Summer Bridge 2010
English Program
California State University
Dominguez Hills
Summer Bridge 2010
English Program Assignment Packet
Assignment One  Commonplace Book  Weeks 1 through 6
The Assignment
Summer Bridge 2010
English Program
A Commonplace Book is a notebook or journal that a reader fills with important phrases, lines, and/ or
passages from texts they have read. The Commonplace Book collects in one place knowledge and
insights a person learns through reading. Commonplace Books have been used for thousands of years by
readers across the globe to record, remember, and reflect on their reading experiences.
Commonplace Books include written comments and notes from the reader; Commonplace Books can
include diagrams, illustrations, images, portraits...any number of creative and analytical ways to express
yourself; Commonplace Books can even be indexed so that the reader can group important themes, topics,
or authors if he or she chooses.
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An essential aspect of your work in the Summer Bridge Program in English is to keep a
Commonplace Book of your own over the next six weeks. That is, you are expected to keep a
record of what you read and your responses to it.

Your Commonplace Book will serve as an activity book, as well, as a place where you complete
English assignments both in- and outside the classroom. You are expected to bring it to class
with you Monday through Thursday throughout the Bridge Program.

Above all, your Commonplace Book will serve as a highly personal account of what you have
read, why you have read it, and what you think about what you have read.
Here are some simple guidelines for starting your Commonplace Book:
Any kind of text produced in any situation can be recorded in your Commonplace Book. Your reading
record can include text messages, e-mails, web pages, print advertisements, printed directions or
instructions, visual art, newspapers and magazines, journals, other students’ papers, your own papers,
essays, novels, poems, graffiti, song lyrics, bedtime stories, catalogues, forms, applications, etc, etc, etc.
Select important phrases, lines, and/or passages from the different texts you read and write them down in
the Commonplace Book; comment on what you have written down; if you are so inclined, draw a picture
or paste an image into the Commonplace Book and add a written commentary to explain how your visual
image engages what you have read; when appropriate, your entries must include the title, author, and date
of publication of the text you are commenting on. Your faculty instructor and the SIs will provide
specific information about correct citation practices for this assignment.
In Week 3 of the program, your Commonplace Book will be collected by the faculty instructor for
assessment. You are expected to have filled in at least ten pages of your Commonplace Book at this
point. Your Commonplace Book will be collected again in Week 6 of the program. You are expected to
have twenty pages filled in by the end of Summer Bridge.
Commit yourself to recording the full range of what you have read and why. Above all else, enjoy the
process. Students whose Commonplace Books demonstrate a sustained, lively engagement with an array
of texts will be evaluated most highly.
Your Commonplace Book will be assessed using a unique rubric. It is a creative assignment intended to
develop your critical engagement with reading and writing in positive but perhaps non-traditional ways.
Here is the rubric your faculty instructor will use to assess this assignment:
Summer Bridge 2010
English Program
Commonplace Book Assignment
Not Acceptable
Acceptable
Strong
Quantity of pages
Variety of texts
Discoveries, Insights,
Connections
Instructor Comments: