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thisisntmineIfoundit t1_ix4bhag wrote

Reply to comment by jessicat7474 in Students at NYC high school get third grade-level lessons on Goldilocks by fppencollector

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

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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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