Reply to Honors English 9A, MP1: What is your child reading?

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Reply to "Honors English 9A, MP1: What is your child reading?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I teach 9th grade honors english at a HS.  Half my classes are reading The Magic Fish.  The other half All American Boys[/quote]

Is this just because there are too few copies of the book for every student to get the same one?[/quote]

It may be due to English Learners in their class. If you are just learning English, the Magic Fish would be appropriate. All American Boy isn't honors reading level. Consider that this teacher has to divide their time between two student cohorts in one class.[/quote]

Do tell - what makes AAB not an honors reading level book? Because it's contemporary and focuses on police brutality against African Americans? Seems pretty finger on the pulse of the nation to me. But I'd love to hear your opinion, PP. Do tell. [/quote]

DP. Its lexile is 770HL -- high interest book for struggling readers who are below grade level. The 9th grade fall median Lexile level is 1195L. It's not even at grade level -- let alone at honors.[/quote]

To me, it sounds like AAB would be a good pick for on level.  For honors, combine it with something more challenging on a related theme — Beloved, invisible Man, even something like a day in the life of Ivan denisovich (which I read on 9th grade in the 80s) if you want to take about misuse of government power.  There’s just so, so much missed opportunity with this supposedly honors curriculum.  This is the perfect age to read all sorts of stuff — once you are in college and have a full time job it’s so much harder, especially if you haven’t developed the habit.  It’s just such a shame.[/quote]

Social Studies class is great place to investigate government issues using easily accessible simplistic writing, to enable social studies learning in student with weak literacy. And MCPS does this

English class needs to focus on language development composition, skills, and literatary criticism and creation skills. [/quote]

Yeah. We do that. The writing assignment for All American Boys asks them to write a story from the point of view of another character in the book, so we spend a lot of time talking about style and writer intention/reader impact. I think y'all get on here and complain just for the sake of complaining. And there's this term - hang with me now - called interdisciplinary studies. It's the idea that being able to read critically and write analytically is as important in non-ELA classes as is learning about history in an ELA class! [/quote]

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