TrixieB Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 Due to unforeseen circumstances, I am teaching 9th grade English to my ds this year rather than outsourcing it. I need some books for him to read and write about this term. Can y'all suggest four books? Online study guides or links to online writing prompts would be a HUGE bonus. He doesn't do well with study guides that are mostly "pretend you are character X" or "tell how you feel about..." type questions. He's a great reader and he loves to read, but he doesn't like to write. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theelfqueen Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 We havent been doing study guides so I am no help there. Things my 9th grader has read this year : To Kill a Mockingbird (actually he read it last year and was assigned it again this year while in ps.) Animal Farm Of Mice and Men The Once and Future King Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes The Martian Chronicles A Midsummer Night's Dream Short stories including The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Pearl, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, The Most Dangerous Game, maybe some others at ps... And a poetry unit. We are also planning to do Call fo the Wild, Night and something else (maybe 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) by the end of the year. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leeannpal Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 We havent been doing study guides so I am no help there. Things my 9th grader has read this year : To Kill a Mockingbird (actually he read it last year and was assigned it again this year while in ps.) Animal Farm Of Mice and Men The Once and Future King Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes The Martian Chronicles A Midsummer Night's Dream Short stories including The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Pearl, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, The Most Dangerous Game, maybe some others at ps... And a poetry unit. We are also planning to do Call fo the Wild, Night and something else (maybe 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) by the end of the year. I am a middle/high school English teacher, and I love this list! I have also used these books with ninth graders: 1. A Separate Peace 2. Fahrenheit 451 3. Lord of the Flies 4. Romeo and Juliet 5. Huckleberry Finn If you are Christian, I have also read The Hiding Place and Screwtape Letters with 9th grade students. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theelfqueen Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 I was planning on Romeo and Juliet but my 9th grader complained that all Shakespeare is depressing, so I decided to do comedy. We read and watched and did work around Midsummer Nights Dream, we started with a children's adaptation of the story to get an overview plus the Thug Notes video which i think was his favorite thing ever... then worked our way through together scene by scene, then watched an adaptation one act at a time as we finifshed each act. He is currently working on a character analysis project. We've also done an overview and a selected reading and listened to A Comedy of Errors and we will watch Taming of the Shrew. I want to get the recent David Tennant and Catherine Tate version of Much Ado. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loesje22000 Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 The Chosen (C. Potok) An Inspector Calls (in classic comics with original text edition) The Bookthief Tale of two cities (Dickens) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AppleGreen Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 (edited) We have done the following books: The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare Othello by William Shakespeare The Odyssey by Homer w/ lectures from Elizabeth Vandiver, Ph.D. from The Great Courses The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Lord of the Flies by William Golding Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand We have also done a couple of short stories and a poetry unit. I *love* Laura Randazzo's stuff from Teachers Pay Teachers. I used her poetry unit, Huckleberry Finn unit and will be using To Kill a Mockingbird next month. Her poetry unit was a lot of fun for both of us. I needed to make some tweaks because it is written for the classroom, but it was still great fun. We also did a banned book unit, with Huck Finn as the jumping off point. I Googled banned book unit and found a 10th grade Honors class and tweaked for my purposes. The essay for that unit was an old ACT question about banning books. (Speak and Fahrenheit fell in that unit). The last three books on the list will be part of a survival unit. I will probably use some of Oak Meadow's stuff for Into the Wild. We also did two Bravewriter classes this year, so I am counting that as half of writing for the year, thus we will only do about 5-6 essays for the books we have read, but lots of discussion and short answer questions. We did not *do* anything for the Shakespeare because those were read due to participation in summer Shakespeare production. I figured they more than discussed and hashed out 'ol Will as they prepared for the shows, plus the acting and memorizing was more than any study guide could have pulled out, IMO. Edited March 14, 2016 by AppleGreen 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haiku Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 I suggest Tom Sawyer, To Kill and Mockingbird, Call of the Wild, and The Grapes of Wrath. All of these have many online study guide choices. Check out Penguin, The Big Read, and Shmoop (turn on your adblocker before visiting Shmoop or it takes for.ev.er. to load). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haiku Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 Laura Randazzo (mentioned upthread) does have great stuff on Teachers Pay Teachers! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MorningGlory Posted March 15, 2016 Share Posted March 15, 2016 I've used multiple guides from the Glencoe Lit site: http://www.glencoe.com/sec/literature/litlibrary/ I tried to think of books that both of my boys read and both *liked* their 9th grade year. There are 3 that fit that description: Great Expectations Macbeth Watership Down The last one, Watership Down, is an all-time favorite for both of my sons...and they have very different personalities. I've read it twice myself. Highly recommended. There are other books I assigned in 9th grade that one boy liked and the other hated. Old Man and the Sea comes to mind. Go figure! :-) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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