Reading ever night - Page 2

[LynnS6]

Originally Posted by Houdini

Honestly...I wonder if it is more to get the parents' who aren't involved on their own to become involved with thier child. I know some parents who only read with their child b/c it is assigned through school.

What I dislike is punishing them if they don't have the log marked and signed by the parent b/c the parent refuses to do the reading with them...not fair to the kids IMO.

:

This isn't for the 'typical' parent here - it's for those parents who don't really understand the value of reading to your child. There's excellent research showing that if parents read with kids, reading improves.

If you ordinarily read for 15-20 minutes a day, then just fill out the log at the end of the week and don't stress!

[hillymum]

Thank you all for your very helpful replies! I've bought a container which will be for library books, and we are heading to the library after homework is done tonight.
My husband and I have read to or with our boys since my eldest was born, actually I started reading aloud to him when I was about 5 months along, so it's already normal, but all this form filling etc decreased the fun of it a bit.

[wannabe]

Originally Posted by muse

DS has only done 4 days of K and already has "homework" to read or be read to for 10 mins every night. I'm already irked by it, since we read all the time. I hate having to check a box for the teacher every night. He's 5 yrs old...And I know it's all about getting them (and me) ready for "real homework" in 1st grade....

It's also because there might be people out there who don't read with their kids every day - they're the ones they're targeting, to get them reading. Reading and a love of reading is the biggest factor in success at school.

Believe it or not, I've been in homes where there are NO adult books whatsoever! Those people certainly need to be kicked up the bum to start reading!

[sofiabugmom]

DD's daily kindergarten homework is to read one book and fill in a reading log book afterward. The school provides the books, and the kids get a new book every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The log also keeps track of how many week nights the kids have read, and has "certificates" for the parents to fill out when the child has reached 25, 50, 75, etc., week nights of reading.

I've decided to look at it as a diary for DD rather than a log book. That way, instead of potentially viewing it as drudgery, she can see how many books she's read, the titles etc., and see how far she's progressed. The only downside so far is that the books she's been reading are ridiculously simple for her, but she's still looking forward to reading them after school every day.

One interesting thing: the log only tracks reading for Monday through Friday. Weekend reading doesn't count for the log. Sounds to me like it's a way to get the kids used to having homework at an early age; I'm not sure yet how that sits with me ...

[rainyday]

Originally Posted by muse

DS has only done 4 days of K and already has "homework" to read or be read to for 10 mins every night. I'm already irked by it, since we read all the time. I hate having to check a box for the teacher every night. He's 5 yrs old...And I know it's all about getting them (and me) ready for "real homework" in 1st grade....

It's not really all about getting them ready for real homework. Reading is the most important academic skill kids learn in school. If they can't read well and easily, every other subject is a lot harder. Kids' reading fluency improves the more they read and the more they're read to. That's why most schools make a big push to have kids reading every night. If all families did it already, schools wouldn't make such an issue out of it, but the truth is a lot of kids come to school from families where books are rarely if ever read by anyone.

Originally Posted by hillymum

I don't actually mind the reading, they both read to me for their required time, then atr bed time I read to them, but his teacher has made it clear we are not to read the same book twice. I am more annoyed at having to come up with new books and these text to text or text to life reports my eldest has to write. Even I struggle to come up with links between life and a Pokemon book lol. Reading is something we nurture in my family, but my eldest is begining to be put off. I am worried about getting a huge stack of books from the library in case we loose one or two in our ciollection. I dread having to hunt down specific books lol. I guess I will have to get over that!

I too find it very odd that the teacher doesn't want you rereading books. I think there's good evidence that being very familiar with some texts really helps kids learn to read because they start to associate the words on the page with the words they hear. I'd want to ask the teacher why she doesn't want any repetition at all.

Going to the library every week for new books can be kind of a pain, but it has its good points too. Is there a possibility of your DC bringing books home from the classroom or school library? That would make it easier on your schedule perhaps.

[Viola]

My daughter had to read 20 minutes a night in first grade, M-Th and we signed a log. At that point we were mostly reading to her, but as she learned to read, she read to us or even silently sometimes.

Second grade was the same thing, she read 20 minutes a night M-Th and we signed her log. This log actually had to have the book title, though, and a yes or no in a column asking if she read the full 20 minutes.

Now she is in 3rd grade and has to only read 10 minutes a night and we don't have to sign a log.

The twenty minutes of reading didn't have to be books, it could be recipes or instructions or magazines. Finding the books wasn't really a problem for us because we had a collection of kids books, and they did send home books sometimes, either the Scholastic books they had for the class that were part of the Weekly Reader program, or the reading book with stories. She might read the same story she had already read in class that day. There were times when we read longer books, and at 20 minutes a night, it could take weeks to get through one book completely.

Right now we are reading a library book From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and to make it go faster, I am timing her for her 10 minutes, but interspersing it with me reading too. That's working pretty well for us.

The thing I resented about her homework last year (2nd grade) was that if she missed a day of school due to illness, the teacher piled up all the worksheets she had to do, and that ended up getting piled onto the daily homework. Plus if she didn't finish her wordsearch in class, that got added to the homework. She often didn't finish wordsearches because she despised them, and I told her just not to finish them. That didn't fly so well, LOL. She insisted she *had* to do them. One day she'd write out all her spelling words a number of times, another day she'd alphabetize them, the 3rd day she's have to use them all in sentences. She could bang those sentences out in about 10 minutes with no help from me, but wow, the alphabetizing--that got her so frustrated because she'd try and number them all and if she found out she had missed one, she'd erase all the numbers and start over again instead of just trying to figure out where the new word should go and inserting it with an arrow before she wrote out her final list. I finally had to step in and double check and just tell her yes or no as she was alphabetizing.

[BusyMommy]

Originally Posted by hillymum

I am worried about getting a huge stack of books from the library in case we loose one or two in our ciollection. I dread having to hunt down specific books lol. I guess I will have to get over that!

We get 15 books/week from our public library. They are kept in a dedicated tub (old milk crate) and we have yet to lose one!
Good luck

[BusyMommy]

Originally Posted by 1xmom

What's nice is that I can go online and review my account to double check what books I have, and even renew them online. It works out great. One time I thought I lost a book and renewed it online and I ended up finding it a day or two later, but I didn't get a fine for it being late

: ITA

[EFmom]

We have similar reading assignments. The reading is no problem, but the record keeping is a boil on my posterior.

Our public library allows you to take out about a million books at a time. We go at least weekly and bring home a big tote bag of books, so there's always something to read.

Going to the library is one of our favorite family activities, but then again, I'm an academic librarian, so it's sort of an occupational hazard.

[turtle2who]

Reading all of these replies from those of you who have 15 mins of reading to do as homework with your kids makes me feel pressure to start assigning it to my students! I gave it up a few years ago and am one of the few in my school who don't assign nightly reading to my students. I stopped because I saw reading becoming drudgery for some of my students.

I work hard to turn my kids on to reading. I read them all different kinds of stories (genres) and share my excitement about reading and about specific books with them to try to get those reluctant readers to want to take a book home and read EVEN THOUGH IT ISN'T HOMEWORK!

We have wonderful spur of the moment conversations about books we have read. And nothing gives me the same thrill as seeing someone check that book out of the library the next time we go!

I really struggle with this though- because the research does say that kids who read more read better. And kids who read at home do better academically. But I am not convinced that we can force the same success by making kids read at home.

I don't know though- maybe I am wrong and I should be forcing it. Everyone else does.

[1xmom]

What also makes it fun for my dd, is we pick a character out of the book to read. Right now we are reading Charlotte's Web again, and she started reading all of Fern's parts, now she's moved on to being one of the geese.

[EFmom]

Originally Posted by turtle2who

Reading all of these replies from those of you who have 15 mins of reading to do as homework with your kids makes me feel pressure to start assigning it to my students! I gave it up a few years ago and am one of the few in my school who don't assign nightly reading to my students. I stopped because I saw reading becoming drudgery for some of my students.

I work hard to turn my kids on to reading. I read them all different kinds of stories (genres) and share my excitement about reading and about specific books with them to try to get those reluctant readers to want to take a book home and read EVEN THOUGH IT ISN'T HOMEWORK!

We have wonderful spur of the moment conversations about books we have read. And nothing gives me the same thrill as seeing someone check that book out of the library the next time we go!

I really struggle with this though- because the research does say that kids who read more read better. And kids who read at home do better academically. But I am not convinced that we can force the same success by making kids read at home.

I don't know though- maybe I am wrong and I should be forcing it. Everyone else does.

No, I think you are doing it exactly right. Do everything you can to make it fun and exciting. Do what you can to have the parents make it fun and exciting. But I think there is something negative about forcing it.

I'll be honest. We are supposed to keep a reading log, and the kids get graded on whether or not they've done their 20 minutes every day. My kids read a ton. They both score over the 95th percentile in all the standardized reading tests, so we must be doing something right.

However, my kids' reading logs are complete fiction to keep their teachers happy. I don't make them read 20 minutes a night. They read when they want to because they want to. Sometimes they'll read for hours at at time and somedays nothing. It doesn't matter a bit to me.

[elizam]

Originally Posted by wannabe

It's also because there might be people out there who don't read with their kids every day - they're the ones they're targeting, to get them reading. Reading and a love of reading is the biggest factor in success at school.

Believe it or not, I've been in homes where there are NO adult books whatsoever! Those people certainly need to be kicked up the bum to start reading!

I've been in too many homes like this to count. What gets me, though, is that most of the time, these people still have "gifted" kids who make straight As. I say "gifted" like that because it irks me that there are so many of them who are "gifted", but hate school, make fun of reading as "lame", "boring"
, or "for geeks", and are not what you'd consider creative. It seems like these days, "gifted" in PS = good grades and/or test scores, period. And here I've always read to my kids really good literature; they choose good literature when they are old enough to read, and they have curious minds, but none of them fit the typical "PS gifted" mold. In short, a parent can do "all the right things" learning-wise and still not have honor roll gifted kids. Sigh......

I should add, we have all these books and read them because we LOVE to, not because I'm trying to produce geniuses. My dc don't get into things like Leapfrog and writing their alphabet, worksheets, etc. So it is nearly impossible to "prep" them. When my oldest was in K, he hated reading so much (after loving it up until then), he could barely make it through assigned reading time for homework. Sad.

[kater07]

Your kids should have a library card for the school library.

My DS is in kindy and he reads to me every night and I read to him every day at least 1 hour if not 2.

IMO, reading is a GREAT thing, and kudos to the teachers for requiring it. I feel that 15 minutes is far too short, too.

Join Paperbackswap.com or one of the others where you can trade books FREE. I just unloaded about 50 books that we were finished with. Maybe you can go to the trading post and offer to pay for shipping on free or cheap books.

Books can be found SUPER CHEAP at Saturday morning yard sales too.

Good luck!

[Mizelenius]

Originally Posted by turtle2who

Reading all of these replies from those of you who have 15 mins of reading to do as homework with your kids makes me feel pressure to start assigning it to my students!

I think you should assign it. This is what I'd do:
(1) No log/record requirement
(2) No time minimum
(3) No genre requirement

Then, I'd schedule a once-a-week book/whatchabeenreading? chat. Maybe on Fridays. They can have snacks and water and get into small groups about what they've been reading. Very informal. I think that would be fun!

[KJoslyn78]

we have had 15 minutes of reading (at least 15 min - more is always ok!) since kindergatern. it started with me reading to her, and moved to ehr reading to me, then self-reading. We always re-read books - because of course kids have their favorites - and repitation - esp for the younger kids - is not a bad thing (can help grow confidence in reading, etc... until this past spring my daughter was almost 2 years behind - and is now at grade level!)

[Amaranth]

www.paperbackswap.com is good place to trade kid's books.

Also, some Newbery winners are good for younger kids - a good place to read about them is The Newbery Project.

I would make up a list of books your kids might be interested in, have it requested at the library, and then you can be in and out quickly (since the OP had not much time for the library) with your big stack of books and be set for a week or two.

I wouldn't depend on the teacher or school recommendations. Some teachers are great, others not so wonderful in picking appropriate selections.