Summertime Favorites 2005
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where—” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“—as long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
—Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Instead of aimless wandering this summer, get somewhere by picking up a book from NEH's Summertime Favorites, which has been guiding teachers, parents, and students in their summer reading since 1988. Regularly updated, NEH's Summertime Favorites highlights 300 literary classics organized by appropriate grade categories.
Whether students are taking fantastic trips around the globe, traveling through history, exploring their own world, or dramatizing fictional characters, let EDSITEment accompany them on all of their literary adventures. EDSITEment lesson plans and resources are wonderful enhancements to summer reading. Most lesson plans, regardless of grade level, can be adapted as guides for discussion, either with your children or among members of a reading group. Parents can use lesson plans and EDSITEment-reviewed websites to provide enriching activities and entertainment for the summer while also helping their children prepare for the next year's reading assignments.
Between summer camp and the annual family vacation, younger students do not have to spend those long, hot summer afternoons in sheer boredom. Why not let them take a fantasy vacation through fairy tales and folk stories from around the world? EDSITEment has a large assortment of lessons dealing with fairy tales and folklore, including Fairy Tales Around the World, Cinderella Folk Tales: Variations in Character, and Helpful Animals and Compassionate Humans in Folklore. Using EDSITEment lessons Aesop and Ananse: Animal Fables and Trickster Tales and Fables and Trickster Tales Around the World, you can teach younger students about the larger context of fables and trickster tales as they read Aesop’s Fables. Read Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with your child and use EDSITEment lesson plans A Trip to Wonderland: The Nursery 'Alice' and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: Nonsense Poetry and Whimsy to encourage them to create their own whimsical art and poetry. Students can even travel to the other side of the globe and explore Asian cultures that may be completely unfamiliar to them through the EDSITEment lessons The Jataka Tales: 550 Lessons of the Buddha and The Magical World of Russian Fairy Tales.
Older students interested in fantastic escapes and journeys can learn about Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow or Jack London’s Call of the Wild. Perhaps they would like to travel to another time period and experience what it meant to be a knight during the time of the legendary King Arthur, which they can achieve by reading Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur and then delving into EDSITEment lessons Tales of King Arthur and Exploring Arthurian Legend.
Student Activity:
When students return from their imaginary journeys around the world, have them make their own postcards, one for each stop they made during the trip. For the front of the postcards, they can draw or cut and paste to make pictures that represent the places they have been. On the back, have them write a description to another family member, a school friend, or an imaginary person of where they went and what they experienced through the fairy tales and folklore. Students can then actually deliver these postcards or keep them as souvenirs of their travels.
Students can also travel to historical places and experience what life was really like there during significant historical events. After they read Diary of a Young Girl, guide students towards a better understanding of the Holocaust, what caused it, and how it affected a girl of their age with the EDSITEment lesson plans Anne Frank: One of Hundreds of Thousands and Anne Frank: Writer.
However, one doesn’t always need to take a trip to have an adventure. Many writers prefer to document the world around them and how they experience it, and nature is often the subject of many poems and artwork. During summer, plants and animals are growing and flourishing, which makes playing outside a rich experience of nature’s beauty. Through the EDSITEment lesson "Leap, plashless": Emily Dickinson & Poetic Imagination, students can get a glimpse of nature through the eyes of a poet and begin to record their own experiences of various natural wonders. Students living and playing in more urban areas can read the poetry of Langston Hughes, an influential 20th century poet who wrote about his life in the city, and then learn about the important concepts of poetic voice. By using EDSITEment lesson The Poet's Voice: Langston Hughes and You, students not only learn about poetic voice, but begin to develop their own unique style through a series of journal writing exercises.
Student Activity:
After these explorations of people in different times and places, encourage students to begin a journal or scrapbook in which they can record the details of the world today and the impact it has on their lives. Entries can be pictures, stories, or contemplative letters that reflect observations of the world and their personal experiences. They can make their own scrapbook or journal using common art and school supplies and then decorate the front and back covers with pictures and words that represent themselves and their world.
Through many books and stories on the reading list, high school students can immerse themselves in the personas of fictional characters. During camping trips, augment scary campfire stories by reading short stories by Edgar Allan Poe and then help students learn about his life and narrative voice through the two EDSITEment lessons Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, and the Unreliable Biographers and Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, and the Unreliable Narrator. Encourage students to make summer reading of drama, such as Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, come alive by reading aloud and acting out the plays with a group of friends. The corresponding EDSITEment lesson plans Hamlet and the Elizabethan Revenge Ethic in Text and Film, Hamlet Meets Chushingura: Traditions of the Revenge Tragedy, and Dramatizing History in Arthur Miller's The Crucible, provide background and some ideas for accurate character portrayals. Students can also make some simple costumes and a few basic sets and then put on a show for parents, siblings, and others in the neighborhood.
No matter what your students or children read this summer, encourage them to consider the following as they take some time to reflect on their reading:
- What was your ultimate summer favorite?
- What did you enjoy about the book or story, and what made it a great read for the summertime?
- How would you promote the book if recommending it to a friend or NEH’s Summertime Favorites?
These are only a few of the many EDSITEment lesson plans and activities that complement the NEH Summertime Favorites reading list. Keep reading below for a full list of EDSITEment lessons currently available that intersect with the NEH reading list or scan the entire list of lesson plans that EDSITEment offers.
Links to Lesson Plans, by grade:
An * marks a lesson plan for a different grade group that may be suitably adapted
Grades K-3
Aesop. Fables.
Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Lear, Edward. A Book of Nonsense.
McDermott, Gerald. Anansi the Spider.
Potter, Beatrix. The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
Seuss, Dr.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. A Child's Garden of Verses.
Grades 4-6
Andersen, Hans Christian. Fairy Tales.
Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales (Hänsel and Gretel,
Rapunzel, etc.).
Hughes, Langston. The Dream Keeper and Other Poems.
Kipling, Rudyard. The Jungle Book.
Perrault, Charles. The Complete Fairy Tales (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty,
etc.).
Grades 7-8
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.
Frank, Anne. Diary of a Young Girl.
Frost, Robert. Poems.
Irving, Washington. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
London, Jack. Call of the Wild.
Malory, Sir Thomas. Le Morte d'Arthur.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein.
Grades 9-12
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart.
Anonymous. Beowulf.
Cather, Willa. My Ántonia.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales.
Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage.
Dante. The Divine Comedy.
Dickinson, Emily. Poems.
Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby.
Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter.
Hughes, Langston. Poems.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Lee, Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird.
Miller, Arthur. The Crucible.
Orwell, George. Animal Farm.
Poe, Edgar Allan. Short stories.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet.
Shakespeare, William. Sonnets.
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