Audiobooks in 8th grade language arts

I’ll start by saying I am a parent and not a teacher.

I was at my 8th graders parent/teacher conferences last week. I was surprised to hear from the Language Arts teacher that their current project involved written analysis of short stories selected from a list, and that listening to an audiobook of the story was an option (not an accommodation, an option offered to everyone) as an alternative to actually having the student read the material. I must have given a look when she said that because the teacher seemed to double back and explain that since it wasn’t supposed to be a test of reading ability, she didn’t want students to get hung up on the reading.

At a time when students struggle with reading fluency, does it seem totally backwards to let students out of having to read, with the explanation given that some students struggle to read? I have heard that “students first learn to read, then they read to learn” - is this no longer considered valid?

Submitted October 13, 2025 at 07:19AM by earthdogmonster https://ift.tt/TDAo5pV

how i’m actually learning all the laws without losing my mind

sooo i used to just read and reread cases thinking repetition = mastery. turns out my brain was just zoning out with a highlighter in hand lol. what’s helped a ton lately is turning everything into questions. like, instead of rereading, i ask myself “what’s the rule here?” “what were the facts that triggered it?”

i’ve been making flashcards and short quizzes out of my outlines, blekota makes that part easy because it basically auto-generates them from your notes, so you’re not wasting an hour typing definitions. i’ll review a few in the morning and a few before bed. spaced repetition actually works when you stop fighting it.

law school feels like drinking from a firehose, but if you turn what you read into mini active recall moments, it starts to click faster. even 15 min of quizzing beats 2 hours of rereading. stay patient, it’s a long game.

Submitted October 13, 2025 at 03:02AM by Rare_Dependent4686 https://ift.tt/LZMgFQD

I did bad in high school am I doomed

I did bad later in high-school towards senior year i got sick and skipped a lot. I don’t even remember the things I learned. I just feel undereducated. How to get educated and what should I learn? What critical skills are learned in school what should I make sure I know how to do?

Submitted October 13, 2025 at 01:50AM by Amazing-Channel-4020 https://ift.tt/RugTeQd

Brainly substitute?

I have less than a week to finish my work before i finish year 12(im an Australian student) and ive been trying to use brainly without any success as of now, i used it back in 2021 and i was actually getting responses, but now, it fees absolutely deserted, i need to finish an analysis table about inspirational speeches, write two fake travel blogs for some reason, i have to go back to school to complete a student interview(basically just the teacher asking questions and looking at my portfolio), and a whole other things i have to do that i find difficult due to my autism(undiagnosed because the official test was too expensive according to my mum, although my brother has autism), so i want to find out if there are any alternatives other than Brainly that i can use to get my work done.

Submitted October 12, 2025 at 08:18AM by Majestic_Shopping471 https://ift.tt/g6e5S2C

Just caught 8 students using chatgpt for their midterm essays after implementing new detection methods

This semester has been wild. Started noticing essays with this weird perfect structure but zero personality. You know that feeling when something's off but you can't prove it? That was me for weeks.Finally decided to run everything through GPTZero and boom. Eight papers lit up like christmas trees. The weird part? These weren't my struggling students. These were solid B students who probably could've written decent papers themselves.

What really got me was the confrontation. Half admitted it immediately, couple tried to argue, one actually thanked me for catching them early in the semester instead of finals. Made me realize how normalized this has become.

Now I'm requiring drafts and having students explain their thesis in person. Already seeing improvement in actual understanding even if the writing quality dropped a bit. Sometimes messier authentic work beats polished fake content.

Submitted October 12, 2025 at 05:10AM by _Jin_kazama__ https://ift.tt/aHTvMGW

Kids should be taught about fallacies in high school

Knowing about fallacies is crucially important to knowing how to identify and not fall victim to manipulation which I think we can all agree is a very important skill for our young adults to have particularly as they enter the dating world. The skill is also very useful for identifying propaganda and using the propaganda to figure out what the propagandist wants you to believe which is a very important skill for the formation of an educated voter base. If we can identify propaganda then we won’t be tricked into voting against our interests for fascism or authoritarian capitalism. It will also help kids identify prejudice or fallacies within themselves so they can learn more about themselves and learn to become better freer thinkers.

What do y’all think?

Submitted October 11, 2025 at 11:58PM by Hezanza https://ift.tt/fiq7Ve2

Small Town Public School Seems Like Its Own Separate Fiefdom

Is this common these days? When I was growing up, it seemed like the school system and the overall community were largely indistinguishable. Everyone had kids in school, the parents were actively involved and a lot of town life revolved around school activities.

Today though in my hometown there seems like two separate worlds. The public school district doesn't seem to engage with other groups or organizations in the community at all, including the city government. They even butt heads on issues like youth sports and stuff where it should be a natural place for collaboration. I get the feeling that the school district tries to maintain its independence and control of everything. So in terms of our political structure now, we have the city commission and stuff going on through various civic and economic engagement programs, and then we have the school board and they do their own activities and things. There's no overlap and even the people involved seem to not overlap much or at all. I see entirely different people at school board meetings than I do at commission meetings, and the city commissioners don't seem to socialize with school board or administration folks. It's like they might as well be separate towns.

The weird side effect of this is that kids get overlooked entirely because the school district seems to have a monopoly on their attention and access to them. So when the city wants to do things like youth sports or recreational facilities geared toward kids, they can't seem to get any interest or input, and the schools won't assist in any way or work with them on it. That basically seems to take kids out the "city population" entirely, and there's just no way to build any public youth programs here because the schools keep the kids and parents in their own little walled garden.

Has anyone else encountered this sort of thing?

Submitted October 11, 2025 at 01:23PM by -Clayburn https://ift.tt/nW39Zgp