May 2017

Dear MRSD Community,

The game’s afoot!  Make this the summer of looking for evidence and solving mysteries.  Join us as Monadnock READS explores mystery and inquiry based on the Sherlock Holmes stories. Sherlock Holmes, a character created by Arthur Conan Doyle, has been recreated over and over in books and movies. We encourage you to explore this genre as a family through books, television series, and movies. Students are required to read the selection for their grade level in order to prepare for our discussions and assessments in English classes.

Selections this year:

Students entering grades 9-12 — A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro

• This is the first book in a series. Although Sherlock Holmes and John Watson have been dead for nearly a century, their great-great-great-grandchildren meet and become a crime-solving duo at a school called Sherringford, a Connecticut prep school.
• Please note: This selection includes some profanity and brief references to drug use and a sexual assault. We are offering The Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer as an alternative choice.

Students entering 7 and 8 —This year, you have a choice between the following two books:

The Eye of the Crow by Shane Peacock. 

• This is the first book in the series, The Boy Sherlock Holmes. In this book, we see a young Sherlock Holmes solve his first case.

The Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer. 

• This is the first book in The Enola Holmes series. This book features a female protagonist in the way of Enola Holmes, Sherlock Holmes’s much younger sister.

*Toadstool Bookshop and Bull Moose in Keene will have discounted copies of the above texts.

It is our hope that you will read the novel with your son or daughter. It would be great to start the discussion at home before we discuss the books in English classes this fall. We also hope that your child visits our Monadnock READS Google Classroom. Throughout the spring and summer, we will be adding supplementary materials (videos, articles, titles of other texts) concerning mystery, inquiry, and Sherlock Holmes. We will also be making many interdisciplinary connections throughout this unit. We will also be using this “classroom” as a reference and a way to post activities and assignments in the fall. Here is the code: Y93im9. Parents may also request an invitation to join Google Classroom. Please email Heather Gigliello if you wish to join. Although these materials in Google Classroom are optional, we hope you take advantage of this information. 

We hope you join your child and the teachers at MRMHS explore these topics! Please feel free to email Heather Gigliello at hgigliello@mrsd.org with any questions, concerns, or suggestions.

Have a great summer!

MRMHS ELA Teachers