The Future of Reading - ‘Reading Workshop’ Approach Lets Students Pick the Books - Series - NYTimes.com

JONESBORO, Ga. � For years Lorrie McNeill loved teaching �To Kill a Mockingbird,� the Harper Lee classic that many Americans regard as a literary rite of passage.

But last fall, for the first time in 15 years, Ms. McNeill, 42, did not assign �Mockingbird� � or any novel. Instead she turned over all the decisions about which books to read to the students in her seventh- and eighth-grade English classes at Jonesboro Middle School in this south Atlanta suburb.



Interesting. But I think certain classics like TCAM and Catcher in the Rye should be mandatory reading for high school students. And Brave New World, Great Expectations, In Our Time, Great Gatsby, Homer's Odyssey, Canterbury Tales, A Day No Pigs Will Die, Heart of Darkness, Animal Farm, 1984, MacBeth, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, etc. etc.