Anonymous wrote:I’m confused. Not yet in middle school yet but why not just call it English instead of Advanced English?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not a big fan of Study Synch. I was going over the responses to one of the multiple choice quizzes on Study Synch and there was one question where the question (to define a word as used in context) really had two possible answers; there was another question where the "correct" answer seemed to me totally the wrong interpretation of the passage, and there was another answer that was also not great, but maybe closer to the point the author was actually trying to make.

So I think even an advanced reader can do poorly in Advanced English, because at least the multiple choice questions seem to be an exercise in trying to figure out what the StudySynch people would think, rather than what the author thought.

For Band, I thought it was just that 6th grade is beginner band and 7th grade is advanced band -- not that it implied any better skill level. They could call it Band 1, Band 2, Band 3, which might be more accurate.

There's really a wide variation in the grading. My older kid, who is a conscientious student who studies Spanish in her spare time and is close to fluent now, got a B in MS Spanish for random reasons. Her sibling is getting an A and he knows about 5 words, three of which are foods he orders at Mexican restaurants. My husband keeps saying "How is he getting an A?" and I'm like "How did our first kid get a B???"

That's funny, re: Spanish. My kid doesn't seem to be learning much Spanish at all. In our middle school, 6th grade band is also called Advanced Band.

Anonymous wrote:I'm not a big fan of Study Synch. I was going over the responses to one of the multiple choice quizzes on Study Synch and there was one question where the question (to define a word as used in context) really had two possible answers; there was another question where the "correct" answer seemed to me totally the wrong interpretation of the passage, and there was another answer that was also not great, but maybe closer to the point the author was actually trying to make.

So I think even an advanced reader can do poorly in Advanced English, because at least the multiple choice questions seem to be an exercise in trying to figure out what the StudySynch people would think, rather than what the author thought.

For Band, I thought it was just that 6th grade is beginner band and 7th grade is advanced band -- not that it implied any better skill level. They could call it Band 1, Band 2, Band 3, which might be more accurate.

There's really a wide variation in the grading. My older kid, who is a conscientious student who studies Spanish in her spare time and is close to fluent now, got a B in MS Spanish for random reasons. Her sibling is getting an A and he knows about 5 words, three of which are foods he orders at Mexican restaurants. My husband keeps saying "How is he getting an A?" and I'm like "How did our first kid get a B???"

Anonymous wrote:Writing in the humanities is a joke until you get to AP classes, or are in a Humanities magnet. It's the weakness of MCPS compared to selective private schools.

Anonymous wrote:The classes are mixed ability. But our school had a presentation at some point about how they can differentiate individual students' assignments within StudySync so they are reading at the appropriate levels.