Gove kills the mockingbird with ban on US classic novels ...what do you think?

[mrz]

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/article1414764.ece?CMP=OTH-gnws-standard-2014_05_24

How did schools do it in the past?

But we've been free of SATS for a long time and Y9 is a great time to teach the American Lit that the exam boards aren't offering on the new specs.

What is it with turning back the clock?

In the past grammar school kids probably did a lot of reading in class and expected the kids to do a lot of reading at home.

Then they were expected to write essays. There were no essay plans, no modelling, no scaffolding, no mark schemes, no assessment objectives.

Nowadays OFSTED would not consider a lesson of reading acceptable. Where's the learning? What are the kids actually doing? How are they applying their learning?

Now we do not split kids into sheep and goats.

This exam does not even have tiers.

We cannot expect all our kids to read up to 18 hours of a challenging text at home.

To be fair, although I honestly love Dickens I need a summer holiday to read him because otherwise I find myself reading the same page 10 times.

Agree pluto and we do Mockingbird and Lord of Flies at year 9 too.

I just think we should be encouraging DCs from Y7-Y11 to read more reasonable quality books.

Not necessarily 'literature' what ever that means, but good 20th-21st century books.

My DDs enjoyed Holes, About a Boy and Cordoline, not 800pgs of Dickens, but not twilight either.

I'd love my two to do 'His Dark Materials' and things like that. A booker prize winner perhaps for Y10/11?

Because modern DCs read and most adults read for escapism. With YouTube and catchup TV they need never pick up a book.

As a parent of a DD who is really good at English, but total resistant to any suggestions from me or her teacher as to what to read at home, it's clear books have to be an integral part of lessons.

Reading Romeo and Juliet in Y9 and using it for GCSE and using OMAM for lit and lang. Means DCs read just a tiny handful of texts, before rereading Twilight yet again.

Nocomet I think encouraging reading is exactly what English teachers do and would like to do more of too.

It should be at the core of our vocation but with league tables and exams etc it's not as easy as you might think.

Also, nobody's picked up on what I said about the Eng Lang papers.

Have you seen them? You need to.

One of the Lang papers now involves an unseen literary text and more higher level thinking tasks i.e. evaluation.

I'm 46 years old, and most of my generation found English Lit. irrelevant then. 20 years later DCs are still doing the same set books, not simply Shakespeare which I understand, but that misery fest LOTFs and an Inspector Calls.

DD and me quite like IC, but honestly isn't it time for a bit of a change.

blue I know you would like to encourage wider reading, the syllabuses clearly make it hard and the league tables are always going to council better the book we know how to teach.

It just makes my sad that nothing has changed since I was at school, but DDs live in a world of comparatively cheap books and Kindles, not a small village with a tiny library.

DD1 can blow £100 on teen books, I'd love a pointer to one grade better.

She's dyslexic and DD2 is stubborn, neither are going to read Pride and I can't spell it .

No, I haven't seen an Eng. Lang paper. I'm not asking too many questions as it's the one exam that makes DD1 a bit twitchy.

What is it with turning back the clock?

It isn't turning back the clock it's learning from the past and from schools that still manage to read whole texts

In the past grammar school kids probably did a lot of reading in class and expected the kids to do a lot of reading at home.

Why do we have lower expectations from pupils now

Then they were expected to write essays.

No they were expected to write essays right from the start

There were no essay plans, no modelling, no scaffolding, no mark schemes, no assessment objectives.

There were essay plans, modelling and mark schemes and oddly enough pupils learnt what was expected without writing out objectives

Nowadays OFSTED would not consider a lesson of reading acceptable. Where's the learning? What are the kids actually doing? How are they applying their learning?

Now we do not split kids into sheep and goats.

So schools don't have foundation and higher levels groups?

This exam does not even have tiers.

We cannot expect all our kids to read up to 18 hours of a challenging text at home.

Why?

Even the most motivated of Y10s or Y11s aren't likely to be be able to read Great Expectations or which ever other Dickens is on the lists in less than roughly a month of their own time in term time. They do have other homework to complete and teenage lives to lead.

It might seem reasonable, at an objective distance, to require a young adult to digest Dickens or Austen in a month of their own time but this doesn't reflect the reality for a lot of students. They will hear in their English lessons that reading at least a book a month is a driving force to succeed in many areas of the curriculum but if there's little support or opportunity at home then this is going to be really hard to sustain once the 3.30pm bell tolls.

I don't like the current GCSE English specifications but I am worried that the new courses won't support us in closing the gap between the disadvantaged and advantaged. To be confident that students understand the whole text some will need to be given the opportunity to read most of it in school...but there never is enough curriculum time to afford this.

I am in my forties. I adored reading Lord of the Flies, Mockingbird and Inspector Calls at school. They are modern classics and the students I teach continue to enjoy them. English Literature remains hugely relevant; I'm glad that it will have such a significant part to play in the new school performance measures.

Is that assuming they do no reading in school pluto? GCSEs are studied over 2 years so even 1 text per term (13 weeks) would cover 6 texts in depth

Of course they do some reading in school but we have 2 GCSEs to teach in an average of 3 hours a week; the English Language specification also requires a considerable amount of curriculum time. Students have to keep refining their essay writing skills, discuss, explore and analyse what they've read (the fun and properly demanding bit!) and complete the speaking and listening endorsement. If I had 2 years of 3 hours a week to just do the Eng Lit texts I wouldn't be worried at all and we could easily cover 6 texts in depth.

mrz, most of your questions have been answered already but just to clarify.

There will be no tiers on this exam. ALL the kids are expected to do it.

Surely you understand that you cannot teach ALL kids in 2014 in the same way that the top 30 % of kids were taught in 1967 in a grammar school?

Why is it unreasonable to expect kids to read challenging texts at home? DS1 doesn't seem to read any whole books at school (he reads plenty at home though) and did not receive one single piece of English homework in the whole of Y9, not even a book home to read. I cannot understand why he wasn't set reading tasks as English homework like I was when I was at school.

Actually reading stuff is about the single best (and easiest) way to get better at English.

And to argue that English teaching or any sort of teaching was better in the 60s is beyond ridiculous.

I know there WON'T be bluestraw but there ARE at the moment so perhaps you can explain the difference between NOW and the PAST (not the past and futire)

We cannot expect all our kids to read up to 18 hours of a challenging text at home.

Why?

You're being ridiculous. I love reading. I love Dickens. I can only take on a book like Great Expectations in the long summer holiday. And I am a highly qualified English teacher.

My own kids often don't get home from school until 6 or after. They have hours of homework and activities. There are so many demands on their time and every teacher and sports coach is telling them that theirs is the most important subject. There are also other things going on - TV, the Internet, other books.

And my kids have been brought up in a house full of books and are very literate.

mrz, I'm sorry but I'm not going to explain why teaching in a comprehensive today is different from what passed for teaching in a grammar school in the 60s. Perhaps visit a school??

18 hours over a term equals just over 15 mins a day with weekends off for other things

One thing - in a class of 30 it takes me over a week's worth of lessons to assess all the individual speaking and listening presentations which don't actually count for the GCSE any more.

There are 3 speaking and listenings + an extra one if we can fit it in.

Do you know that just sitting the controlled assessments not the prep for them is about 11 hours?

Each CA involves a different set of assessment objectives and a different mark scheme. It can take at least a lesson just to deal with this for each one.

In the 60s in a grammar school a teacher could just turn up with a book and the kids wouldn't expect or ask for me.

THe reality is that many kids were bored out of their heads and learnt very little but didn't dare complain .

I will be reading aloud all the set texts to my dd1. She will love it!

Dd2 will read them herself and tell me stuff I don't know.

Children are different. One method, one tier, one system will not suit all.

Love the fact we are discussing Lit though!

I've visited a few bluestrawhat and have two children who have been subjected to what passes as teaching now which is why I asked the question.

You haven't got a term while you wait for the kids to read the book.

You really don't understand much about ENglish teaching do you?

And maybe you can read Dickens in 15 minutes a day but I certainly can't. You need a few hours at a time to get into it first. Hence why I read Dickens in the summer holidays.

And many, many kids including clever kids would not be able to cope with the language or ideas on their own.

And Mrsbluestraw you sound very conscientious. I agree with what you have said but (whispers) we need to start cutting corners on EN 1....

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