In my small town I have seen the deadly grip of AR on the hearts of my students. I see less and less students reading because they enjoy it and more and more hating to read.
I have a theory on why this is happening. I think it can be partly attributed to the fact that electronics have become so readily available to our students in their free time. What kid doesn’t want to play on a tablet? I know that I am continually telling my nieces and nephews, “Is this your phone? Then why are you trying to look at it?” when I am responding to a text.
Growing up I would never have attempted to look over my parent’s shoulder at what they were doing on the computer. That was not for me. That was my parent’s domain, not mine. But there seems to be this idea that “If it’s on a screen I HAVE TO LOOK AT IT!” or “It’s on a screen? It’s for me!” among many of the young patrons that come into my library, as well as the children in my own family.
But even more so than that our school system uses the Accelerated Reader program, or AR. Children are tested to see where their reading level is at and encouraged to read at that level or above. Is that a good thing? Yes! Is challenging kids not read things just because they will be “easy” a good thing? Yes! We should challenge kids to read hard things!
But here’s the thing- the kids are given a range like 4.5-5.2 and they can only read books within that level….. Yep. We have taken the vast unlimited supply of stories that is the library and told our students “Nope. Pick from these 150 books. Sorry if you like the Ranger’s Apprentice Series, it’s above your reading level. Sorry if you want a quick light read like Junie B. Jones. It’s below your level. No more enjoyment of those for you!”
It drives me nuts! And students have to reach a certain amount of AR points each semester! So they take a test to see how much information they’ve retained from the book and they have to get enough “points” to get a better grade in their Language Arts classes. Really? They can’t just read the book to enjoy it?
No wonder students don’t want to read recreationally anymore! We are raising a generation of children who love movies, not books. They like movies because they can just enjoy the action and the movement of the story. There is no stress for them. They aren’t going to be tested on it.
I think AR can be a good tool but we can’t keep limiting our students to only reading within a small level. I have seen reluctant readers become voracious readers over Rick Riordan. But when they get older and Riordan publishes new things, they aren’t allowed to read it anymore and my voracious reader becomes a begrudging reader.
Let’s re-commit ourselves to teaching kids to love reading, not following some pre-determined standards of what they “should” read. Let’s put great books into the hands of kids, not just books that they will know every word. Let’s challenge our kids!
Keep Sparkling,
B
The Sparkling Librarian 