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][quote=Anonymous]All American Boys 
But they will also be reading Of Mice and Men 
[/quote]

Of Mice & Men is a choice in MP2. And it's super short. Why couldn't they read both of these in MP1?[/quote]

Totally agree.  My HS English class in 1986 probably read twice as many books.  I remember we read Great Expectations, catcher in the rye, Frankenstein, a Shakespeare play, the Iliad, and I’m sure there were a couple more I’m forgetting now (maybe Huck Finn?)  And I went to public school in a random state so I feel like it’s achievable for McPS.  [/quote]

Sorry to those of you who don't know this, but...these kids DO NOT READ! The vast majority of them, including your precious IB Magnet students, are not doing the reading. They are overwhelmed and/or do not have the stamina to read books the way you think they can.

I teach 9th grade right now. I've also taught AP Lang in the past. Their reading stamina, as previously stated, is in the garbage and has been for some time. I struggle to get them to retain information when we read books together, in class, using an audio book. It takes insane amounts of contextualization to get them to understand any text, so I've come to learn if it's going to to be challenging for them, it better be interesting too.

This year, we will do All American Boys (in Q1 - mind you, we have had significantly fewer instructional days this quarter because of various interruptions and non-instructional days), MARCH Book 3 in Quarter 2, Flowers for Algernon in Quarter 2, A Raisin in the Sun in Quarter 3, The Poet X in Quarter 4, and probably a literature circle book somewhere in there.

For anyone complaining that their kid isn't reading enough or isn't reading any "classics" - get a library card! No one is stopping you! As a matter of fact, it would be great if you and your kid read those "classics" together, and then they can have a discussion with you about the differences between those "classics" and the books they're reading in class :) [/quote]

Can you explain what you mean by "no reading stamina"?  Like, how much should they be able to read?  My 9 year old reads for 30 minutes or so in a row voluntarily most days, is that not enough?  How do you build reading stamina and how much of it do they need by high school?[/quote]

My 9th graders are struggling to read 5 pages in a 45 minute class period.[/quote]

Seriously?  Even the top 5-10% of kids?  Most of my kid's friends can do that easily in 4th grade, including many who didn't qualify for literacy enrichment, so like 70th-80th percentile MAP-R scores at best (we're at a medium-FARMS school.) I can totally believe that the below-average kids struggle with that, but you're saying the average and advanced kids do too?[/quote]

With the average and advanced kids its not an achievement gap issue but rather an attention span issue.  They have difficulty staying focused for longer than 10 minutes at most.  They are getting up and walking around, talking across the room, asking to leave, begging to use phones and chromebooks inappropriately.  Like I said in a previous post, I have 120 total students across 40 classes and the average grade right now is a 48%.  This isnt just the special ed kids having struggles.

I am sure lack of challenge and boredom is a significant contributor to this but it is a deeper issue that kids these days are dealing with.

And yes i understand this forum is made up of only the best 5% of parents in the county and it’s impossible to even think that your kids could ever be distracted in a classroom.[/quote]

Wow, what's bringing the grades down so much?  Is it mostly about not turning in assignments and getting zeros, or are most kids getting bad grades on assignments and quizzes/tests too?  If so, is it poor reading comprehension, poor writing, not trying hard on the assignments and getting lower grades than they're capable of, or what? (Again, talking about the average and advanced kids getting bad grades, not the below-level ones.  What is the rough breakdown by level in your classes, would you say, for context?)

I don't think my kid is naturally immune from what you're saying, no... just trying to understand what's going on. How do we help make sure our kids are in better shape by the time they get to 9th?[/quote]

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