This year in English your aim will be to read independently both for fun and to help you increase your understanding of the ideas you will be learning about in your English classes. Reading is also a great way to learn about life and boost your vocabulary.
You will be required to keep a reading log of the different types of reading you will be doing this year. You should aim to read a variety of authors, both male and female and authors who have a different cultural background to you.
A good reading log/presentation for a book/story/poem/article will always:
- Record the text’s title
- Record the text’s author
- Record the text type (Novel/poem/play/song lyric/magazine article etc.)
- Record the date when the text was published
- Record the date(S) when you read the text
- Write a brief summary of the main events in NO MORE THAN 50 words
- Write at least two (2) detailed personal responses (at least 100 words each) which explain what the people, places or ideas in the text made you think about. You will need to include evidence from the text in the form of quotes or detailed description to help make your responses convincing.
Use the response starters listed below to help you begin your personal responses. Alternatively you can create your own.
1. I found this text easy to follow because….
2. This text is set in _________. I can’t imagine being or living in such a place because …….
3. The setting for this story fascinated me because ………..
4. The character _____________ really made me feel ______________ because ……………………
5. I could relate to the character of ___________ because he/she ……….
6. The one character I admired the most in this text was ________ because he/she …………….
7. The one thing I have learned from this text is …………….
8. I was horrified / excited / angered / overjoyed when I read about ……
9. This story really made me laugh, especially when _______________ because …………………..
10. This is a book that I can totally recommend to other junior English students because it ……….
11. Discuss how your book did one of the following things (as explained in the video at the top of this page):
- It saves us time -- we get to travel through space and time to places we’ve never been and historical periods we’ve never lived through.
- It makes us nicer --we learn to empathise with others, see things from their perspectives.
- It’s a cure for loneliness --we feel less lonely after encountering the lives and fates of characters who we can identify with in spite of our differences.
- It prepares us for failure --many novels deal with human failure, the kind of failure we are all likely to experience in our lives.
Example Reading Log (Level 4A):
“Holes”, Author: Louis Sachar, Published: 20000, Text Type: Novel, When Read: Nov 2015
Stanley is wrongly convicted of stealing a pair of shoes. His punishment is to go to camp Green Lake where he must dig a big hole each day in the dry lake bed. He thinks that this happens because his family is cursed. It turns out the prison guards are really criminals looking for buried treasure. Stanley makes friends with a boy called Zero. It was Zero’s great great grandmother who put the curse on Stanley’s family. When Stanley helps him to escape the camp, the curse is broken.
I really liked the way this story jumps back to the past and tells two other stories. You don’t know why these stories are important and it takes you a while to work out how they all tie together. The first of these old stories explains that the curse is put on Stanley’s family because his great great grandfather did not carry Madame Zeroni to the top of a mountain. When Stanley carries Zero up the hill that looks like a thumb the curse is removed. The other story explains how the treasure gets into the lake 100 years before.
I felt really sorry for Zero. He was a homeless orphan who had never learnt to read and write. He helps to dig Stanley’s holes in return for writing lessons. He gets into trouble for this and decides to run away. The saddest part is when he tells Stanley about what he remembers about his childhood. He remembers standing in his cot and being taught a song. He also remembers how other kids didn’t want to play with him because he slept in the playground.
Example Reading Log (Level 5E):
“The Fault in our Stars”, Author: John Green, Published: 2012, Text Type: Novel, When Read: July 2015
The book, “The Fault in Our Stars” by John Green, is about two teenagers diagnosed with cancer but still allow themselves to find love and enjoy the most with the time they have left. Hazel meets Augustus at her cancer support group and they become friends really quickly. Augustus is a very optimistic person and teaches Hazel to find happiness with their lives despite having their serious inevitable conditions. Hazel allows herself to fall in love despite her fear of hurting others for when she passes away due to cancer as she knows that with cancer, death will be near and unexpected.
I really liked this book as it teaches us to enjoy what we have now. We shouldn’t live our lives fearing our death. Augustus never shows how serious his condition actually is and doesn’t allow his sickness to get in the way of enjoying his life and what he has. He puts a cigarette between his lips but never smokes, “It’s a metaphor, you see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don’t give it the power to do its killing.” This is what he believes in and wants us all to know that just because we might have a disadvantage, we are still the only ones who can choose how to live our lives. We will only destroy our own wellbeing if we choose to let it affect us.
We don’t have to be pulled down by others if we stay strong and keep doing what makes us happy. Augustus is great at doing this, “I’m on a roller coaster that only goes up.” His optimism is something we should all learn to have. It not only makes him able to enjoy his own life more, it also affects the people around him. By only focusing on the joys in life, he manages to ignore his troubles while he is having fun. He doesn’t want to worry about the bad possibilities all the time. He wants to be able to enjoy what he has now. We don’t see his pain at all as he covers it exceptionally well with his brightness and smiles. I think this is very important as focusing on the bright side of things will make the problems we have to face less daunting which makes them easier to deal with as we can look forward to the things we enjoy in life. “Our fearlessness shall be our secret weapon.” Not fearing what the end will be is the technique to living a happy life that we want.
Alternatives to the written reading log:
Oral report to class
Prepare and present oral report(s) on text(s) to the class. Aim to get other students interested in reading, viewing, or listening to the text you have chosen.
Class wiki or blog
Your teacher may set up a class wiki or blog site on which you could submit your responses as a reading journal.
Class bookclubs
Students in your class may form into small groups of those who are interested in similar kinds of the reading. Present your response(s) on text(s) to your group. Bookclub groups could include those who:
- like to read the same genre (horror, comedy, sci-fi, fantasy)
- are interested in the same idea (catastrophes, other places, politics)
- are following a particular event (an election, Olympic or Commonwealth games, an arts festival).
Role play
Prepare a role play in which you express your personal response to a key point or idea in one of your texts to one or more classmates. Suggestions for role plays include:
- You are being interviewed by a television news reporter at a local bookstore where the author has been signing copies of their book. You explain to the reporter why you are there to get the author’s autograph and why the particular book has had such an impact on you.
- You are part of a panel of experts deciding which texts should be nominated for a special award. You have to convince the panel that your text is worthy of being shortlisted because of the particular impact you think it has for young people today.
- You are the judge who has given a particular text an important award (for example, best screenplay Oscar, Montana Award for Young Adult Fiction). In a television interview, explain what the award is and why the book made a lasting impression on you personally.
- You have to defend to your classmates your view that a particular incident, character, situation, and/or idea in a particular text has had an impact on you and why the school should buy the text for the library.
Written report for display in school library
Prepare a written review of your text for the school library. You can tell your readers a little about the story, but your main aim is to get other students interested in reading, viewing, or listening to the text you have chosen. You will need to consider the impact the text has had on you or how this text has changed your view of some aspect of the world.
JUNIOR ENGLISH READING LOG
Student:
Title:
Author:
Published:
Text Type:
Culture:
Date Read:
- Plot Summary (50 word maximum):
- Personal Response 1 (At least 100 words):
- Personal Response 2 (At least 100 words):
- Personal Response 3 (At least 100 words):
- Recommendations: “I would/would not recommend this book to other Junior English students because…
