The concept of guided reading is fine, but the choices sometimes aren't. For example, we had to read a ton in 5th grade at my school and fill out papers to them to the point where some kids began to think of reading as work. And don't even get me started on how classics were handled. Listen, I really don't want to flex and stuff but when I was in 8th grade I had a college reading level and was fairly mature for my age. A lot of my classmates weren't. So when we'd read things like Frankenstein and Hamlet, they didn't get what was going on, especially since we had to read and annotate for Frankenstein and read and perform for Hamlet. So you're turning kids off of classics and Shakespeare, two things every kid should be taught to love, by having them associate it with confusion and a heavy workload. Also the choices in books were just bad. Why assign kids Jekyll and Hyde in 7th grade, they won't get it. Why choose Shakespeare's longest play for dissection in 8th grade as opposed to M*cbeth or Midsummer (especially since we were doing Midsummer as our play)? I get that Frankenstein is more child-friendly than other classics, since there's not really any swearing or sexual stuff, but it's still heavy, deep, and thoroughly confusing to the average eighth grader, not to mention that a bored and annoyed eighth grader will dumb the characters down subconsciously.
It makes me extra annoyed since we read The House of the Scorpion earlier, which is a YA book dealing with a lot of the same themes as Frankenstein, and also drugs.
Basically, just because I personally loved the assigned books doesn't mean that they were the best choices.
I personally do not care for assigned reading because I read a lot already so as someone who is picky about the books they read, I would rather just pick my own books. Especially if I have to do a report on it (Ugh I hate doing book reports. Just let me read and enjoy the dang book!)
The concept of guided reading is fine, but the choices sometimes aren't. For example, we had to read a ton in 5th grade at my school and fill out papers to them to the point where some kids began to think of reading as work. And don't even get me started on how classics were handled. Listen, I really don't want to flex and stuff but when I was in 8th grade I had a college reading level and was fairly mature for my age. A lot of my classmates weren't. So when we'd read things like Frankenstein and Hamlet, they didn't get what was going on, especially since we had to read and annotate for Frankenstein and read and perform for Hamlet. So you're turning kids off of classics and Shakespeare, two things every kid should be taught to love, by having them associate it with confusion and a heavy workload. Also the choices in books were just bad. Why assign kids Jekyll and Hyde in 7th grade, they won't get it. Why choose Shakespeare's longest play for dissection in 8th grade as opposed to M*cbeth or Midsummer (especially since we were doing Midsummer as our play)? I get that Frankenstein is more child-friendly than other classics, since there's not really any swearing or sexual stuff, but it's still heavy, deep, and thoroughly confusing to the average eighth grader, not to mention that a bored and annoyed eighth grader will dumb the characters down subconsciously.
It makes me extra annoyed since we read The House of the Scorpion earlier, which is a YA book dealing with a lot of the same themes as Frankenstein, and also drugs.
Basically, just because I personally loved the assigned books doesn't mean that they were the best choices.
You had to read Hamlet in the 8th grade? My class read it in our senior year and at least half of them were still confused (partly because they couldn't understand the Shakespearean Era English and mostly because they didn't like Shakespeare. We liked it even less after reading Romeo and Juliet in I want to say 9th Grade).
The concept of guided reading is fine, but the choices sometimes aren't. For example, we had to read a ton in 5th grade at my school and fill out papers to them to the point where some kids began to think of reading as work. And don't even get me started on how classics were handled. Listen, I really don't want to flex and stuff but when I was in 8th grade I had a college reading level and was fairly mature for my age. A lot of my classmates weren't. So when we'd read things like Frankenstein and Hamlet, they didn't get what was going on, especially since we had to read and annotate for Frankenstein and read and perform for Hamlet. So you're turning kids off of classics and Shakespeare, two things every kid should be taught to love, by having them associate it with confusion and a heavy workload. Also the choices in books were just bad. Why assign kids Jekyll and Hyde in 7th grade, they won't get it. Why choose Shakespeare's longest play for dissection in 8th grade as opposed to M*cbeth or Midsummer (especially since we were doing Midsummer as our play)? I get that Frankenstein is more child-friendly than other classics, since there's not really any swearing or sexual stuff, but it's still heavy, deep, and thoroughly confusing to the average eighth grader, not to mention that a bored and annoyed eighth grader will dumb the characters down subconsciously.
It makes me extra annoyed since we read The House of the Scorpion earlier, which is a YA book dealing with a lot of the same themes as Frankenstein, and also drugs.
Basically, just because I personally loved the assigned books doesn't mean that they were the best choices.
You had to read Hamlet in the 8th grade? My class read it in our senior year and at least half of them were still confused (partly because they couldn't understand the Shakespearean Era English and mostly because they didn't like Shakespeare. We liked it even less after reading Romeo and Juliet in I want to say 9th Grade).
Yes, we had to read it and also act it out with sock puppets. We also read Much Ado About Nothing that year, then Romeo and Juliet and M*cbeth in 9th grade.
Why tf did you censor Macbeth lmao?
I think it's a theater thing
Yes, we had to read it and also act it out with sock puppets
You guys had to act out Shakespeare?
We didn't start doing Shakespeare until grade 10. We read Julius Caesar and we had to just sit quietly at our desks and read it like it was a novel. Pretty sure this is the worst way you could introduce Shakespeare's writing, especially since for a lot of us (including myself at the time) it was our first time reading through a Shakespeare play. I literally had no idea what was going on at any point. At one point I asked my teacher to proof read a paragraph that we had to write and he started reading it and was just like "umโฆ that's not what happened."
Although, this was also the same teacher who assigned us the book Hiroshima and then made us write a paragraph about the "symbolism." IT'S ๐ NON ๐FICTION ๐ THERE๐ IS๐ NO๐ SYMBOLISM ๐
Man, I wish we had gotten to actually read Julius Caesar. It was part of the curriculum but she always took too long with it so we just had to read her summary. The first we ever read was Romeo and Juliet and boy am I upset about how it was taught but that's a whole other rant
Why tf did you censor Macbeth lmao?
Because it's a fucking curse
Yes, we had to read it and also act it out with sock puppets
You guys had to act out Shakespeare?
We didn't start doing Shakespeare until grade 10. We read Julius Caesar and we had to just sit quietly at our desks and read it like it was a novel. Pretty sure this is the worst way you could introduce Shakespeare's writing, especially since for a lot of us (including myself at the time) it was our first time reading through a Shakespeare play. I literally had no idea what was going on at any point. At one point I asked my teacher to proof read a paragraph that we had to write and he started reading it and was just like "umโฆ that's not what happened."
Although, this was also the same teacher who assigned us the book Hiroshima and then made us write a paragraph about the "symbolism." IT'S ๐ NON ๐FICTION ๐ THERE๐ IS๐ NO๐ SYMBOLISM ๐
Yeah, we did Hamlet with sock puppets, R+J we read aloud, and since I did M*cbeth online I did it on my own, but I'll be doing it again this year. It's not meant to be read silently, it's meant to be seen or read aloud. Even when I'm just working on scansion for my lines (I'm in Love's Labours Lost right now) I read them aloud. Also JC is a horrible one to start with for students, start with M-cbeth or Much Ado or Romeo and Juliet!
Ewwwwww my teachers kept trying to have us look for symbolism in Night.
I approve of assigned reading actually.
Most people don't realize the content that they are absorbing (culture/knowledge/etc) until later on. I hated reading R&J, Crime and Punishment, Jane Eyre, Shogun, etc in school but realized later on in college and high learning classes (my own life) that I could really understand the human psyche a lot more given deeper thought.
I'll admit that teenagers hate it mostly because it's assigned.
I like assigned reading when the teachers help, but I've had some who just toss books to the kids and provide no insight to what they're reading. To someone in early high school with no former experience, Elizabethan English is like a whole new language. I'd read 4 Shakespeare plays for school prior to going to a Shakespearean acting camp for teens and not once in school did we dissect the text and use scansion.
Yes, we had to read it and also act it out with sock puppets
You guys had to act out Shakespeare?
We didn't start doing Shakespeare until grade 10. We read Julius Caesar and we had to just sit quietly at our desks and read it like it was a novel. Pretty sure this is the worst way you could introduce Shakespeare's writing, especially since for a lot of us (including myself at the time) it was our first time reading through a Shakespeare play. I literally had no idea what was going on at any point. At one point I asked my teacher to proof read a paragraph that we had to write and he started reading it and was just like "umโฆ that's not what happened."
Although, this was also the same teacher who assigned us the book Hiroshima and then made us write a paragraph about the "symbolism." IT'S ๐ NON ๐FICTION ๐ THERE๐ IS๐ NO๐ SYMBOLISM ๐
Yeah, we did Hamlet with sock puppets, R+J we read aloud, and since I did M*cbeth online I did it on my own, but I'll be doing it again this year. It's not meant to be read silently, it's meant to be seen or read aloud. Even when I'm just working on scansion for my lines (I'm in Love's Labours Lost right now) I read them aloud. Also JC is a horrible one to start with for students, start with M-cbeth or Much Ado or Romeo and Juliet!
Ewwwwww my teachers kept trying to have us look for symbolism in Night.
We had to act out all of the scenes in the Shakespeare we read with Mr. Howes (9th, 11th, and 12th Grade English Instructor), but honestly the part that was funny was not the acting, it was the way it went down.
In Romeo and Juliet, a guy got the part of Juliet.
In Hamlet, you had theatre kids being more overdramatic than Hamlet himself (or maybe that was just me), we usually got less important characters. Then the main characters would get somebody who either read it in a really deadpan way l, or they'd try, but do something really dumb.
When my class read Julius Caesar we listened to an audio book recording and at one point there is this random guy who was super committed to reading his lines in it so in the middle of this really serious dude reading for Anthony you just her "READ THE WILL!!!!" and it was great,
We read it but we also watched clips from a movie so we could understand it.
And then everybody just called everyone else "Saucy fellow" for about four months.
I was Laertes, and then Mercutio, no one, Romeo, Friar Lawrence, and Juliet in that order.
Also Oberon for school and Montjoy and Hostess Quickly for camp.
We usually would read the book/play (or at least part of it), watch the good version of the movie, then watch the horrible version of the movie.
My 9th grade class watched Gnomeo and Juliet.
Gnomeo and Juliet is everything
I watched it one year and I donโt remember anything about it other than bored
It manages to be the only Shakespeare for kids adaptation that has a similar amount of sex jokes as the original
