Reply to Tell me about the schools in Herndon/Chantilly - Crossfield, Oak Hill, Navy, Fox Mill, Lees Corner

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Reply to "Tell me about the schools in Herndon/Chantilly - Crossfield, Oak Hill, Navy, Fox Mill, Lees Corner"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Current Navy AAP 5th grader, has done 2 assigned book club, is asked to read 10 books each quarter, teacher would sit next to individual student to discuss/assist ( observed when volunteered outside classroom). Teachers assigns writing/report/vocabularies etc and math practice nearly everyday. AAP and Gen Ed students mixed in specials but not LA Arts and Math ( not all students are in advanced LA Arts and Advanced Math, a couple of more advanced join AAP 6th grader for math). Don’t know about pre Covid, but the policy is 2 AAP class teachers teach both classes in case one has to take sick leave, the same may apply for Gen Ed classes. [/quote]

I call BS. There is no way they are asked to read 10 [u]grade level appropriate or advanced level  [/u]books each quarter. That is more than one per week. While many kids can certainly read that many books, there is no way the teacher is asking them all to do so.[/quote]

I'm the navy parent who wrote about supplementation.

Yes, they are asked, but not required to read 40 books in a year.  This was covered on the back to school nite (that occured on a morning before school started).  The teachers (Brown/Trench) said that most kids complete this.[/quote]

More likely then not, the books are not full novels the way we think of them (Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and the like) and more like books like I Survive series or the Tales of a Fifth Grade Knight or President of the Whole Fifth Grade. Novels but shorter novels that are meant to be accessible to kids in upper ES. Which is not to down play reading those books, they are good, age appropriate reads, and far more manageable then thinking that the kids are reading 40 books like the Percy Jackson series.

But I think it is kind of crazy to ask kids to read 40 books and not to read books that are interesting to them and challenge them. It feels like Teachers are pushing quantity over interest. DS reads the I Survive books and similar length books at school. He is currently working through the Hardy Boys series at home. He gets different things out of each type of book. I prefer the Hardy Boys or the Front Desk series because I think they help him realize that he can read and enjoy longer books. I like the I Survive Books because they introduce him to interesting historical scenarios and lead to conversations about how he might handle challenging events. I far prefer the reading method in his fifth grade class because it simply encourages reading and is not setting a numerical goal which then encourages kids to read shorter books.[/quote]

Precisely. Encouraging quantity over quality is extraordinarily problematic.  An AAP fifth grader should be reading books much more challenging than the [u]I Survived[/u] series or other such novellas.

My AAP fifth grader is currently reading [u]Diary of a Young Girl[/u] by Anne Frank, which has conjured an interest in learning more about the Holocaust and the plight of Jews in Amsterdam.  She is now voraciously researching these spin-off topics. I strongly prefer she read the way she currently is-- challenging herself and following her interests-- than to read a large number of books far below her reading level merely to reach some arbitrary goal a teacher has set.  In fact, should a teacher ever criticize the small number of books my daughter has read in a prescribed amount of time, we would need to have words. [/quote]

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