Review of basic skills can be woven into lessons throughout the entire school year. Just because they were doing this one lesson on a day in November doesn’t mean that’s what they’re doing all day, every day. Students who are far behind need regular exposure to the basics, especially at this age when the ability to absorb things like a sponge is waning.

As far as your second question goes, I could be wrong but I read it as they were being assigned extremely abridged summaries of classic novels. This may or may not be appropriate; with zero context, we have no idea. They could have been assigned to a class of students with disabilities (or again, students who are severely behind in reading level) and in which case, would be a good way of exposing those students to the classics without expecting them to read text they physically can’t. I don’t think this is the norm. This is one situation, and again, we have zero context.