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How to Hook a Reader, and How Not to: The Fault in Our ARs

Alison Baker2 Comments
This is the second of two blogs on external reading incentive programs and why I think they can’t help but fail, sometimes causing damage as they do. AR is the acronym for Accelerated Reader, the program at use in my kids’ public schools in Los Angeles county, and the beast I fought on the way to raising readers.

There are lots of problems with reading incentive programs, and I addressed my big, philosophical problems three weeks ago: I think the system can be gamed, and if it isn’t, it can do more damage by training kids to read superficially. In this installation I raise some AR-specific (and possibly district-specific) gripes that my kids had to work around.

One problem with AR is that it depends on levels of reading, and when a child’s reading level is established, at least in our schools, kids were unable to read outside of their range. I have trouble with pigeon-holing kids in to levels in the first place, but if it means they are actively discouraged from reading widely, I think it’s doubly awful. 

What gets and keeps kids reading is letting them choose what they want to read, and if you tell them they can’t read something above or below their reading level, two bad things happen. First they lose the benefits of “comfort-reading,” where they read easy stuff that they just enjoy, and second, they are discouraged from really challenging themselves. Sometimes kids are interested in books beyond their ability, and telling them they can’t read them might mean losing a critical moment when they could have fed a passion. Kids learn by reading demanding texts, and if they choose something way beyond their ability, the higher road is to help them through it, rather than tell them it’s too hard for them.

The other loss from limiting kids’ reading choices is that they can’t always read what their friends are reading. This is a huge loss. Kids come in every day talking about what they saw on television or at the movies, and they love to talk to their friends about it. But if they happen to test in to a level way above or way below their friends, they will never be able to talk about the books they have read. We know as adults we love talking about books we’ve read—book clubs are popping up everywhere—but we deny kids that pleasure when we limit the books they can choose to read.

So much is at stake when our kids learn to read. If they love it, they do better in all their coursework. If they love it, they have a lifetime of cheap entertainment and an opportunity to grow continually as they read throughout their lives. If they dread it, they can struggle academically and psychologically. 

Why, then, don’t we do what we know works? Let them choose what they want to read? The short answer is time. Teachers with wide gaps between kids’ skills don’t have time to meet every child where they are and move them gently forward—would that they did. For instance, when my daughter was in 3rd grade, kids in her class were testing at kindergarten to 12th grade reading levels, while all the text books were at third grade level. That means some kids are bored, and some are lost and struggling every single day. (Another answer to that question is that reading programs and other testing companies are BIG business, but I am not that cynical today.)

In the absence of a private tutor, then, a kid needs someone—a parent, a librarian, a friend, just some grown-up who can discuss the books the child reads. Someone needs to listen to what they like, make suggestions for appropriate books, and discuss them afterward. They need to check if the book was too difficult, too scary, too mature, or just right, and follow up with another book.That’s how you hook a reader—show them something amazing, and then tell them there is more… lots more. (If that person could read some aloud, that would be even better, but that is a different blog.)

Ultimately, of course, every kid is different. That’s why they need different books along the way to becoming book worms. We just all need to pitch in; we can’t dump this responsibility solely on teachers. We can all help, putting the right books in to kids’ hands at the right time. That’s a sure-fire way to change the world.
Reading

The Problem with Reading Incentive Programs

Alison BakerLeave a comment
I have a hard time with reading incentive programs. I remember when I was a kid, and my mom made me read novels for the Read-a-thon, when other kids were reading picture books, and I got creamed, even though I was reading a lot more. I learned that kids will game the system if they’re allowed to.
I was reminded of this when my kids were learning to read. There were the Pizza Hut incentives, but they didn’t work well because we didn’t make it to Pizza Hut very often (like once, maybe). And then there was the Accelerated Reader program. And that took my general disenchantment with external motivation incentive programs to new heights of fury.
I think it’s true that if you set up an external reward system, a significant number of kids will find a way to get the prize without doing the work, and when it comes to reading, the stakes are too high for that.
We want kids to love reading.  If they do, so much is easier for them, and they have a lifelong source of solace and inspiration.  There is a lovely time, right around third grade, where kids are supposed to move from the “learning to read” stage to the “reading to learn” stage, and if they love to read, this period can feel like a rocket launching.
If they don’t, it’s miserable for everyone.
But the solution is not external motivation.  The AR program is a system of points accumulated by taking quizzes over books the child has read.  Let’s start there. That presumes the book has been rated (so it’s worth a certain number of points), and that there is a quiz available to take. The quizzes are content-based, checking recall, and they’re multiple choice.  The system-gamers just got pretty good odds; they can take quizzes without having read or read carefully, and hope to do ok. And the kids who read books that aren’t approved, rated, and quizzed up, can’t get points for reading what they like to read.
In fact, on some questions, kids who haven’t read may do better than the kids who have, because the questions are sometimes so detailed, they don’t have anything to do with the big aspects of plot or character. I remember a question that asked if Clifford the Big Red Dog used a phone pole or a tree to sharpen his claws.  It doesn’t matter, really—you have to know he was a big dog, so he didn’t use a toothpick, but if you couldn’t remember exactly, you could still get plenty from the story.
And look at what else kids are learning: that details matter more than plot.  That what happened is more important than how it made you feel.  That reading superficially–for recall—is good. If they get anything about critical thinking from the new Common Core, they will be spending the rest of their years unlearning these lessons AR taught them.
I teach literature. I do use these kinds of quizzes at the beginning of my classes, so that students have a concrete reason to keep up with the reading. It’s part of their grade, so it keeps them honest when the realities of life threaten their best intentions. I use these quizzes to take attendance; that’s it.  Then I spend an hour or more talking about what the text is really about.
AR keeps these quizzes as an endpoint. When you’re done with the book, the culminating experience is a multiple-choice quiz. I want my kids to get so much more out of books than that. I want them to want to read because they love it—because they get to go places they’ve never heard of, meet people different from themselves and surprisingly similar, learn lessons about human nature and Mother Nature, and hear the beauty of well-wrought words. I want them to understand that when the book ends, their imaginative experience of it does not, and that what is wonderful about a book—what they felt as they read it, what they learned when they talked about it with their friends, and how they will carry its lessons with them–is not ever going to be contained in a quiz.