Iola High School students are reading again, thanks to a new English Language Arts curriculum.
Teachers Laura Schinstock and Catherine Dean gave USD 257 board members an update on the program at Monday’s meeting.
The new curriculum began in the fall and allows students to choose the books they want to read.
In Schinstock’s classes, 58 students have read 331 books with 103,889 total pages since the start of the school year.
“Allowing my students to choose their own books to read and providing them with current titles greatly increases student buy-in and willingness to read,” she told the board.
Dean calculated success differently, offering a sample of the total pages read by category. In historical fiction, for example, one student has read 1,457 pages. Another read 1,414 pages. True Crime is a popular category, with one student reading 1,755 pages.
“The ability of students to choose their class lessened classroom misbehaviors. As such, my classroom became a more collaborative learning environment,” Dean reported.
This year, IHS has offered literature classes in a variety of nontraditional genres. Students have taken introduction classes for graphic novels, modern literature, mythology and women’s literature. They take classes to study dystopian literature, “monsters and mayhem,” social justice and holocaust studies.
The teachers also have tapped into social media, allowing students to seek recommendations from platforms such as Instagram and TikTok. The latter, for example, offers a thread called “BookTok” where content creators discuss their favorite books.
Schinstock also uses social media to encourage the study of current events. Her students have read articles about trending topics such as the Super Bowl, Taylor Swift, how alligators survive winter and why some states are trying to ban TikTok.
As a result of the new curriculum, students aren’t just reading books. They’re talking about them, too.
“It’s great to see our kids with a book and actually talking about the book with their peers,” Schinstock said. “In the Holocaust Studies class, they talk about things they experienced in the book. They’re having authentic conversations.”
And while the literature portion is producing results, the same can’t be said about writing courses.
“The real problem we have is apathy, especially with writing,” Dean said. “We really struggle with getting them to do spell check.”
Students also have problems understanding capitalization and grammar, she said.
