Reply to APS MS ELA curriculum and differentiation?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]APS does have intensified classes in middle school now, so there is some differentiation.  My 7th grader is in Intensified English.  The teacher said they read materials at a higher lexile level, do more analysis and write more than in the non-intensified class.  So far, in Q1, they did a short story unit and are now reading The Outsiders as a class.  That's the only whole class novel of the year, but they get to pick other books from a selection.  So yes they do read books and your kid can choose more challenging options, if that's their preference.

APS has emphasized writing and analysis in all intensified classes, so there should also be more writing in classes like history/civics and science, than in the non-intensified versions.  [b]In 6th grade Intensified History, for instance, my kid had to write a fictional narrative from the first person perspective of an immigrant and do research to support the details in their account.[/b][/quote]

[b]I’m as liberal as they come and my spouse is an immigrant, but this feels like a poor use of an assignment. Do they at least say like an immigrant arriving in America in 1889 or  something like that? Or is it a contemporary immigrant?[/b]

[b]As for novel reading, reading a novel as a class allows for deeper discussions, and the analysis that students submit can be more careful scrutinized by the teacher [/b]— it’s not like they are reading 150+ random novels to critique their writing assignments?!  My neighbors private told me they were assigned about 5 novels.

But obv the SOL and SAT are not having students read novels for the test, so the emphasis for APS is reading passages and responding to those. [/quote]
You're really nitpicking here.

It was history.  They were studying immigration to America during a particular time period and were given a couple of options, including German/Dutch settlers, Chinese settlers who were working on the Transcontinental railroad and maybe one other.  I thought it was a good assignment.  The had to synthesize content, think about a perspective, and write a longer narrative piece.  Totally reasonable for 6th grade.

The teachers like the book club concept because they find it easier to have discussions in a slightly smaller group and the kids are more engaged if they pick the book.  I have no problem with the class being split into 2-3 groups by book.  The teacher has still read all the books and they have discussions.

I also think you're being a bit overly critical of the idea that sometimes kids read different books from a list.  This is how we did it when I was a kid and we wrote book reports.  I think this is what they're doing for the historical fiction unit, so they'll all read WWII books and share different perspectives.  That is totally in the range of normal for middle school.[/quote]

Womp.[/quote]

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