Required reading for high school students

[FlightlessDuck]

I have a 9th grader, and this year the major works she had to read were Romeo and Juliet and Fahrenheit 451. I am sure she read a lot of short stories, too.

 

[Holly]

12th grade AP English Lit:
Invisible Man
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Catch-22
Frankenstein

He also had to read a few plays:
Oedipus the King
Henry IV
12 Angry Men

 

[johnsontrio]

9th Grade they read several books with a common Coming of Age theme:

Glass Menagerie
To Kill A Mockingbird
Of Mice and Men
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
House on Mango Street
Out of the Dust
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Catcher in the Rye
Our Town
They also incorporated the movie A Bronx Tale into the curriculum.

10th Grade is Studies in British Literature:

Pygmalion
Cry the Beloved Country
Annie John
A Christmas Carol
Pride and Prejudice
Canterbury Tales
Return of the Soldier
Romeo and Juliet

Junior and Senior Years the girls pick their English courses, one each semester. These are the classes DD chose.


Literature into Film:

Minority Report
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
The Graduate
MacBeth
Night of the Hunter

This class included a Director Project where the student choose a single director and presented their work contrasting and comparing different elements of three of their works. We watched a lot of Clint Eastwood movies that semester.

Myth Tales and Legends:

Bulfinch's Mythology
Oedipus Rex
A Handful of Dust
Frankenstein
Don't Bet on the Prince

Race Relations:

Marrow of Tradition
Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
Bartleby and Benito Cereno
Light in August
Dutchman and the Slave
Confessions of Nat Turner
Invisible Man

Shakespeare:

Henry IV Part 1
Hamlet
The Tempest
A Midsummer's Night Dream
King Lear
Othello

For the Junior and Senior level classes it is not uncommon for them to have 2 or 3 writing assignments underway at one time. These courses move quickly and cover lots of ground. At all levels the teachers will show the films of the literary work or will incorporate other films with similar themes. They have a tremendous amount of class discussion and that weighs into their grade along with tests and writing assignments.

 

[Tinijocaro]

DS sophmore in honors English will have read this year:

Animal Farm – George Orwell
All But My Life - Gerda Klein
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
A Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry
Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Pride and Prejudice (film unit) – Jane Austen
Arms and the Man - George Bernard Shaw
Julius Caesar – William Shakespeare
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
Major Research Paper
Independent Novel per quarter
Short Stories
Poetry
Non-Fiction Articles

Plus, last summer he had to choose three books out of a list. Can't remember what he read.

 

[disney11fan]

in sept. since freshman year thru senior yr. 4 books to read over the summer and then a test first week in sept. they hve a selection they can choose from based on the class yr.


best thing they ever did.

 

[Donnainnj]

Asked my Senior,
This year AP Lit: No Exit, Othello, Alias Grace, The Glass Menagerie, A Confederacy of Dunces, Great Expectations, and Wuthering Heights. The summer reading for this class was Frankenstein and they were allowed to choose one.
Junior year, AP English Comp, what she can remember, The Stranger, Catcher in the Rye, Hamlet, The Lottery (and other short stories), American Pscho (one banned book) Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. And for summer A Clockwork Orange
Sophomore year, again, what she remembers: Billy Bud, The Scarlett Letter, Romeo and Juliet.
Freshman year, also what she remembers: 1984, Animal Farm, A Tale of Two Cities, Kaffir Boy
And she threw in what she could remember of 8th grade: The Giver, Anthem, Watership Down, Dracula and The Golden Compass
Donna

 

[Cinderella94]

I'm a senior in HS now, so I'll give you the run down .

9th grade Honors- To Kill a Mockingbird, Romeo & Juliet, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, A Raisin in the Sun, snippets of the Odyssey...might be one more that I'm forgetting

10th grade Honors and 11th grade AP Lang I always get mixed up because I had the same teacher. I know in 10th grade was Grapes of Wrath, the Scarlett Letter, Huck Finn and the Crucible; I know 11th grade AP Lang was Othello, Great Gatsby, and a couple more in there that I'm forgetting.

12th grade AP Lit is The Alchemist, Beowulf, Macbeth, Wuthering Heights, Hamlet, Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Awakening, The Things They Carried, and our senior paper for which we got to pick from a list of a bunch of classics- I picked Sense & Sensibility.

 

[disneylovin24]

9th Grade

Dawn
Murder on the Orient Express
To Kill a Mockingbird
Animal Farm
Romeo and Juliet


10th Grade Honors

A Child Called It
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Five People You Meet In Heaven
Lord of the Flies
Tale of Two Cities
Catcher in the Rye
Grapes of Wrath
Huck Finn
Of Mice and Men
The Grapes of Wrath


11th Grade Honors

Scarlett Letter
The Jungle
An American Tragedy
Canary Row
The Crucible
Death of a Salesman
Diaries of Adam and Eve
The Great Gatsby

 

[Tinkerbelle'sMOM]

My 1st DD is a freshman and the 2nd is a junior

A House on Mango Street
Animal Farm
Othello
Odyssey
Romeo and Juliet
To Kill a Mockingbird
Lord of the Flies
The Hunger Games
Parts of Schindler's List
Huck Finn
Scarlet Letter
Dean Koontz Frankenstein
Maus

These are from Honor's classes...what I can remember lol

 

[SpecialK]

I'm surprised that so many of these book lists are almost exact replicas of my reading lists from high school thirty years ago.

 

[comicguy]

The following have been read by students in the 9-11 grade in my school Grade 12 is usually various Eng related elective classes, so no idea what they are reading.

To Kill a Mockingbird
Of Mice and Men
Romeo and Juliet
Night
Hamlet
Parallel Journeys
Animal Farm
Lord of the Flies
The Crucible
The Great Gatsby
The Good Earth
Chinese Handcuffs

There are a few more that I am forgetting

 

[tara lynn]

What I remember from my high school (I took College Prep level all 4 years):

9th - Romeo & Juliet, Lord of the Flies, The Odyssey, The Illiad, Oedipus Rex (may have been 10th grade, I'm not sure)

10th - The Good Earth, To Kill a Mockingbird, Macbeth, Animal Farm

11th - The Great Gatsby, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Crucible, The Catcher in the Rye, The Old Man and the Sea, Of Mice and Men

12th - Beowulf, Heart of Darkness, Hamlet, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Dante's Inferno

 

[PatsGirl]

All I remember having to read in high school was To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies.

I remembered reading these in high school too but DD13 had to read them in 7th grade

 

[IDoDis]

DD is in Freshman Honors English. I can't recall everything that she's read, but she's currently reading Le Miserables. She's also had to read Anthem (Ayn Rand), and Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier)

 

[lacrosse_lady72]

In my junior and senior years, we read The Awakening, The Stranger, Metamorphosis, The Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Pride and Predjudice, The House of the Spirits, Madame Bovary, A Room of One's Own, The Color Purple, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Alice in Wonderland, Hamlet, Heart of Darkness, Beowolf, The Canterbury Tales, The Decameron,.... that I can remember, I know I'm missing some though.

 

[DisneyAsh32]

I graduated High school in 2008. These are all of the books that I remember reading:

Romeo and Juliet
The House on Mango Street
Of Mice and Men
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Wuthering Heights
The Odyssey
A Tale of Two Cities
Great Expectations
The Things They Carried
The Grapes of Wrath
1984
Catcher in the Rye
Tess of the D'urbervilles
Hamlet
Crime and Punishment

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

I went to three high schools and it messed up things for me. I missed out on many books b/c one state would have you read it junior year, but then I moved and the new state had you read that book sophomore year or something goofy.

I did not read any Shakespeare except Romeo and Juliet as an example. I read that Freshman year and recall nothing else from that year and wonder if it was the only thing I read in English class. That was Berkley Co, SC.

In New Orleans:

Sophomore year was World Literature, I think we read Faust? The epic of Gilgamesh (sp?) and several other things that I don't recall the title, but know it if I saw it. Lots of ancient old stuff. I don't recall anything modern. (looking at other posts: Oedipus Rex,

Junior year--American Literature...I will to name them all:
The Great Gatsby
Huckleberry Finn
Wuthering Heights
The Scarlet Letter (ugh!)
Death of a Salesman
As I Lay Dying

I know there were more. *sigh*

Senior year, St John's County, FL--they told me about Dual Enrollment and I jumped ship so fast on traditional English and took ENC1101 and ENC1102 which was college level Composition 1 and 2. We read some books over the summer that were collections of essays. But I have absolutely no idea what they were. We did not analyze them for literary content.

 

[golfgal]

Just a tip for parents, many of these books are available for free on Gutenberg.org, Nook, Kindle. If your students have a smartphone, you can download these apps for free or you can download them on to your computer for free. You can highlight text, save notes, etc. on the computer/phone. It's pretty handy. I am not sure if these work with the Nook STUDY app (which is different than the regular Nook app) but if it does you can even print note cards from your saved notes on books. The Nook Study app is designed to be used with textbooks so not sure if novels work. I will have to look into that later.

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

DS is a freshman in pre-AP. Over the summer he had to read To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, and Night. So far this year they have read A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Odyssey and they just finished Romeo & Juliet. He is at a performing arts magnet so he also has to read plays for another class. I think they have read Oedipus and The Glass Menagerie.

I am not sure what he will have to read this summer or next year.