52 pages • 1 hour read
Jason ReynoldsA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
These prompts can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before or after reading the play.
Post-Reading Analysis: Cycles of Violence
The Rules are a social code that trap Will in a cycle of repeating violence. Why do you think this social code exists, and how are the characters in this book trapped in a system that they don’t believe they can change?
Teaching Suggestion: As you discuss the prompt, you might find it helpful to engage your students in Will’s larger context—poverty, lack of institutional trust, Toxic Masculinity, and many other factors might help students connect Will’s feelings of helplessness or lack of agency to larger conversations about injustice in America.
Personal Response Prompt: Challenging assumptions about inner-city violence
When you think of people who live in an inner city and engage in violence, what do you typically think about their emotional state or their character? How does this book challenge those notions?
Teaching Suggestion: Long Way Down reveals the posturing of the street as a fragile shell built around a core of inexpressible feeling, yet the dominant narrative for decades has been around thinking of gang members as violent, unrepentant criminals. Getting students to write about how this book defies those stereotypes will help them engage with Toxic Masculinity and Vulnerability and Cycles of Violence.
By Jason Reynolds
Ain't Burned All the Bright
Jason Reynolds
All American Boys
Brendan Kiely, Jason Reynolds
As Brave As You
Jason Reynolds
Eraser Tattoo
Jason Reynolds
For Every One
Jason Reynolds
Ghost
Jason Reynolds
Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks
Jason Reynolds
Lu
Jason Reynolds
Miles Morales: Spider-Man
Jason Reynolds
Patina
Jason Reynolds
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You
Ibram X. Kendi, Jason Reynolds
Stuntboy, in the Meantime
Jason Reynolds
Sunny
Jason Reynolds
The Boy in the Black Suit
Jason Reynolds
There Was a Party for Langston
Jason Reynolds
When I Was the Greatest
Jason Reynolds