Reply to APS -- Want to return but spouse resistant -- please clarify curriculum 5th grade

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We left APS for Langley early in the pandemic, as our DD was struggling with the isolation of remote school and had trouble reading so much on the screen.

We have had a good experience at Langley, but it is quite expensive for us, DD misses her friends, and we would love to be part of a neighborhood school again.

Spouse believes reading and writing are underemphasized in APS, so can someone who has just finished 5th grade help me win this argument:

[b]How many novels were assigned for 5th grade students to read on their own at home? [/b] Langley had DD read 5 novels, then write essays and do a quiz on them.  Which spouse really appreciates since our DD is a reluctant reader, so having it "assigned" has made it much easier to get her to read independently.[/quote]

Ha.  You should be looking farther down the road than 5th grade.  5 novels is more than either of my kids read in their Arlington high school English classes.  
And they don't even necessarily read the complete novel when they work on one.  This is our experience from both general ed and intensified English classes.
[/quote]

Let me know overstate it, these were short novels like Long Walk to Water and Red Kayak. Something an adult reader would finish in a day or so.

Surely they are assigned at least that much reading by middle school? I want to sway my spouse and save this tuition![/quote]
I don't think having the whole class read the same novel is typcially a central feature of 3-6th grade public school English classes.  The in class work is usually focused around shorter reading passages where the kids are taught concepts and expected to extract information.  Closer to what shows up on the SOL.  Any novels tend to be read independently.

IMO, this makes sense as there's still a pretty large range in reading ability.  It's better to have kids choose novels at their reading level.  It would be difficult to have the whole class the same thing at the same speed.  My advanced reader who polishes off 1000 pages a week would be bored to tears while the slower readers would struggle to keep up.[/quote]

They talk about differentiation, why not just break into small reading club groups and assign novels?  Reading a novel or longer text is way different than just reading passages, as helpful as that is for SOLs [/quote]

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