Summer Assignments and Book Lists for 2012-2013

[Aalliiee]

I'll be starting as a full Diploma student in the fall, and I just got my very first IB summer assignment and list of required books for next year. This invoked my curiosity as to what other IBers have to do over the summer and read next year.

I only have two summer assignments: to read, annotate, and answer questions on The Sorrow of War (Bao Ninh) for English I HL and to read the first few chapters and write an essay on The Radicalism of the American Revolution (Gordon S. Wood) for History of the Americas.

As for required books for next year in English, we're supposed to read:

Brave New World

(Aldous Huxley)

Candide

(Voltaire)

Catch-22

(Joseph Heller)

The Handmaid's Tale

(Margaret Atwood)

Crime and Punishment

(Fyodor Dostoevsky)

[Award Winning Boss]

I read nothing before I started the IB. Partly because I didn't know I'd be doing it like a day before school started

So if you don't read anything. Don't worry about it but I'll say that one of the books that we were recommend was I know why the caged bird sings by Maya Angelou

[Summer Glau]

I didn't do anything school related the summer before the first year of IB and it didn't hinder me at all. Some people borrowed the math textbooks from my school over the summer to try to get a head start, but of course it failed since it's pretty hard to motivate yourself to do anything to do with school over the summer. Summer holidays are meant to be a break from school, after all!

Read them if you have time (ie if you get really bored) but otherwise, don't fret if you don't get around to it. You should have plenty of time to read them when you get back to school in the fall.

So enjoy this summer and make the most of it, because in the summer between IB1 and IB2 you may have to start working on your extended essay. Don't worry too much about school, there's a bit of an adjustment period when you start school anyways so the workload likely won't be too bad for the first few weeks when you get back. So go hang out with your friends, travel, get a job, do something crazy. Just don't worry about school.

[carpediem]

I had quite a lot of summer assignments right before IB, but it turned out none of the teachers check them. (Grr, all those hours wasted...) So I would say: enjoy your summer! Rest up before IB - you'll need it.

And if you do want to do summer assignments (especially since they've been 'officially' assigned), I found the most useful pre-IB summer homework was to read the A1 texts and to become familiar with them. But remember, you'll be going through the books again so analysing every detail isn't necessary.