Taking All the Fun Out of It

My third-grade daughter normally has to keep a reading log (and you know how I feel about that!) as well as write 1-2 paragraphs per week about the books she is reading, which are due on Mondays.  But the last two weeks, she had to do neither, in order to lessen the workload on the days surrounding the NYS ELA tests (another topic about which I have a lot to say).  I've been sick with what was first the flu and then pneumonia (that, plus our move into a still-being-renovated apartment account for my online absence lately), and this weekend her sister and dad were sick too.  We couldn't entertain her much.  My husband was worried that she was bored.  But I knew better.

She was thrilled.  Thrilled to have time to read just for fun.  She read two books in their entirety and started another, and possibly finished another one in there.  I read to her.  She went to the library and checked out thirteen books (nowhere near her record of 27!), ranging from classics (Daddy-Long-Legs) to junk (every balanced diet - reading or otherwise - needs some junk).

She read and she read and she read.  And she was so happy.

Sure, there's something to be said for reading deeply and analyzing what you are reading.  But there's also a lot to be said for just reading for pleasure.  Reading to be taken out of yourself.  Reading to get absorbed in a story, in someone else's life, in the rhythm of the words.  And I know that even this type of reading has all sorts of educational benefits: my daughter's vocabulary astounds me.  She never opens a dictionary.  She has learned from context.  (That's why the best SAT prep is not vocab lists but reading.)  But even if reading for pleasure had no educational value, who cares?  There's nothing wrong with reading solely for pleasure.  That's right.  There's nothing wrong with reading solely for pleasure.

With high-stakes tests and new curricula and the Common Core, reading for pleasure has all but disappeared.  The teachers no longer have time to let the children read independently, just for fun.  They no longer have time to read aloud to the class books of their own choosing.  What a loss.

Yes, some learning is boring and repetitive, of necessity (think times tables).  But if you take the fun out of reading, children aren't going to want to read any more.  I hope my daughter always finds joy in reading.  And I hope she is granted the gift of time in which to do it.

Who Should Decide What Book My Third-Grader's Class Reads?

Right now there is a controversy brewing at my daughter's school over whether this book, Behind Rebel Lines: The Incredible Story of Emma Edmonds, Civil War Spy, which is required reading for all third grade classes pursuant to the Ready-Gen curriculum her school has adopted, is "appropriate."  Many parents are up in arms, feeling that it is not.

Who should decide what book my third-grader's class reads?  
Here's a radical idea: HER TEACHER. 
Not Pearson, the writers of the curriculum, not the other parents, and not me.

A curriculum should guide, not prescribe.  A teacher should have flexibility - within parameters - to choose what books her class reads.  Otherwise, why not just have an untrained adult in front of the classroom?  Better yet, why not just have a robot? 

I should advocate for MY child.  And I do.  But I should not tell the teacher what the entire class should read.  I only know one third-grader.  Her teacher knows 30 - this year - and dozens, perhaps hundreds over the years.  She knows what is appropriate for them in terms of vocabulary, sentence structure, context, content, and literary quality (which should most definitely be a factor).

I'm not telling you my opinion of the "appropriateness" of the book because I feel strongly that it is irrelevant.

LET TEACHERS TEACH!

None of the Above

A "test prep" reading passage for third-graders about how a Bangladeshi boy created floating schools for children who could not travel to school because of annual flooding was followed by several questions. The last question asked why the author most likely wrote the passage.  The correct answer was missing.  After all, the author most likely wrote this passage because he got paid to by a big corporation despite his probable lack of teaching experience.

The other questions were poorly constructed.  One asked which word best described the boy: nervous, angry, kind or scared.  Clearly, kind was the best out of those choices but kind is actually a terrible choice.  Off the top of my head, better ones include innovative, creative, and determined.

Another question asked what causes floods:

A. heavy rains
B. overflowing rivers
C. too many people
D. both AND B

At first glance the answer seems to be D.  But then I realized that it is the heavy rains which cause the overflowing rivers.  So is the answer really just A?  Or are they looking for the immediate cause, in which case the answer is B?  After all, rivers can overflow without heavy rains - if, for example, a dam breaks.  But such a possibility was not discussed in the text.  Standardized testing does not reward overthinking.  It rewards being able to predict what the testers were thinking. 

And ultimately, it rewards the companies which get paid the big bucks to create poorly designed curricula and poorly designed tests.  Yes, Pearson, I'm talking about you.

How do you feel about the rise of high-stakes testing and the increasingly lucrative privatization of the test-creation business?

Let's Start With Chapter... Seven?!?

My daughters' school rolled out their new ELA curriculum, Ready-Gen, yesterday.  By today, my 3rd grader was complaining about it.  And I don't blame her!  She told me that the teacher read aloud a chapter from The Lemonade War by Jacqueline Davies, an excellent book.  So far, so good.  The students were required to follow along, pointing with their fingers.  OK, I can see the rationale here, but my daughter hated this.  She said it was hard not to race ahead of the teacher.  Don't we want to encourage readers like her?  I can remember this type of frustration from when I was a kid - but even worse, other kids were reading aloud, much slower than a teacher would.  I always read ahead and then couldn't find my place when I was called on to read! 

The questions following the read-aloud were boring too.  They had to write something they "learned" (it is unclear if this means something they learned about a character or plot point or something factual)  and write down what questions they had.  Not scintillating.  Not inspiring.  Not thought-provoking.

But what really got to me was that the teacher read Chapter 7 - and only Chapter 7 - to the kids.  Really?  Chapter 7?!?  Why not Chapter 1?  Why not the whole book in fact?  This curriculum seems like a step backwards to the days (my days) of what were called basal readers - boring collections of stories and excerpts, rather than actual books.  No one learns to love reading by reading from a basal reader.

What do you think about this type of reading curriculum?  What type does your school or your child's school use?

How The New Curriculum + The Common Core = Less Reading

As I've mentioned before, I volunteer at my daughters' public school, entirely parent-run library.  This year, as we sat down with the administration to arrange the class schedule, we were informed that teachers had been approaching the administration and requesting that they only bring their classes to the library every other week, rather than every week.  The reason?  The new curriculum.  Whether it's due to the curriculum itself requiring more time, or the fact that the teachers are - rightly - overwhelmed by being handed a new curriculum with no time to review it before using it (in fact, our school did not even have the ELA curriculum on the first day of school and as of now is only in possession of Unit 1; rumor has it that other units are not even written yet!), it is just sad that the alleged raising of standards results in teachers feeling that they don't have time to allow their students - many of whom do not or cannot go to the public library - to choose their own books.

One last word about the Common Core.  I got a peek at the kindergarten ELA curriculum the other day.  The curriculum our school is using is Ready-Gen by - who else? - Pearson, it of the completely mismanaged G&T testing.  It includes such gems as having 5-year-olds draw pictures of past-tense verbs like "quacked" and "flapped"  (the first unit is on ducks), words like "distance" (not a short or long distance, just distance), leaves little space for the children to write, and what space there is are lines that are too small for typically-oversized kindergarten handwriting.  I almost cried.

How is the Common Core working out in your school?