10 Honors Part II
May 2015
Brentwood High School’s Summer Reading Project has taken a new direction. This summer, at each grade level,
honors students will be reading two required novels. Each novel and its corresponding activities have been
carefully selected and designed to encourage your independent reading, and to build your critical thinking skills in
order to gain a deeper understanding of the texts. In September, after having completed the assignment you will be
able to fully participate in the classroom lessons, activities and assessments your teacher has planned for the novel.
We are certain that you will enjoy the selection and its timeless themes. We wish you all an enjoyable summer and
good reading!
Essential Question: How can literature serve as a vehicle for the personal development of
ethics and morality?
Dear Student:
Welcome to the 10th Grade English Honors Program. As an honors student, we hope
to offer you not only a very challenging curriculum, but also an enjoyable program. The summer
reading assignment will enable you to explore literature independently.
Here is your summer reading assignment, which must be completed by the first day of the
class. There are two works of literature which are required reading. You are encouraged to
annotate, or take notes, while reading the novels as well. Since you are not allowed to write in
the books, post-it notes can be used instead.
The first is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot which addresses
many ethical issues. After you read the novel, research and find one article or experiment that
relates to the ethical issues presented within the novel. In a well developed essay, explain how
the article or experiment you found relates to the ethical issues that were discussed in the novel.
Make sure to use specific relevant evidence from both the article or experiment and the novel to
discuss how these ethical issues are shown. To help you accomplish this, attached you will find
an evidence-based claim graphic organizer. You must complete a graphic organizer for both the
article/experiment and the novel. This graphic organizer will help you pull evidence from the
text and create a conclusion based on the ideas presented within the novel and your article or
experiment. The graphic organizer should be completed first and can be used as a guide to help
you write your essay.
You will also read The Pact by Drs. Sampson Davis, George Jenkins, and Rameck Hunt.
They wrote this book to deliver powerful messages of hope and inspiration to communities
across the country. The Pact has uplifted and motivated many people, the world over, by
delivering a much needed blue print of real life.
For this selection, you will be responsible for completing BOTH of the following
assignments as you read the novel.
Reader Response Assignment #1
This novel contains many pieces of advice and words of wisdom. Choose two quotes from the
novel, and please include page #’s. For each one:
1) Explain how this particular quote relates to the characters and/or events in the book.
2) Relate the quote to life. Can you apply this advice to yourself? How can you relate to
this? How is this an important piece of wisdom for people your age? Make a connection
to your life or the world.
***Each response should be around 8-10 sentences***
Reader Response Assignment #2
The focus of the 10th grade English Honors Program is ethics and morality. Ethics is defined as
the moral principles and values held by an individual or group. In 10 Honors, you will read
stories that ask you to question the ethics of individual characters or even society as a whole.
For your last part of the summer reading project you will consider ethical, and unethical,
decision making in The Pact.
For the assignment, you are required to do the following:
1. Choose an excerpt from the text that you think illustrates ethical, or unethical, decision
making. In other words, choose a quote that illustrates a character making a good
decision or a bad decision?
2. Write out the line(s) and give the page number.
3. Explain how you think this quote relates to ethics or morality. Why did you choose this
quote? What is it illustrating about ethics or morality?