English class at middle school: Catholic schools vs FCPS (aap) in NoVa

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We're at a Protestant school (similar price to parochial), but just made the switch from FCPS AAP in 6th to private for 7th, with our younger kids also switching.

TL; DR - it's a combination of more scaffolding and direct instruction to help the kids really understand and higher expectations.

- In the elementary grades there is formal grammar instruction with a separate grammar block. My 7th grader is currently racing to catch up. The language arts teacher is able to use formal grammar terms to explain things to the kids about their writing.

- Five paragraph essays have been carefully taught since mid-elementary in our private, but are being reviewed again in 7th. My kid was never, ever formally taught how to do a thesis or topic sentence in AAP - we covered it at home when the concept was required by a project in 5th grade.

- The whole class studies a novel or play together and does related projects and writing. They really dive deeply into literary analysis as a class, instead of being given random short pieces or having a "book club" that only part of the class is doing (like in FCPS ES AAP). This allows for them to learn from both the teacher and each other. My 7th grader's teacher bribes them with a lot of food and follow-on movies to love the book. Plus I think reading something as a grade builds class cohesiveness, but maybe I'm just an English nerd. Again the kids have been reading whole class novels since elementary, starting with whole class read-alouds. They've been analyzing them since elementary in a stunning amount of depth as well. I've been impressed by the literary analysis my 5th grader is bringing home.

- The writing expectations are so much higher. My 7th grader was used to giving a passable attempt and easily earning a 4. For her most recent short story she revised several times and put a ton more thought and effort into it than she ever had before. It's possible this is just the difference between elementary and middle school, but I didn't get the sense that our FCPS MS was going to be that demanding on the quality of writing.

- To help with the writing expectations, there's a writing lab the students can visit during study hall. My kid took advantage of that and got some great feedback. And as a parent it was so nice to have someone else besides me giving her work a once-over.

in summary, nothing you wrote applies to either FCPS middle schools or Catholic schools. Am I missing something?

The type of instruction that pp laid out is similar to what op will find at a catholic school.

And you know this based on your experience at a non-Catholic Christian school and at public school but no experience at a Catholic school, or did I misunderstand?

I’m the person you’re responding to. My kids are at Catholic school, and what pp described at her Protestant school is similar to the language education that I’ve seen at our Catholic school.

It sounds a lot like AA english in FCPS too. Maybe it's just DD's school, but there was a stark difference in expectation and work load between ES and MS

[Anonymous]

In Archdiocese of Arlington Catholic middle schools, the children have English as a class and Reading as another class with a different teacher. The English class focuses on grammar and vocabulary and the Reading class focuses on reading and analyzing texts. The kids must read multiple books over the summer and read multiple full books throughout the school year as well. This is all on top of math, social studies, religion, Spanish, and science.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We're at a Protestant school (similar price to parochial), but just made the switch from FCPS AAP in 6th to private for 7th, with our younger kids also switching.

TL; DR - it's a combination of more scaffolding and direct instruction to help the kids really understand and higher expectations.

- In the elementary grades there is formal grammar instruction with a separate grammar block. My 7th grader is currently racing to catch up. The language arts teacher is able to use formal grammar terms to explain things to the kids about their writing.

- Five paragraph essays have been carefully taught since mid-elementary in our private, but are being reviewed again in 7th. My kid was never, ever formally taught how to do a thesis or topic sentence in AAP - we covered it at home when the concept was required by a project in 5th grade.

- The whole class studies a novel or play together and does related projects and writing. They really dive deeply into literary analysis as a class, instead of being given random short pieces or having a "book club" that only part of the class is doing (like in FCPS ES AAP). This allows for them to learn from both the teacher and each other. My 7th grader's teacher bribes them with a lot of food and follow-on movies to love the book. Plus I think reading something as a grade builds class cohesiveness, but maybe I'm just an English nerd. Again the kids have been reading whole class novels since elementary, starting with whole class read-alouds. They've been analyzing them since elementary in a stunning amount of depth as well. I've been impressed by the literary analysis my 5th grader is bringing home.

- The writing expectations are so much higher. My 7th grader was used to giving a passable attempt and easily earning a 4. For her most recent short story she revised several times and put a ton more thought and effort into it than she ever had before. It's possible this is just the difference between elementary and middle school, but I didn't get the sense that our FCPS MS was going to be that demanding on the quality of writing.

- To help with the writing expectations, there's a writing lab the students can visit during study hall. My kid took advantage of that and got some great feedback. And as a parent it was so nice to have someone else besides me giving her work a once-over.

in summary, nothing you wrote applies to either FCPS middle schools or Catholic schools. Am I missing something?

The type of instruction that pp laid out is similar to what op will find at a catholic school.

And you know this based on your experience at a non-Catholic Christian school and at public school but no experience at a Catholic school, or did I misunderstand?

I’m the person you’re responding to. My kids are at Catholic school, and what pp described at her Protestant school is similar to the language education that I’ve seen at our Catholic school.

It sounds a lot like AA english in FCPS too. Maybe it's just DD's school, but there was a stark difference in expectation and work load between ES and MS

The thing is that in catholic schools, the writing education starts strongly in elementary school. Spelling tests, vocabulary, parts of speech, different types of writing, are all done from the beginning.

[Anonymous]

My Catholic school-educated children also know cursive and can sign their names!

[Anonymous]

Not sure about the aap academics at 7-8th grades. The math is the same (honor algebra, honor geometry etc) — and they are fairly straightforward and not at competition level. There is a separate aap language class — but many people have said it’s not much different from the honor one. There is not much writing involved — no essay. Reading is modern novels or biography— simple English.

[Anonymous]

Interesting. My 5th grader in AAP is definitely writing and revising 5 paragraph essays with topic sentences and a thesis. They also are doing whole class readings in addition to book club. Maybe school specific?

[Anonymous]

We've done fcps aap and catholic school and the 8th grade AAP is about equivalent to a good 6th grade Catholic School language arts program. The public schools are about 2 years behind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. My 5th grader in AAP is definitely writing and revising 5 paragraph essays with topic sentences and a thesis. They also are doing whole class readings in addition to book club. Maybe school specific?

Which school? My younger one is attending Lemon Road but has not been doing much for English.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. My 5th grader in AAP is definitely writing and revising 5 paragraph essays with topic sentences and a thesis. They also are doing whole class readings in addition to book club. Maybe school specific?

Might actually be the change to Benchmark in elementary. We're no longer in FCPS but everyone I've talked to who values a more traditional ELA education says Benchmark is far more rigorous than the patchwork curriculum FCPS had before.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We've done fcps aap and catholic school and the 8th grade AAP is about equivalent to a good 6th grade Catholic School language arts program. The public schools are about 2 years behind.

We're zoned for Frost and all my friends tell me 8th is when school actually becomes challenging in our pyramid.