Friday, September 17, 2010

Help!

I'm a teacher, as you all know.  Students are required to read X number of books a year.  Lots of teachers have students do reading logs.  Students have to read X number of minutes a day and parents sign off on it.

Problem- it's a pain and makes reading a chore.  It's stuff like that makes kids HATE reading.  It's a strain on the parents because they have to sign off every week.

Question:  Is there a for kids to LOG information on-line? Like how many pages they've read, how many books they've read.  Is there a way to have parent confirm it.

I was thinking about the writing progress widgets, but how would you do it for 500 kids?


Any suggestions would be helpful.

Thank you!

6 comments:

  1. I don't know of anything online. If there is you might have to pay for it through the school.

    My daughter came home last night with a 40 books challenge. In which each book she completes she can earn a fork, then a spoon, napkin, plate...all the way up to ice cream and such for a class party.

    She has to write the book name down and time it took her (I think) to read it and I sign it to verify then she goes online and takes a small test about the book to make sure she has read it. This is for the fourth graders.
    My first grader just has a timed reading...ten minutes per night and I sign her sheet saying if she did it or not.

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  2. I'm in advanced placement, so I haven't had to do reading logs since fourth grade, but I HATED them. There are these things called AR tests, though, that we do, and basically you take a ten-question test on the book and you get X number of points. A lot of teachers have specific goals for each student and if they get that number of points, they don't fail the class xD

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  3. My brother and sister both did the AR reading with the tests. I've not had to deal with timed reading before. I can certainly see how it would put a damper on the fun of reading though.

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  4. Interesting idea. We don't have enforced reading so I've never run into this.

    I'll think about it - if I come up with anything I'll get back to you :)

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  5. Frankly school reading programs bore me to tears. I am a teacher so I can say that. I think school does an excellent job of killing the joy of reading for kids. My experience of teaching in the USA was that everything had to be documented. In Australia we don't. We just don't. I am not trying to bag the US, but the school I worked in over there was so perscriptive about reading I felt like we were all on trial. That may of course not be the way it is across the board. It was just my experience.

    At the school my son goes to kids take home reading books every night and change them the next day. There is no set amount of reading time.There is no quote of books to read by the end of the year. Each child works at their own pace. The parents write down the title of the book on a card (or the kids do it if they are old enough) and they get a new book.

    In library they read has many books as they want or do not want. They can borrow up to three books. No one takes a list of what the kids have or have not read. They scan the books so they know who has borrowed what of course, but once the book is return that is wiped.

    There is one reading test a term (every 10 weeks) and the kids move up a level or stay on the same level depending. I felt like I was constantly taking records of kids reading in the school I worked at in the USA. Is that common? I was sick of it. The kids were sick of it. I can't imagine what purpose this serves. The kids in my class mostly thought of reading as 'school work'. That said to me that I was not creating a life long reader. something is broken in a system where children think reading is 'school work.'

    School readers (especially at the early level) lack plot and character development. I'd hate to read those books!

    We aren't perfect here either, please don't think I am saying that. But I did get the feeling that we are a bit more relaxed about the whole learning/teaching thing. Our teachers are required to take far less records of the kids and the kids are put through far far less reading tests.

    What is it like where you work? I'm sure it might be radically different to the school I worked at there.

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