I’m actually emailing to let you know that we’ve begun to discuss the chapter questions for Mice and Men and whilst discussing the second question of Chapter 1 [your son] made a very insightful point about George’s benefit of having Lennie around; namely for protection, company and extra income. Leading up to the point [your son] made we had mainly been focussing on Lennie’s need for George, and so I thought [his] comment was a very intelligent and thoughtful one.
English homework has been a focus of mine over the last few weeks following a phone call from his concerned teacher who was worried she wasn’t engaging him. We thought perhaps it was non-engagement due to a lack of confidence in his abilities… and that perhaps some tutoring would help. Anyway as a first step I thought some coaching was in order so I was a bit of a homework nazi making him go back again and again and do the homework properly.
English seems a lot more difficult than I remember from school. The study questions she mentioned were really challenging and sparked a lot of discussion at home as to what they might mean. It helps having an interesting text.
I hadn’t read Steinbeck’s novella before. I really enjoyed it. What a great piece of work to get your teeth into as a year 8 student. Menace, friendship, murder and tragedy. I can’t remember the novels we did in Year 8 English at school… Tess of the D’Urbervilles rings a bell, and Pride and Prejudice but that might have been English Lit in later years.
One more point: Is there anything more fraught than emailing an English teacher? Thank goodness for spell check. 
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Of Mice and Men does seem to be awfully advanced for Year 8! We were doing some Colin Thiele, I think, and maybe some King Arthur stuff. On emailing teachers: I’m less worried about spelling than I am about my punctuation. I’ve yet to master the semi-colon and colon, and I’m sure I misuse the dash but they are all so important to me.
I am an English teacher and have taught Of Mice and Men at year 9, where I thought it worked perfectly. It’s a wonderful book to teach as it’s short enough to read aloud in its entirety in class … I think being read to is one of the great privileges of being at school, and I miss it myself!
I’m now teaching Tess of the d’Urbervilles to year 10s, and that’s so long it took us a week just to watch the film!
Good on you for being so concerned about your child’s progress in English.
I can’t remember one book we were set at school so those lessons were a great success. My awful word is disaster, I always want to put an ‘e’ in there.