Directions to students: Each of the summer reading books have several themes in common. The questions below focus on three of those themes – Survival, Confinement, and Loss. The three questions below can be used for all three books. Read over each question carefully. Think about the book you read. What ideas come to mind? How might they tie to one of these questions? When you have considered these and any other ideas you might have, choose ONE of these questions and begin to develop your response. When school starts, you will be assessed in your Communication Arts class using the very same question. The only difference is you’ll have to start from scratch developing your answer – no notes, but think of all that prep work you will have done in your head!

Just think: We're giving you the test questions in advance! What a great opportunity to prepare!

One more thing: If you want to have an idea about how well you're doing, check out the rubric for each question. Use it to analyze your work, and come up with ways to strengthen it.

Assessment Questions

1. Survival. Each of these books has main and secondary characters engaged in having to cope with challenges and adapt their choices to their situations in order to survive.

Choose a character from the book you read. Explain how, in your opinion, this character changed over the course of the story. Use three examples from the reading, of instances the character you chose was faced with, and how the process of surviving contributed to their changes.

2. Confinement. Characters in each of these books experience confinement in both physical and emotional ways.

Choose an example of a character who experienced physical confinement and another for a character who experienced emotional confinement. Give your opinion about which type of confinement was more difficult and why. Support your opinion with examples from the story.

3. Loss. This is a theme in each of these books.

Choose an example of loss from the book you read, and explain how it changed the characters or events of that story. Compare that with an example of loss from your own life, and how that loss changed you.