In the current era school has transformed from what many of us experienced while growing up. The modern school is focused on metrics and data. How many growth points did someone gain? What percentile did they score in? Are they meeting proficiency? In many ways school has become a numbers game and teachers are constantly analyzing and observing these numbers. Many say they are helping education but the question is, “are they really?”

Where Do These Scores Come From?

The easiest class to analyze where these scores come from is an English classroom. English classes have a large variety of tests that they have to take during the year. These include:

Reading Inventories
- Usually done at the beginning, middle and end of the school year
Writing Tests
- Usually done at the beginning, middle and end of the school year
End of the year testing

The one thing that these tests all have in common is that they are standardized tests, meaning they are one size fits all tests usually designed to test students the same way at a school district, state, or sometimes a national level. These tests are great as a diagnostic tool, they can quickly and efficiently measure a student’s skills and weaknesses. However, they have a big flaw, they don’t provide teachers with an answer to help their students.

We Understand the Problem, Where’s the Solution?

Teachers have plenty of different tools in their educational toolbox to help their students. The ones that we commonly think of are:

Timed writes
Spelling worksheets
Grammar worksheets
Reading practice pages

While these worksheets and practice assignments can be helpful to students who struggle, they often aren’t engaging and can’t be used to help students in the long term. One forgotten project however can be used to support students at all levels, engaging students while simultaneously reinforcing the skills that they may be lacking. That project is the book report.

Don’t Students Find Book Reports Boring Though?

As J.K. Rowling once said, “If you don’t like to read you just haven’t found the right book yet.” Students who get to choose their own books for book reports will be so much more eager for the project than if they were assigned a book, and those who don’t consider themselves readers just need help finding the correct book. By consistently reading, students scores will improve in the following areas:

Comprehension
Fluency
Spelling
Grammar

Furthermore, once students have found books that interest them teachers can follow up with a book report at the end of the month to further grow those skills. Book reports also don’t have to be the traditional pen and paper essay that most have come to loathe. There are tons of fun and exciting middle school book report ideas that allow students to be creative and have fun. These book reports can be activities like putting on a play, designing a new cover for the book or creating some artifact to show their knowledge.

Through these projects and activities students will be learning deeply while to them, they will just be having fun. This will also give teachers a much better understanding of how well students are doing. This allows students to show their knowledge and mastery of the subject each month and not just rely on doing well on a standardized test a couple of times a year. Book reports can be the ultimate test of knowledge and skills in an English classroom.