Wednesday, September 26, 2007

4th grade NATIONAL READING SCORES DOWN Concerns Mom

I have twin fourth grade boys. One loves to read and one, though an excellent reader, prefers to do other things, anything but read.

Today’s cover story in The Oregonian newspaper’s Metro section states that Oregon’s Fourth –graders sink below the US average, and that does not ring happy in my ears.

And now into the fourth week of school – and discussing this with my children’s teachers at last week’s open house at the school -- I found out kids can choose whatever they want to read, and I just disagree with this. How do you monitor if kids even finish a book or not.

Whatever happened to assigned reading, where all the students read the same book and then discuss it. Summer is a time for choice reading while the school year should have mostly assigned reading, and classics at that. As a parent I do rely on the schools to pick books for my kids and my kids look to their school teachers as authorities in this area, so it is hard to come back as a parent and say, “Okay, choose so and so book.”

It is so important for schools to introduce classics to children beginning in the younger years, and required reading is one way to do this, but in my kids’ schools, even on the high school level, there seems to be this, “read what you want” philosophy for part of the time.

The schools are missing out on a chance to help kids learn to love good literature and discuss it together as a class. And with today’s scores showing reading tests are lower on the fourth grade level, maybe schools will listen.


Cornelia Seigneur aka Nellie

www.writermom.net

www.myspace.com/corneliaseigneur
www.writermom5kids.blogspot.com

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