Summer Bridge lesson

Next week, in the sadly shortened (was that a BCPSS decision? or a school-based one?) High School Prep, I am charged with teaching a 55-minute session on high school reading to every one of our school's incoming 9th graders. I'll be focusing on Summer Reading, which involves the reading of the curious incident of the dog in the night time (Hadden) and their choice of The Book Thief (Zusak), Does My Head Look Big in This? (Abdel-Fatteh), or A Long Way Gone (Baeh).

I'm going to focus primarily on the Hadden text because (a) all the kids are reading it; and (b) it's the text that I think they'll need the most help with. It will be challenging because I know about half the kids will have already read the book and completed the assignment, and probably the other half haven't even gotten the book yet.

I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself to come up with a bang-up lesson because (a) I feel that since High School Prep is shortened this year, I have to cram a lot more learning/preparation into one session than I normally would have; (b) I really want to have a great year with these 9th graders and that starts with summer reading; and (c) I have to teach the same lesson 15 times, so if it's not a great lesson, I'll be bored to tears.

Wish me luck. It's been marinating for a few weeks, and, this weekend, I'll have to put it together. Monday at 8:30 a.m., I'll be back at it.