The protagonist is extremely intelligent, but decides from a young age to hide this from everyone around her so she can avoid being treated differently and maintain her friendship with a peer. She advocates against school programs that are only available to students with high grades.
I found this book anti-gifted, although I can see the appeal to students, since she creates a plan to question grades and tests and the "student power" message is fun for kids. Nora (the main character) is shown to try her best when she plays soccer, since "no one thinks you're weird if you're an excellent athlete - only in academics." Okay, the word in the text wasn't weird, but the gist is close enough. Sadly, that rings true, but the book doesn't pause to critique that, it's just an accepted fact.
Nora refuses to try the gifted program when her secret is revealed, complaining that the other kids won't get those opportunities. The child who does participate in the gifted program at school is shown to be annoying and bossy, and the implication is that this is a result of his gifted label, rather than a child who happens to be annoying and bossy. Only one a
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Our Summary of The Report Card by Andrew Clements
Andrew Clements' novel titled 'The Report Card' was published in In the novel, Clements explores and evaluate the issue of grading, grades, testing, and achievement. He centers the narrative on a main character named Nora, who is a genius, but doesn't let anyone know. She earns her spot in the fifth grade without her parents and teachers realizing that she is not ordinary. It is here where Clements injects conflict into the storyline. Nora is fed up with test scores and grading. She complains about the system of grading. She purposely comes home with a bad report card to prove her point that the system of grading is fruitless. She attempts to influence her parents and her t
Themes
The Harmful Emphasis on Grades in Education
The objective of Nora’s plan is to demonstrate how an emphasis on grades and test scores is unhelpful—even hurtful—to students’ development and relationship with learning. Students learn from a young age that grades and test scores are important, and as they grow older, these numbers become more central to the educational opportunities that students receive. In kindergarten, Stephen demonstrates a genuine love of learning, as he’s determined to perfect his letters and really study his surroundings. However, learning becomes less enjoyable when he feels pressured to meet a particular standard. After fourth-grade testing, Nora recalls, “Stephen didn’t get good scores. And I knew why. I had watched him making faces and chewing his pencil and looking up at the clock every other minute during the tests. It was the pressure that got to him” (24). Stephen panics under the intense expectations because the test results not only affect his future, but also his present sense of self-worth.
Grades also create social divisions among classmates in the novel. Teachers categorize students by their grades, sending the highest-scoring
Character Analysis
Nora Rowley
The protagonist, Nora Rowley, is a fifth-grade genius. From a young age, she is aware that her intelligence brings unwanted attention, so she quickly learns to hide her abilities by doing what many kids do to fit in: observing and copying her classmates. Over the course of the novel, Nora learns that she acts differently from her classmates simply because her nature makes her different. After putting her plan to fail on purpose into action, she realizes, “Fact: I was the only kid in the whole school worrying this way about grades and tests and competition. All the other kids were being normal. And I had to face that fact, too: I was not a normal kid” (). She realizes that even while advocating for her classmates, she didn’t understand what they needed until she considered their developmental levels.
Nora slowly discovers that she wants people to know her for her whole self, but she still doesn’t want them to treat her differently. Mrs. Byrne is the first person to learn her secret, and Nora wishes she could guarantee that everyone would react like the levelheaded librarian: “It struck me how good it was to have someone else know the re
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