In an article in the Washington Post this week, Lyndsay Layton discusses the odd situation in which English teachers find themselves, that of teaching nonfiction or informational texts almost exclusively. English teachers are trying to figure out which poetry units and literature units must be sacrificed.
In an interesting passive rebellion, English teacher J.D. Wilson is asking students to read essays about the value of literature. Here are links to his articles; I’ve added the Lexile levels for each of the articles. Note that the first one would be ineligible under the Lexile ranking because it would be considered a college level text.
- 1400 L (outside range of high school reading) Epstein, Joseph. Who Killed the Liberal Arts and Why We Should Care. The Weekly Standard. Sep 17, 2012, Vol. 18, No. 01.
- 1120 L (6th grade and up) Marche, Stephen. Literature is not Data: Against Digital Humanities. Los Angeles Review of Books, October 28th, 2012.
- 1220L (6th grade and up) MacGregor, Mac. Shakespeare, a poet who is still making our history. The Guardian, Monday 15 October 2012.
Author, blogger and writing teacher Darcy Pattison writes about publishing, fiction and the Common Core. Published in eight languages, Pattison has written how-to-write books, picture books for children, teacher resource books and middle grade novels.
