I had a student drop out of English 3 (10th and 11th grade English) today because it was too much work. It was too much work. In eight weeks we did exactly two chapters of grammar and six chapters of vocabulary. We did actually make it through 150 pages of the lit book. (Which is less than a quarter of the book.) And they wrote 7 essays of 5 paragraphs each. That's less than an essay a week. It's less than a chapter of vocab a week. It's WAY less than a chapter of grammar a week. It is also less than 20 pages of lit a week. Which I would think would not be too much.

–Okay, I will admit that one of the seven essays required research. The students had to find three articles on the net to get information from. But they were not required to cite the information or give a bibliography.–

Two students came to class today complaining of too much work. Where was there too much work? When was there too much work?

I think it was because they made good grades on the first half of the midterm (the take home) and not so hot grades on the second half of the midterm (the in-class).

I told them EXACTLY what the grammar test was going to be. I took it word-for-word from the book. But NO ONE made a perfect score on it because no one went to the book and did the stupid exercises I told them to do.

I also told them that the vocab test would be one third the lesson we hadn't had a quiz on and would have three words each from the other lessons.

The other third of the in-class test was over their lecture notes. I also told them quite a bit of what would be on that. They weren't even able to identify the authors we read.

I guess they thought that since I let them use their books for the take home section that the in-class section would be a breeze. Or something. I really don't have a clue what they were expecting.

There was only one failing grade on the test. That person has a 50+ in the class anyway.

There were some C's and D's. I guess that's what made the work too hard. But the student who dropped the class hadn't turned in 8 different assignments. She had 8 0's. So, no, her grades weren't going to be very good.