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jessicat7474 t1_ix3m8em wrote

Teacher here. Indeed this is scaffolding. What many civilians don’t get is that sometimes we as teachers give rudimentary assignments to review skills kids SHOULD know already. Then we apply those skills to more challenging assignments. Believe it or not we’re not that far into the school year, so I will assume that the teacher was indeed reviewing skills in a simplistic way so that students felt empowered to complete tougher assignments. There’s no date, so I’m going to go with that.

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fppencollector OP t1_ix3n8wi wrote

I have some honest questions. Please indulge my curiosity.

It's late November and these are high school students. How nuch time should review take during the school year?

The article mentioned the student's current experience of only being assigned chapters instead of entire novels. Why is that the norm?

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PuzzleheadedWalrus71 t1_ix3ur0s wrote

You'd be surprised how many parents get upset about their children feeling stress over having to read whole books.

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fppencollector OP t1_ix3v08t wrote

My oldest reads a novel a month in English class. I thought that was normal for high school.

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PuzzleheadedWalrus71 t1_ix3xa4f wrote

There are parents who would push back on that requirement.

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WVOQuineMegaFan t1_ix4anoh wrote

I sure would, unless those novels are closer to novellas.

I don't even know why we spend so much time teaching "English" in the first place when those same skills could be built in a history class

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cavalryyy t1_ix4bc6v wrote

Because assessing the deeper meaning of media is valuable in more contexts than just historical analysis?

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thefirstnightatbed t1_ix4ews7 wrote

You don’t really need full length novels to do that, though. Most of my readings in university English classes were short stories.

I do agree with you on English classes being important.

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cavalryyy t1_ix4fqrz wrote

You don’t need full length novels, but certainly some of the best works of all time are novels and there is intrinsic value to having read them. But yeah, I have many gripes with the American school system, and definitely English classes. But glad we’re on the same page that they’re important!

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WVOQuineMegaFan t1_ix4cmyx wrote

I don't believe that's a skill which is all that distinct from general literacy and comprehension, especially given the way English is taught in K-12. There's really very little doubt in my mind that people learn more from reading 1984 than reading about the Soviet Union and analyzing primary source documents

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cavalryyy t1_ix4dz2j wrote

> I don't believe that's a skill which is all that distinct from general literacy and comprehension, especially given the way English is taught in K-12.

I’m not really sure what you mean by this. You don’t learn to understand themes and motifs, separate authors intent from readers interpretation, etc through “general literacy and comprehension”. Understanding what’s being said and understanding what’s meant are different skills

>There's really very little doubt in my mind that people learn more from reading 1984 than reading about the Soviet Union and analyzing primary source documents

I’m not sure if you meant to say this but I agree with this lol. People do, indeed, learn more (about certain things) from reading 1985 than about the Soviet Union

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WVOQuineMegaFan t1_ix4ga3r wrote

> themes and motifs

There are absolutely themes in historical analysis. It's true you don't learn about literary motifs, but that doesn't seem like a topic that justifies English taking up more time in school than any other subject. Also, I don't remember much time being spent on "motifs" in English classes anyway.

> separate authors intent from readers interpretation

Of course you learn about this in a history or sociology class, both explicitly in textbooks and implicitly when analyzing primary source documents, which are almost never unbiased or entirely accurate.

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Another thing: if English really is about the deeper meaning of media it should mostly ditch novels and focus on movies, television, news articles, and social media. Most people only read novels occasionally and *never* read poetry. The only reason they teach literary fiction is because literary fiction is generally considered to have more aesthetic value than great television or TikTok, which I personally agree with but also think is basically irrelevant.

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NotAHoneypot t1_ix8ljte wrote

"Most people only read novels occasionally and never read poetry."

Okay, if you say so then this must be true 😅. Weirdly enough though, Audible is incredibly popular. And even stranger, Lewis Carroll and Homer are considered highly rated and very popular authors on it. Both are poetry-centric.

And before you say anything about audiobooks, bear in mind Stephen King - a cherished wordsmith who married a poet, Tabitha King - has long since been an emphatic supporter of how they can help improve literacy.

Kind of a bummer if you don't like poetry - different stroke for different folks, but to say people never read it seems far more opinion than fact 🤡

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Pera_Espinosa t1_ix4bhl4 wrote

Why is this so downvoted ?

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mechadizzy t1_ix4snxp wrote

People on this subreddit are hyper-sensitive to anyone saying anything bad about the state of american public institutions.

Just ignore the numbers next to people's posts. They don't always align with reality, and anonymity creates fuckwads out of people.

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RChickenMan t1_ix51gf3 wrote

Because it's trying to draw conclusions by comparing one anecdote to another anecdote. The scaffolded review assignment shown in the article is one data point. This person's kid's class is another data point. Two data points, in two completely different contexts, amongst the millions of assignments being completed in thousands of classrooms throughout the city. It's an incredibly misleading and useless way to try to understand an issue as complex and nuanced as education.

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Sketcha_2000 t1_ix4nr1c wrote

Review of basic skills can be woven into lessons throughout the entire school year. Just because they were doing this one lesson on a day in November doesn’t mean that’s what they’re doing all day, every day. Students who are far behind need regular exposure to the basics, especially at this age when the ability to absorb things like a sponge is waning.

As far as your second question goes, I could be wrong but I read it as they were being assigned extremely abridged summaries of classic novels. This may or may not be appropriate; with zero context, we have no idea. They could have been assigned to a class of students with disabilities (or again, students who are severely behind in reading level) and in which case, would be a good way of exposing those students to the classics without expecting them to read text they physically can’t. I don’t think this is the norm. This is one situation, and again, we have zero context.

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jessicat7474 t1_ix5q80c wrote

Sometimes we assign portions of books if the focus is on a specific area of content. We review throughout the year. So for instance, I give my students a model paragraph but instead of their first review being of the content in the paragraph, I make it about something silly. Teachers are constantly trying to engage kids in learning in new ways. I’ll tell you, I teach high schoolers and they give zero f’s a lot of the time. I have a high level class and then a lot of kids reading at elementary school level in the same class. So it’s really tough to deem an assignment too basic. I’m trying to get around that with differentiation but it’s a beast.

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fppencollector OP t1_ix61a4o wrote

Thank you for the perspective. That would make for a tough balancing act with such a wide range of abilities in the same classroom.

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thisisntmineIfoundit t1_ix4bhag wrote

But...Goldilocks? And what does it say about our public school system that 11th graders need "review" on answering who, what, where, when, why? The only way I was going to excuse this assignment was if the student was in special needs and didn't know it. But here you are defending it, along with the school's principal. Scary.

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[deleted] t1_ix4uju2 wrote

[deleted]

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thisisntmineIfoundit t1_ix4vtp1 wrote

A) 1000% agreed on the parents

B) Why aren't these kids held back?

C) Learning to read started in Kindergarten for me and I knew how to sound out any grade appropriate word by 1st/2nd grade so I guess I'm wondering what's going on in those classrooms to get a kid like this in grade 11.

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DryGumby t1_ix5a5bu wrote

They can work on it all year in kindergarten, or at least their classmates can while they're absent or have some other issue, not be able to do it and then get left back. Then do the same next year and they're older and get pushed to the next grade. 3 years later they can't read and nothing in class makes sense. At some point someone has to go back to their level of understanding if they want to make any progress.

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Dangerous-End-2725 t1_ix5u955 wrote

It’s more about community than just the parents. Everyone has to do their part. People can have shitty parents and an amazing community center or after school. Some parents aren’t assholes, they’re parents stuck working overtime with no time to force their kid to do homework or help them read. A parent struggling to speak English and their kid is their translator but they’re expected to help their kid read??? You’d be surprised about how many kids drop out because they’re helping their family at home. All of these things have to be considered when thinking about “proper” education. Also holding back kids back costs money and we alll know school districts don’t wanna pay!

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jessicat7474 t1_ix5qyar wrote

I replied this above but I think it also stands here:

Sometimes we assign portions of books if the focus is on a specific area of content. We review throughout the year. So for instance, I give my students a model paragraph but instead of their first review being of the content in the paragraph, I make it about something silly. Teachers are constantly trying to engage kids in learning in new ways. I’ll tell you, I teach high schoolers and they give zero f’s a lot of the time. I have a high level class and then a lot of kids reading at elementary school level in the same class. So it’s really tough to deem an assignment too basic. I’m trying to get around that with differentiation but it’s a beast.

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Dangerous-End-2725 t1_ix5toq7 wrote

You’d be surprised how many adults, people in college need to review a who what where when and why. They are questions we use with both easy and complex text. Literally was in college reminding other students to answer those questions when reviewing texts for research. The exercise may have been a bit basic but tbh if everyone approached text with the basic questions like this, folks may be better readers.

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