We’ve been reading author-illustrator Louise Fitzhugh‘s classic children’s novel Harriet the Spy with some of our classes recently. The book features a keenly observant, fiercely intelligent sixth-grade female protagonist. Harriet’s always-alert, intensely analytical mind constantly runs at full throttle and she fills her trusty notebook with a continuous stream of entries, chronicling her interactions with the world around her and an interior life richer than that of many busy grownups.
Last week, after leading them in reading portions of that week’s chunk of Harriet the Spy aloud, we asked Ching Kiu and Vivian and their classmates to tackle their first reading comprehension homework question in class, something that we do from time to time to help us gauge how well our young people grasp what they’ve been reading.
Despite having just a couple of minutes in which to formulate, write, and proofread their answers, everyone performed well and two students, Ching Kiu and Vivian, even managed perfect scores. Keep up the good work, folks!