Upper School

American Literature

Students are required to read the following two texts in this order: First, they should purchase The Portable Dante by Dante Alighieri and read Inferno (the first section), not Purgatory or Paradise. Second, they should read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, noting connections to Dante's Inferno.

Students are required to read Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver.

Students are required to read The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. 

Students are required to read Defending Jacob by William Landay.
Before beginning the novel, students should read this letter from their teacher.

Students are required to read Welcome to Lagos by Chibundu Onuzo.

Students are required to read Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays by David Ball.

Students are required to read The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Please purchase an edition translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.
Before beginning the novel, students should read this letter from their teacher.

  Students are required to read: Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson.

Please contact Ross Holland with any questions about Upper School English assignments.

CA Upper School students do not have summer math work, however, students in higher-level classes may receive direct communication from their teachers regarding work specific to that class.

For Grades 10-12, a TI-Nspire (CX) calculator is required in all math classes. You may use either the CX or the CX II model. Please do not purchase the CAS model. 

Please contact Michael Huntington with any questions about course options or placement for Upper School Mathematics.

Chinese I

1. Join Ms. Wei‘s Duolingo classroom. Plan on spending at least 10 minutes a week doing the activities.   Link: www.duolingo.com/classroom/ycxfpp If you have difficulty, try this code instead: ycxfpp. If neither method works, email Julie Wei.
   
   
2. Go to “Ni hao, China” and choose five short videos about Chinese culture. Summarize each video in three or more sentences in English.
    

Chinese II

1. Join Ms. Wei‘s Duolingo classroom. Plan on spending at least 10 minutes a week doing the activities.   Link:www.duolingo.com/classroom/xyxytx. If you have difficulty, try this code instead: xyxytx. If neither method works, email Julie Wei.
   
   
2. Write about your summer (two to three paragraphs in Chinese). This writing assignment should include:

• • Weather 
  • Activities you have done
  • People you have spent time with
  • What are your thoughts about the summer break

Chinese Cultural Studies ASR

1. Watch “To Live"    
   • Chinese subtitles
   • English subtitles 
2. Write a 2-page paper on a topic related to Chinese history or culture that you are unfamiliar with yet. You will present your research to the class at the beginning of the school year. The topic could be from a story you heard/read or something you learned from a movie, TV show, or podcast.

Contact: Julie Wei

French II 

1. Join my Duolingo French 3 classroom: www.duolingo.com/classroom/wsnqqr Practice regularly, at least once a week. There will be prizes for most points!
   
   
2. Watch the first episode of “Lupin” on Netflix. Listen in French and read the subtitles in English. Contact me if you cannot access it (Stephanie Turner). Be prepared for a quiz and discussion.

French IV 
Contact: Vincent Trinquesse

French Topics
Join my Duolingo French Topics Classroom : www.duolingo.com/classroom/awkxwu Practice regularly, at least once a week. There will be prizes for most points!

1. Watch the first episode of “Vortex” on Netflix. Listen in French and read the subtitles in English; then try listening in French AND reading subtitles in French! Contact me if you cannot access it (Stephanie Turner). Be prepared for a quiz and discussion.

Contact: Vincent Trinquesse

• Read through chapter 7; Use the glossary in the back to look up anything you don’t understand.
• Write down the names of all of the main characters, and add descriptions in Spanish.
• For each chapter, write a 1-2 sentence summary in Spanish using the present tense.

For questions regarding summer assignments, please contact David Colodny or Madison Slater.

Spanish IV


Contact Madison Slater with questions.

Please contact David Colodny with any questions.

1.  Visit the webpage for BBC Mundo in the link below: http://www.bbc.com/mundo
2. Look at the headlines on the main page for each Monday of the last 3 weeks before the start of classes. Take note on just the main headlines. The click on the link for “América Latina” and take note of the main headlines. Do you notice any overlap?
3. Select one of the news stories from the "América Latina” link that most interested you regarding politics, economy or culture. Research the story further, and create a PowerPoint presentation in which you will cover the following points:
   A. The event (what happened)
   B. Background (what led to this particular event? How does it fit into the country’s current situation?)
   C. Consequences or repercussions of the event (Does this event cause a change or shift in the life of that nation? Who is affected by this event?).

Please include a map of the country in which the event took place and images related to the story in your presentation. The first day of class you will be sharing your work with your classmates and you will hand in the notes you took during the 3 Mondays you followed the news on the BBC website.
Contact: Valerie Maté-Hunt

If you have questions, contact Jane Kelly.

Contact for questions: Valerie Maté-Hunt.

Summer Assignment:
Students who are moving straight from Intro to Computer Science to AP Computer Science A, without taking CS Principles in between, are required to complete a summer assignment to bridge the gap.

We also believe that students who have completed Computer Science Principles would find the assignment to be a useful review of coding concepts. The assignment will review and/or introduce strings, while loops, nested loops, arrays, functions vs. methods, and return statements in Java.

Students will receive the work by email on August 1, and the assignment will be due before class meets.

We expect students to complete a summer assignment designed to reinforce mathematics skills necessary for success in AP Physics 1.  Topics include algebraic manipulation and right triangle trigonometry. The AP Physics 1 teachers will provide opportunities for students to meet over Zoom throughout the summer to support this effort. Students will receive the work by email on August 1. The assignment will be due before class meets.

We expect students who are co-enrolled in a first-year calculus course to complete a summer assignment to learn basic calculus skills necessary for calculus-based physics topics.  We also believe that students who have completed one year of calculus would find the assignment  a useful review and preview of calculus-based physics. The assignment will include introductory-level differential and integral calculus, with a focus on how these apply in a physics context. We will provide opportunities for students to meet with their teachers over the summer to support this effort.  Students will receive the work by email on August 1. The assignment will be due before class meets.

Students taking Genetics this upcoming fall will be required to do a small amount of work in preparation for the pace of the course.  In early August, Genetics students should expect an email from Dr. Procise describing the work they should complete before the first day of class.  This work will include some short reading and about 30 minutes of watching educational videos.

AP Chemistry students will have an assignment due on the first day of school, which they can access in Webassign, an online program. Expect an email from Lisa Boes at the beginning of August with the assignment and instructions.

1. Who is the author of this book? Does he have the expertise to accurately approach such an ambitious project?
2. What sources does the author reference in this work? Is his source base reliable?
3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the book's methodology (the way the author decided to approach writing a history of the world)? What does his approach potentially leave out?
4. Socially, how did the referenced drinks bring communities together? How did they divide them? As you are reading, consider what processes connected the world and what processes have led to local and regional division.
5. In what ways has climate and geography shaped the broader development of the world?
6. Based on your reading, what are three turning points in human history? What served as the catalysts for these changes?
7. As an American, you are likely most familiar with the history and society of the United States. Was the author's portrayal of the United States fair, and do you agree with his suggestion that Coca-Cola represents the "embodiment of America and its values?"
8. What is the likely next phase of human development, and what drink might come to embody that shift (do you agree with the author's suggestion in the epilogue)?

United States History - 2024
Summer Reading: A collection of primary documents from a variety of 17th and 18th century sources. Download the documents, read, and follow the directions.

Summer Reading: A collection of excerpts from different books. Follow link to Google folder to access the excerpts.
 

1. Tim Harford, Undercover Economist, Chapter 1. This excerpt aims to introduce you to some of the fundamentals of economic thought as they relate to modern life. It specifically looks at how certain products are valued based on the concept of scarcity.
2. Todd G. Buchholz, New Ideas from Dead Economists, Chapter 2. This excerpt looks at how many of the principles first written about in depth by the so-called founder of economics, Adam Smith, are still fundamental to how we think about economics and economic policy today.
3. Steven G. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics, Chapter 1. This section introduces you to the concept of behavioral economics – kind of a mashup of psychology and statistical analysis that doesn’t always have to do with “the economy,” as we typically think of it.
4. Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens, Chapter 10. This book is an excellent study of how modern human systems evolved. I highly recommend the whole book. Here, you are reading about the earliest types of money and how groups of people collectively choose to believe that certain tokens have value.
5. George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Schiller, Animal Spirits, Chapter 6. This chapter poses the question, “Why do economies fall into recession?” The authors examine why people’s choices lead to changes in what is known as the business cycle – the shifts between booms (growing economy and low unemployment) and busts (shrinking economy and high unemployment) and back to booms at the national level. To do so, the section covers the U.S. during the 1890s and 1920s-30s.
6. Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus, Chapter 6. This book is written by the same author as Sapiens. Here, he examines the structures in which we live today and how people are trying to shape them in the future. This chapter, entitled “The Modern Covenant,” is focused on the modern economy, including its promises, its benefits, and its difficult problems.

All students are required to read The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore.

International Gender Movements (ASR II) Summer Reading:
Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions, Ed. Wade and Ferree (W.W. Norton 2022) THIRD EDITION ISBN: 978-0393892864 

Instructions:

Summer Reading: A Collection of Essays & a Podcast. Please follow the directions and read/listen to the six items contained in the linked document.

Students are required to read Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller.

Summer Reading: The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus, by Richard Preston

Summer Reading: Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing, Jacob Goldstein 

Summer Reading: Major Problems in American Immigration History: Documents and Essays, 2nd Ed. edited by Mae Ngai and Jon Gjerde. Note: the photo on the Amazon link is of a Physics book, but the description is correct.

• Chapter 2: “Settlers, Servants, and Slaves in Early America”: pgs. 36-54. This section includes primary source documents of immigrants who arrived in colonial America in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. 
• Alison Games, “Adaptation and Survival in the New World” also from Chapter 2, pgs. 65-71. This is a secondary source essay by historian Alison Games that examines the various factors that inhibited or promoted successful migrations to the colonies. 

• What economic, social, political, and religious factors motivated or forced migrants to come to colonial America? Identify quotes from the sources as evidence. 
• How did race, class, and religion impact immigration patterns and experiences in the New World? Identify quotes from the sources as evidence.
• To what extent could migrants reproduce European or African cultures overseas? How did migrants improvise and adapt characteristics of their old cultures to fit their new settings and new neighbors? **for this question, you are looking specifically at Games’ argument in “Adaptation and Survival in the New World.”

Summer Reading: Szablowski, Witold. Dancing bears: True stories of people nostalgic for life under tyranny. Penguin, 2018. 

For instructions and a note from your teacher, download this file.