Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Group 10: Discussion #2 Kelly Shea
I have noticed that many teachers will assign at home reading records for students to log in the amount of time they spend silently reading at home. However, I have also heard from students themselves that often times they just have their parents sign off on the reading record. In reality, the student has not read the actual 30 minutes assigned, or the parent does not know what their child is reading. Now, I do agree with doing reading records, and I think it can be an effective way to have students read at home. My question is, does anyone have any ideas of how to make this reading strategy effective so that the student is not just having their parent sign off on a sheet of paper each week?
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5 comments:
I don't believe that reading assignments should be given at home for the very reason you stated. Some students will not do the reading and have it signed off by a parent thinking it was completed. What I've learned with the students that I'm working with and kids that I know personally is that- we as teachers can not rely on the parents of our students to be there to do what is necessary. I find that far too many students don't have the tutorial support at home. If the parents aren't involved then it can be difficult for the child to be motivated to accomplish assignments and goals at home. I think reading at home should mostly be at the students will. As a teacher we can encourage it by letting them pick out books of their own choice to free read on their own time. If it is assigned as homework it can be maybe for a book report that needs to be done. If they don't keep up with the reading at home you can give them extra down time throughout the week in class to work on reading their book. I don't discourage reading at home, I just think we as teachers need to realize that assignments given to be worked on at home are pretty much the child's responsibility.
I was very intrigued by the idea of the traveling book bags that children can take home. Teachers assemble bags of books about a similar subject such as reptiles, insects, rainbows or any other appropriate subject. As a very special treat the child can choose a traveling book bag to take home to share with the family and enjoy. Something along these lines might make home reading more attractive and less "homeworklike".
I agree with Desiree that we really can't rely on parents. They don't want to take the time to make sure their child is reading but they still want them to recieve a good grade so they sign off on the sheet. We could have students from the same reading group take home the same book and at the end of the week you could give the students a little quiz on the book they were supposed to be reading. This might encourage parents to actually have students do the thirty minutes of reading at home so they pass the quiz.
I agree with Desiree, and it is unfortunate that we can't rely on parents at home, and that they would just sign off on their childrens schoolwork without the child actually doing it. I personally feel we do need to encourage and assign reading at home even if it can't be 100% proven they are actually doing the work. I think something similar to what Lauren said is the best way we can do it- either assign similar books and have a quiz on them- or a slightly different option would be to let them read whatever they want and require them to do some sort of write-up or detailed report on the book that is read. Yes, they could still fudge this a bit- but I think it would be more effective than a simple sign off sheet.
I think in the end all of it comes down to engaging the kids enough so that they want to read. I believe that interest inventories are effective tools to this end so that way you don't have to worry about kids kids just getting parents to sign off because they legitimately want to read.
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