Anonymous wrote:Yes. It's one of the reasons we moved from public.

Same here.

Our Catholic HS has them reading multiple books and writing papers in English, also writing papers in Theology and History classes.

Yes. All three schools DC has attended (Montessori, a k-8, and now HS) have read full books and then written about them. Earliest years were things like the Mercy Watson series and James and the Giant Peach, with actual novels (Fever 1793, The Cay) and plays (Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet) starting in 5th and 6th. In HS, DC reads several full books a year in English classes, plus at least one non-fiction, non-textbook book for history class (summer reading).

While reading whole books is great, since your child is in preschool, I’d focus on schools that have a strong emphasis on phonics in their reading instruction. This needs to be systematic explicit instruction in phonics, where the kids are given decodable texts (books that they can sound out), and be taught to sound out unfamiliar words. The label “phonics” can be applied to significantly different approaches to instruction, with significantly different outcomes. This article describes the different approaches to teaching phonics:
https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/phonics-and-decoding/articles/phonics-instruction

Yes, more than one whole book -- plus 1 Shakespeare play.

Yes. I remember them reading whole books in 4th grade. Now in 8th grade and reading multiple whole books during the year (and had one assigned during the summer).

My HS student in private and my MS student in public both read whole books for school throughout the year and over the summer.

Yes, but my one in public also reads whole books, just different books.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Disturbed by the recent trend of schools not assigning whole books to kids in school anymore. There was a NYTimes on it this morning. Do they still assign books in the private your child attends? Mine is still in preschool (public) and haven’t fully thought out his future education path yet. Having a robust reading curriculum with books would be a big draw for private.

You can also read entire books to and with your child, you know. Reading with your child in the early years lays the groundwork for his literacy.

Not arguing that it's good for OP (critical even) to read with DC and to DC. However there's something really valuable about reading a whole book with your class and having that touchpoint together of having analyzed the literature and being able to make inside class jokes about pieces of it or things like that. These little details are how cultures are built.

Nobody's going to get that from tiny snippets on a screen they forget in 2 seconds.

Yes. It's one of the reasons we moved from public.

Anonymous wrote:Disturbed by the recent trend of schools not assigning whole books to kids in school anymore. There was a NYTimes on it this morning. Do they still assign books in the private your child attends? Mine is still in preschool (public) and haven’t fully thought out his future education path yet. Having a robust reading curriculum with books would be a big draw for private.

You can also read entire books to and with your child, you know. Reading with your child in the early years lays the groundwork for his literacy.

Yes, they read them. They write about them - I've seen worksheets that guide them through the writing in the primary grades and part of upper elementary along with quick paragraph responses and essays in the middle school grades.

Our public elementary occasionally read whole books (1-2x year), but not as a whole class novel ever. Projects in response were often slideshows. Literary analysis was taught, but most teachers weren't good at it.

Literature also spans timeframes. It could be more globally diverse (I grew up with a homeschool literature curriculum that was way ahead of its time on this), but our public school didn't really teach global history or literature well despite all the messaging about diversity, so it's still better.

In addition in social studies starting in middle school they read a lot of primary source documents.

Yes. And write about them. And learn to annotate as they are reading. They have actual books to read over the summer with essays due the first week of school. For summer, they have lots of options for kids with different interests and reading abilities, but typically have one book everyone in each grade or division reads as well.

Yes, multiple whole books per year. But the important point, imo, is that they write about them. Just reading them is not enough, after a certain grade (5th?), and I can imagine a strong writing program that uses only short stories and plays. So "whole books" is not exactly the right measure.

We left public before kid was reading independently, so I have no comparison. You should ask parents at your zoned public and look at the online curriculum.

Disturbed by the recent trend of schools not assigning whole books to kids in school anymore. There was a NYTimes on it this morning. Do they still assign books in the private your child attends? Mine is still in preschool (public) and haven’t fully thought out his future education path yet. Having a robust reading curriculum with books would be a big draw for private.