Summer Reading Odds & Ends & Some Stuff for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Every year my school changes the summer assignment because we never really know what to do with it. Some years we don’t do it and other years we have the kids read choice books and other years we have kids read assigned books. This is all still in flux 13 years later. This blog post has some of the odd handouts and lessons that I used in response to the different 9th grade summer reading assignments…basically things I would use when the students returned to school in September having completed their summer reading or summer reading assignment.
We would usually try and give a quiz of some sort, so here as some very short quizzes for some of the books we have had kids read over the years :
I have lost my notes for the above books, or I didn’t do much with them in the first place, but hopefully the quizzes are helpful.
The only book that I ever did some work with after it was assigned for summer reading was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
I found this book to be hilarious because I relate to it so much; mostly I am Dr. Jekyll in my normal life and I turn into Mr. Hyde when I show up to work and the county is so disrespectful of their teachers and their teachers’ needs that I turn into Hyde…also if I get hangry ….but I usually carry around a granola bar to solve that problem now. Work is much harder to deal with.
Anyway, I always felt that getting a bit into Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was a good way to start off the year with my 9 intensified students in order to introduce them to some more complex writing. These lessons would be mixed in with normal beginning of the year “get to know you stuff” and administrative stuff, but here are some of the activities that I did:
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Activities
Day 1
First, I would be ruthless and start off with a reading quiz: Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde Quiz
Next, I always liked to gauge how students felt about J& H with this survey: Jekyll & Hyde Initial Reaction
Then I would a plot review:
Plot Review Directions:
On the sheet of paper given to you, draw a picture of a scene you remember from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. (1 minute)
Decide whether your event took place in the beginning, middle, or end of the novel and tape it to the whiteboard.
Fill in plot chart together with aid of pictures. Fill in whatever did not get covered in picture.
Day 2
After talking to kids about their initial reaction to the book, I would get into a bit of general analysis. First we would start with journal: J & H Journal
On the second day, I would introduce close reading with theses Introduction to Close Reading PowerPoint slides and then do a close reading of opening paragraph. Here is the paragraph if you need it on a Google Doc: Jekyll & Hyde first page
Day 3
On the third day, I introduced Socratic Seminar by brainstorming what it is and what it is not. Later in the year our Gifted Resource teacher comes in and does a full, 90-minute introductory lesson with the kids, so I am really just checking for baseline knowledge. I gave kids time to come up with their answers for seminar for the first half of class. It looks like I came up with two different seminars at some point, but I can't remember why.
For the second half of of class, we created masks:
Mask directions: Create a mask that shows dueling sides of your personality. You can create it on a paper plate, a paper bag, normal paper or any other medium of your choosing.
Day 4
Run Seminar
Finish masks for homework.
I hope some of these handouts are helpful to you! If you have any other helpful Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde resources, please feel free to leave them in the comments section.