It’s a good thing Accelerated Reader wasn’t around when I was in third grade. I doubt there would have been AR tests for the Perry Mason novels I loved.
For unindoctrinated uninitiated, Accelerated Reader bills itself …
Picky eaters and allergy-safe cooking — the two aren’t necessarily unrelated.
From policy to politics, this rant’s for you.
The day’s events in a family way — unless something else amuses me.
From preschool to kindergarten — so far
Inexpensive homemade gifts, creative parties and low-cost projects, for Christmas and beyond. Many are easy enough for children to help.
It’s a good thing Accelerated Reader wasn’t around when I was in third grade. I doubt there would have been AR tests for the Perry Mason novels I loved.
For unindoctrinated uninitiated, Accelerated Reader bills itself as “the world’s most widely used reading software.” Kids choose books based on their reading levels, which are calculated with a test. They then take quizzes of 10 to 20 questions. I suppose that ensures that you caught the major points, but if you miss one question you’ve just spent a lot of time reading to earn a the equivalent of a B in our school district.
All right, so those are the rules. We didn’t make them but we have to play by them, I tell Big Guy. That’s not even my biggest knock against Accelerated Reader.
Late last month, Big Guy finished reading “Diary of A Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever.” Did I say reading? It was more like obsessing over. He’d read for 50 minutes at a time, and there aren’t many books that captivate him that much. He went to school the day after he finished it, fired up to take the AR quiz.
The computer wouldn’t let him. It turned out that the book was .2 higher than the top of his “allowed” reading range. There is no way I could have known that when I preordered the book, and there was no way I would have stopped Big Guy from reading it if I’d looked up its AR level before he started.
He was dismayed that he couldn’t take the test. “At least you read a good book that you liked,” I consoled him.
“But it was a big waste of time,” Big Guy said, hurtling a dagger through my reading-loving heart.
His teacher relented the next day and overrode the computer, though she told him she wouldn’t do it again.
That means no AR credit for the Harry Potter books he and I read every night – we’re currently on “Order of the Phoenix,” which is .9 above the top of his reading range. The only Potter book he’d be allowed to test on is “Sorcerer’s Stone,” which is .8 below his top level.
I had Big Guy take a sample quiz on “Order of the Phoenix,” and he kicked it in the butt even though we have six chapters left in the book. That’s how fascinated he is by this stuff the computer says he can’t comprehend. He missed only two of the 25 questions. One was on a minor point we’d read but he’d forgotten. The other was from a passage we hadn’t gotten to yet.
Last year, the AR problem was different. His school only went up to second grade, which meant the AR software didn’t go much farther than that. By February, three or four kids in his second-grade class had plowed through virtually everything the school had a test for. One of his classmates had probably maxed out by September. He was reading Harry Potter at the end of first grade, before there was a computer telling him he couldn’t.
I’ll take Accelerated Reader’s word for it that the program works wonderfully for a lot of children.
In our house, though, where there lives a child who chafes at being told he can’t pick books he loves, reading has become more about the frustration of finding something that works within the system than about love of literature.
It breaks my heart.
Copyright 2012 Debra Legg. All rights reserved.
Popularity: 1% [?]
In the almost three years since the guys started karate, the pattern’s persisted.
Blow off practice then get upset when you don’t earn a stripe. Practice your little butt off for the next week or so …
They’re bad for the environment – all those bits of plastic and foil have to go somewhere. They’re bad for the pocketbook – calculate the cost per ounce for a box of bags and compare …
It seems that the easiest way to quit something cold turkey is to not know you’re doing it. Of course, that’s also the hardest way, since it’s usually impossible to stop without realizing it.
I managed …
Maybe we’re weird, but I swear this kind of stuff happens here all the time. We’ll be out enjoying the day or running errands, something will catch one of the guys’ attention and before I …
I suppose there’s something to be said for the provocative headline, even if it’s inaccurate, if it gets your attention.
A recent headline from a random publicist trying to get a byline on my site certainly …
He looked like Michael Jordan’s mini-me – or Kobe Bryant’s, depending on your generation – but with a shade more hair. Possibly with a shade more precociousness, too, since Jordan did, after all, get cut …
There was a time when I wrote two, sometimes three times a day every day of the week. A time when life seemed a little muddled once in a while but mostly clear.
That time is …
Big Guy brought the project home from school Monday. It started with a typed note attached to a brown bag – bring three things to school that represent something important in your life. You’ll talk …
It was bad enough that it happened once. By the time of the second incident in less than 24 hours, my head was ready to explode.
One day last week, my phone rang about 20 minutes …
Boots’ school operates on a color system – kids start the day at green and either move up to yellow, orange and then red or down to blue, purple and gray.
The problems with that are …
Boots loves critters – anything with fur, feathers and fins. He’s always loved winged creatures the best, so I suppose it was inevitable that once the infomercials hit we would be buying a butterfly kit …
Disclaimer: There are many men who flat know their shiitake when it comes to the ways of the super market. They understand that when you need balsamic none of the other vinegars in the cabinet …
Due to a dog who eats everything and kids who leave drinkware scattered through out the neighborhood, I dragged my collection of stadium cups out of the cabinet yesterday. Accumulated over decades, the stack had …
It took a while longer to get to the little one.
By the time Big Guy was 4, I knew he was destined to be a baseball fan. That was the summer when he opted to …
Last year, it brought “mean, range and mode” to second grade. Later we saw estimations that caused many a kid to howl “why can’t I just solve the problem?” instead of rounding addends to get …
Twenty-nine months after it came into my life, the relationship is ending.
I’d hoped to eek another few months out of it my 2009 Blackberry, even though I’ve been eligible for an upgrade since the …
Even though this year’s bus stop is a much longer hike for Big Guy than last year’s “roll out the back door” location, my plan had been to let him walk the third of a …
I’m probably the last geek on Earth to own a GPS device, which is funny because the technology was invented with people like me in mind.
The guys don’t say, “Are we there yet?” They ask, …
I’ll say this about our first adventure in standardized testing land: Big Guy’s results from the spring exam dovetailed perfectly with his performance in the classroom. I’m just not sure that either indicator is accurate.
In …
You remember the sweet little baby he used to be, and you wonder how it all went sideways.
You tried to raise him right – before he was born you ordered a onsie from your favorite …
It’s reminiscent of what happened to military personnel during the Vietnam Era, except at least this time the vitriol isn’t violent.
But it’s just as uncalled for and almost as ridiculous. Even worse: It’s the direct …
Big Guy had just gotten his little butt beaten badly, but he’d come up grinning so it was safe to broach the subject.
“So what did you learn today?” I asked. It’s my standard question when …
I’ve come to the conclusion recently that my perfect friend would be a geeky food-allergic liberal with quirky sense of humor, an obsessive interest in education issues and a tolerance for cute crap my kids …
There’s a 30-year-old fishing tackle box on top of my refrigerator that I keep moving from house to house, though for the life of me I don’t know why. It’s covered with a thick layer …
I figured we were headed this way a year ago, when all Big Guy wanted for his birthday was “cool clothes.” Clothes? Didn’t that used to be the ultimate gifting insult?
Suspicion grew stronger at Christmas, …
Looking back, it was a mistake to read Big Guy “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” when he was a baby. Or maybe it’s his kindergarten teacher’s fault.
Whatever the reason, he’s been bent on living out the …
I started out with good intentions, declaring as school let out that the guys would read for a half hour each day.
That soon devolved to bribing – they’d earn one “Mom Buck” for each 30 …
When Daphine was a girl, red shoes were forbidden – only “loose women” wore them, she was told.
As a result, as soon as she got her first job she took part of her first paycheck …
I should call these magic bars, because they disappear. I’ve never seen a pan survive as long as 24 hours in this house, though admittedly I live with two pumpkin freaks. It’s probably just as …
Note to Sara Palin: Michelle Obama is free to stop by my house any evening and tell my kids they can’t have dessert. After seven-plus years of this war, I’m battle fatigued. Michelle would probably …
The lack of health-care workers in schools is nothing new.
We saw the impact when Big Guy was in kindergarten and cooled his heels in the office for half a day after a snooty secretary diagnosed …
I’ve come to the conclusion recently that my perfect friend would be a geeky food-allergic liberal with quirky sense of humor, an obsessive interest in education issues and a tolerance for cute crap my kids …
In this corner we have Big Guy, who’s bored with every book I bring home and isn’t fond of fiction.
In this corner we have Boots, who could devour Step 3 books if he wanted to, …
Boots’ school operates on a color system – kids start the day at green and either move up to yellow, orange and then red or down to blue, purple and gray.
The problems with that are …
Sometimes life is all about timing. There’s a chance the soldier took his protective goggles off briefly during training in The Box – 1,000 barren square miles at Fort Irwin where soldiers prepare for desert warfare. Then ...
So there I was last month, stressing until 2 in the morning over Dad’s “welcome home” cake, worried that it would be ugly or dry or have the wrong color stars. Silly, silly girl. If I’d ...
I’m kind of frustrated this morning because I don’t have girls. I don’t even know any girls young enough to appreciate this. But if I did, I’d be all over the tutu tutorial – say that ...
Poor Boots. He wakes up every morning chirping with the birds and with a cheery greeting. “It’s a beautiful day!” Somewhere along the line, though, the grind of the world beats the beauty out of it ...
On one level, it’s simple: When you’re about to fall, just let go and fall. Trying to stop the tumble or, even worse, flailing your arms and legs as you land will make it worse. Somewhere ...
There’s often a reason why Big Guy does the seemingly quirky things he does. A reason that makes sense only in his 5-year-old brain, but a reason nonetheless.
I usually don’t question, because if it’s genuinely ...
This one landed in my Twitter stream just as Boots was diving into a bowl of … Cocoa Puffs: “New peanut flour warning for General Mills cereals.” Luckily, he’s not the child who’s allergic and Big ...
From the country that wants to censor the Internet worldwide in the name of protecting its children comes another bizarre project, also in the name of “protecting children” The British have launched a database, at a ...
Do I ever feel like a dolt after my post last night lamenting the difficulties of finding dye-free snow-cone syrups. I went to a Middle Eastern market today to pick up some hummus ingredients and ran ...
Parties in the park seem to be the rage around here of late – a rage that will be over by the time Big Guy’s birthday rolls around in 103-degree July – and today’s was ...
Six hundred and eight three killed in Afghanistan. Four thousand, two hundred and ninety six killed in Iraq. Many stories of incredible lives, often amazing sacrifices. This is one such story. Army Maj. Steven Hutchison survived two ...
Archive for By the way »
