Hi Ania,
I believe that reading to pre-teens can be valuable. I believe it is typical in high school settings and even in college classes. I remember alternating reading in my AP English class in HS. There was still plenty read at home, but it helped having it fresh in everyone's minds to then discuss and the teacher would introduce complexities, symbolism, etc. This can be very well-done and sophisticated, particularly if there are a couple other kids in the class who can really discuss things at the same level as Ghost. Oftentimes I've seen that as the problem because the level of the discussion is low caliber and my son is the one outlier.
I expect and want that reading and discussion be part of their Language Arts class at all levels (my 2nd and 5th graders' classes do this as well as my 9th graders'). Most of these classes have questions that the kids have to answer after each chapter or every few chapters. Hopefully these exercises help them think about the book more in depth.
I think spelling should no longer be part of middle school curriculum past about 6th grade (other than correcting it in papers and assignments and deducting points). I do think some vocabulary building is important, and if you do it independently, that will be good. I worked from several books with my oldest. My 7th grader just gets a handful of words or roots each week, like "omni or para or audio" and then several words from each root.
I would like to see more structured writing, essays, and even more grammar. My 7th graders has always loved to write, but has horrible run-on sentences, spelling errors, mismatched verbs, etc. I never have had any of his teachers correct any of this. It makes me so angry that he is not taught how to improve. So I painstakingly correct all his work (which he kind of ignores, because I don't give him grades). Now we're doing a little SAT prep and he's beginning to realize he needs some work. It's been valuable both in some vocabulary and sentence structure.
Even the online writing classes seem to want 8th grade and above unless it's fiction/creative writing.
