Title:
A High School Offers Single-Sex Classes to Top
Students
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Education Report.
See text below
Text:
Most American schools have boys and girls in the
same classroom. But a public high school in the
small, rural town of Boonsboro, Maryland, offers a
special program. Top students in the ninth and tenth
grades can attend single-sex classes for math,
science, English and social studies. The aim is to
help teenagers keep their mind on their work by
keeping males and females apart. Rebecca Brown
chooses the students for what Boonsboro High School
calls the Academy.She says: "What we really want to
do is take that top group of kids and take them to
the very highest level they can achieve here, so
that they're prepared for college."Placement in the
Academy is voluntary. Students are invited after
middle school. They need good grades, high test
scores and strong teacher recommendations. They also
need to be involved in activities.Almost three
hundred fifty students have taken part in the
Academy. It began as an experiment in two thousand
four. Michael Bair has been at Boonsboro High for
twenty years and directs the Academy. His
ninth-grade English class for boys centers on books
that he believes boys find interesting. One of those
books, for example, is "The Call of the Wild" by
Jack London. This classic story tells of a dog
stolen from his home and sold to work as a sled dog
during Canada's Klondike Gold Rush.On this day, the
students are working in small groups. Two students
explain why they are drawing pictures that relate to
the story. Drawing helps them visualize the setting
of the story and gets them to think more about the
important events of the story.Morgan Van Fleet is a
senior at Boonsboro High. She likes being in the
Academy. She says boys and girls act differently
when they are together in a classroom. She says it
is easier to focus on the lesson and the homework in
a single sex class. There is one activity that girls
and boys in the Academy do together. At the end of
the day, many of them stay and help tutor students
who are having trouble in school.For VOA Special
English I'm Alex Villarreal. Tell us what you think
about single-sex classes. You can comment on our
website, voaspecialenglish.com. You can also find
transcripts and MP3s of our programs. And you can
find us on Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning
English.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
