By Shelby Stewart-Soldan
Staff Writer
Brandon — In April of 2022, the Brandon school district began updating the English Language Arts, ELA, required readings for the English 11 students. During the regular Monday night meeting, the board of education received an update on how the change affected the students for the 2022-2023 school year.
“We started this process two and a half years ago when another English teacher and I just started reading and reading and reading a lot of books, and then talking with a lot of students,” said Gwen Stine, ELA teacher at BHS. “I wanted to give an update because we were able to teach them last year.”
The district replaced one book in the ELA 11 curriculum, “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley, with a choice of six books: “The Serpent King” by Jeff Zentner, “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas, “All American Boys” by Brendan Kiely and Jason Reynolds, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” by Mark Haddon, and “Firekeeper’s Daughter” by Angeline Boulley.
“We focused in on English 11, and these were the six books that kids were able to choose from,” said Stine. “They chose one book to read, they got into groups and read the books.”
Before starting the novels, teachers surveyed students by asking if they normally read the books they are assigned in class, such as “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee or “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding. About 70 % of the students said yes, that they read the books they were given.
“But, we asked students afterwards, after they read these books, we let them have some choice, they picked one that they liked,” she said. “We asked them if they read the whole book for the unit of study, and it went up to 87 %. I think that’s a pretty significant growth, whole book reading was up 17.2 %.”
However, Stine said that the growth is more significant for students due to the nature of reading.
“Here’s what the slides don’t show,” she said. “When we read ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, when we read ‘Lord of the Flies’ or ‘Farenheit 451’, teachers are often doing a lot of the reading. We’re reading out loud, we’re listening to audio recordings.”
With a choice of books, teachers didn’t read out loud. There were audio books available for any students who needed them, but the reading was all student led and done on their own.
“We also asked students if they like the books they’re reading in class,” she said. “Thirty-one percent liked the books being taught before. But 44 % liked the new books being taught. Book enjoyment went up by 13 %.”
In addition, 67.2 % of students said they liked the choice reading books better than other books they had to read, and 26.6 % said they liked it the same as the other readings.
“We want kids to read the book, yes,” said Stine. “But we want them to enjoy it. Giving them choice helped with that.”