Why did Coram decide that the children in he took in would be trained for the military (boys) and domestic
service (girls)?
10. How many years did it take Coram to get enough signatures to petition for a charter for his place?
11. Why would the author bother dedicating an entire chapter to Thomas Coram in a book about Charles
Dickens?
Chapter 10 – “The Great Benefactors: Handel, Hogarth, and Dickens”
1. Look up the word benefactor and write its definition:
2. George Frideric Handel – “the great bear”
born (when and where)
career family 3. In what way was Handel like Charles Dickens?
4. Cite some examples of Handel’s generosity.
This is an open word document. You may type your answers directly into this document or you
may print this document and write your answers by hand. Bring a printed copy of your work to
our first class meeting. Please do not wait until you get to class to print your work.
7th Grade English Language Arts
Summer Reading Assignments 2015
5. What is the Messiah?
6. When Handel became one of the hospital’s governors, how did he enrich the education of the children
there?
7. Where is he buried?
8. William Hogarth born (when and where)
career family 8. In what ways was Handel like Charles Dickens?
9. What were the themes of his drawings/pictures?
10. What was Hogarth’s involvement with the Foundling Hospital?
11. What was the effect of Hogarth’s Gin Lane print?
12. What influence did Hogarth’s pictures and sketches have on Dickens as a writer?
13. Why did Hogarth start London’s first art gallery at the Foundling Hospital?
14. Dickens brought new acclaim to the Foundling Hospital through his writing. Cite a few examples:
15. In what decade did the Foundling Hospital go out of business?
16. Finally, what do Coram, Handel, Hogarth, and Dickens all have in common?
Chapter 11 – “Closing England’s Worst Schools”
1. What details are given about the boarding schools in Yorkshire, England?
2. Who was William Shaw, and what does the author say about him?
3. What is Nicholas Nickleby, what purpose was it meant to serve?
4. What was the state of public education during Dickens’s time?
Chapter 12 – “Sending Ragged Children to School”
1. For what reason were the upper classes afraid of having the lower class, slum children educated? p. 94
2. What information is given about the charity schools? pp. 94-95
This is an open word document. You may type your answers directly into this document or you
may print this document and write your answers by hand. Bring a printed copy of your work to
our first class meeting. Please do not wait until you get to class to print your work.
7th Grade English Language Arts
Summer Reading Assignments 2015
3. What role did Lord Shaftesbury play in the development of education for slum children? p. 95
4. According to the book, for what reasons would a slum parent not want their children to attend a Ragged
School? pp. 96-97
5. What kinds of actions did Dickens take to support the Ragged Schools? pp. 98-99
6. Dr. Thomas Barnardo is introduced in this chapter. He was an advocate for the poor, much like Dickens was.
What were some of his good works? pp. 99-101
7. For whom was Copperfield Road, and then the Copperfield Road Ragged School, named for? p. 101
8. In what year did England institute compulsory (required) education for all children five to thirteen?
What else happened in that year?
Chapter 13 - “Giving from a Charitable Heart”
1. In 1843, even though Dickens needed to write a book for money, he still had certain goals in mind. What
were they? p. 105
2. How long did it take Dickens to write his “ghostly little book?”
3. Why was Christmas in England (at that time) a somber or serious holiday rather than the joyous holiday we
enjoy today? p. 106
4. What was the “gamble of his career?” pp. 110-111
5. In what way did Dickens’s gamble pay off? pp. 11-112
6. What have been some of the long-term influences of A Christmas Carol? pp. 113-114
Chapter 14 – “A Dedicated Reformer”
For those of you who read Kids on Strike! last year, the descriptions of child labor in this chapter should
seem familiar. Conditions for working children in England were very much like they were for children in
America.
1. What are some of the jobs/industries that used children as part of their work force? pp. 115-117
2. For what reason did Dickens visit Birmingham, England, in 1853? p. 118
This is an open word document. You may type your answers directly into this document or you
may print this document and write your answers by hand. Bring a printed copy of your work to
our first class meeting. Please do not wait until you get to class to print your work.
7th Grade English Language Arts
Summer Reading Assignments 2015
3. Which of his novels is described as his “heaviest blow” on behalf of factory and mill workers? What is the
setting of that novel, and who is one of its main characters? pp. 119-120
4. How is Bleak House like Hard Times? p. 120
5. What major reform did Bleak House inspire? p. 121
6. Air pollution is the result of the emissions from factories. In England at that time, air pollution was the
cause of much sickness among the poor. In which novels did Dickens describe London’s polluted
atmosphere? p. 122
7. What did Dickens do to improve housing for the poor in London? p. 123
8. Dickens’s work warned the upper classes about possible rebellion by the lower classes (A Christmas Carol).
What novel makes an even stronger statement about this danger, likening it to the French Revolution?
p. 124
Chapter 15 – “A Friend to the Poor, a Complex Father”
1. Quote some text evidence that Dickens was loved and recognized by the reading public in London during his
lifetime. p. 126
2. In what ways did Dickens support the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children? pp. 128-129
3. Give some details about Dickens’s family and home life. pp. 129-132
4. Who was John Forster, and how did he help the public and Dickens’s family understand more about
the great author? pp. 132-133
5. Which two of Dickens’s novels were the most autobiographical? p. 133
Chapter 16 – “An Author for the Ages”
1. What kinds of people were Dickens’s friends – those that he invited to his home? p. 134
2. Toward the end of his life, after he had written his novels, what did Dickens do to earn money? p. 135
3. Within a decade of Dickens’s death, what major reforms happened in England? pp. 137-138
This is an open word document. You may type your answers directly into this document or you
may print this document and write your answers by hand. Bring a printed copy of your work to
our first class meeting. Please do not wait until you get to class to print your work.