Posted on 08/29/2009 2:34:55 PM PDT by Steelfish
Students Get New Assignment: Pick Books You Like
David Walter Banks Lorrie McNeill gives her middle school students a wide choice of reading in Jonesboro, Ga. More Photos
MOTOKO RICH Published: August 29, 2009
JONESBORO, Ga. — For years Lorrie McNeill loved teaching “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the Harper Lee classic that many Americans regard as a literary rite of passage.
But last fall, for the first time in 15 years, Ms. McNeill, 42, did not assign “Mockingbird” — or any novel. Instead she turned over all the decisions about which books to read to the students in her seventh- and eighth-grade English classes at Jonesboro Middle School in this south Atlanta suburb.
Among their choices: James Patterson‘s adrenaline-fueled “Maximum Ride” books, plenty of young-adult chick-lit novels and even the “Captain Underpants” series of comic-book-style novels.
But then there were students like Jennae Arnold, a soft-spoken eighth grader who picked challenging titles like “A Lesson Before Dying” by Ernest J. Gaines and “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, of which she wrote, partly in text-message speak: “I would have N3V3R thought of or about something like that on my own.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
My daughters just switched private schools for middle school. My son started there for high school last year.
They have assigned reading and then book reports where they have some free choice.
My kids would not have read the free reading books on their own. My daughters read Tom Sawyer, and the one in honors also read The Hobbit. Once they got into Tom Sawyer, they both liked it.
They are going to be reading The Outsiders in class. One of my daughters started just looking at it when the books came home, and then she started reading it. She loved it. She said she would have never picked it out on her own, and it is now one of her favorite books.
Last year, my son had to read The Princess Bride and Lord of the Flies. He really liked both of those books. His sister then picked up his Lord of the Flies book and read it. She loved it. This summer, he had to read Farenheit 451 and The Aenid. He really like Farenheit 451, and he’s glad he read The Aenid.
I thinks it’s good to have some books that the entire class reads together and discusses.
Probably not many. But I did, in the 6th grade. Still, dumping everything for "workshop" alone doesn't seem like a good idea at all.
To this day I still think that ‘Moby Dick’ was a piece of literary trash.
Same with anything written by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
On the other hand, I found ‘A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch’ by Alexander Solzhenitzyn to be amazing.
“What child is going to pick up ‘Moby-Dick’?”
Heck, you could hurt a child making them pick that up. Moby Dick stank. I like long novels, old novels, and sea novels especially; but like a lot of the 19th c classics, it just stank, and was five times longer than it needed to be.
I’ll take Dumas, Hugo, Orczy, Stevenson — with a sprinkling of Twain.
No doubt.
See Dick Run.
Run, run, run.
See Spot.
See Puff.
My regular English 9th grade kids are reading the Odyssey.
My honors English are reading Antigone.
After that they will read Romeo and Juliet.
The honors will read Julius Caesar.
Plus the 20 words of vocabulary, plus grammar work, plus another book I assign for silent sustained reading.
Then 1st term will end.
“Moby Dick” is one of the two best books I’ve ever read. 1984 is the other.
You have to take your time with it, but it’s a tremendously good read.
By the way, the honors class will read Rand’s Anthem for their final book.
I was constantly pulling books out of my parents' library. Just a few years later it was "The Brothers Karamazov," which started me off on the Russian authors.
The best route would probably be to divide the reading into three groups: student selection, student selections for the class to read together, and teacher's choice for reading together.
I had read all the James Bond novels by the time I was thirteen. Mostly because no one I knew lived like that, otherwise it was always horse or history books, not novels.
Never have been able to plow through all of the ‘classic’ novels on reading lists. Did read Jane Austen; thought they were stuffy. And did, somehow, survive reading Virgil’s The Aeneid (though just barely!)
LEt me see...at that age, about 12 or so, I would have chosen Gone With The Wind. Or To Sir, With Love. Or one of James Herriott’s many books. The Chronicles of Narnia. I remember buying the copy of To Sir on vacation at the bookstore I frequented there every year. My sister bought a Mad magazine. The owner laughingly told us “YOU (to my sister) are buying trash. YOU (to me) are buying treasure.” I’m trying to remember what other authors I would have bought about that time but can’t recall, after a lifetime of books. Showing kids that reading can be fun is important. Later on, I chose to read some Shakespeare, lots of Dickens etc. Reading has always been pure pleasure to me and I’ll admit, some things assigned were incredibly boring. But encouraging kids to read - A+.
I was a huge fan of the Fitzgerald translation, but my daughter read the Fagle Iliad and I'm a convert to his translations of Homer.
It better conveys the feeling of the Greek, if that makes any sense (I read Greek in college).
Moby-Dick is not an easy book, and he really did need an editor, and if you're looking for a rip-roaring sea story, this ain't it. But I had a semester-long course in college on the book and its sources, and once you start digging, it kind of grows on you, but as New England psychology more than anything else.
And I have to disagree also about Hawthorne. I can take or leave The Scarlet Letter which is by no means his best work. I think his short stories are masterful, though. "Young Goodman Brown" scared me silly when I was in high school, and still has the power to get me to look over my shoulder.
- for rip-roaring 19th c. sea stories my absolute favorite is Captain Marryat. Most of his books are fairly serious, but I laughed my way all the way through Mr. Midshipman Easy. It's very topical today, too, what with all the nonsense blethered around about affirmative action . . . .
I remember so well my 9th grade English class where we read Great Expectations, The Grapes of Wrath, Julius Caesar and My Antonia. It was the year I finally felt like an adult reader and I was thrilled. To this day, these are still some of my favorites.
My 7th grade choice book was the autobiography of Sammy Davis, Jr.!
The idea of letting the kids pick their books is just more of the same old nonsense.
Presumably the teacher is there to teach -- i.e. guide the children into reading that they would not ordinarily approach, stretch their limits, encourage them to think and analyze . . . you know, what school is supposed to be about!
If I lived in Clayton & couldn't afford to send my kids to Woodward, I'd MOVE.
i really liked “1984 and, “it can’t happen here”.
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