I am currently reading the book Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It by Kelly Gallagher. It should be a must read for every parent sending their kids to school, no matter what the grade level. I am about halfway done and it has already hit all so many of the problems I see daily with my students.
1) Accelerated reading. This is the ultimate is setting kids up to fail.
2) Completely inane and contrived stories in reading texts.
3) Completely inane and contrived follow up questions with ridiculous multiple choice answers.
4) Novel studies that pick and pick and pick out every minutia in a great story until it becomes completely unbearable to read.
5) Reading logs that want me to record said minutia. This would seriously tempt me to write crazy things just to see if my teacher read them at all.
6) Teaching kids deep meaningful topics in a very shallow way, super fast......whoosh!........ so there is no time for them to develop an interest in a subject.
It is a very compelling book. Sadly, for some reason, educational practices are rarely founded as a result of good research, they are founded as fads. This hurts our kids and it kills their spirit, especially the ones who need help. Reading this book just put it into an even clearer perspective.
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