Disclaimer: This is an opinion. Mine.
I know that many schools have competitions of many kinds, and that
competition is part of society and that some competition is just good,
healthy fun. But I think it's important to think about the message that
*some* school competitions send, and to me, a reading competition just
goes against my grain. If I were teaching in this school, I would not
feel good about being pitted against all other classrooms AND I would
find it hard to participate. That's why I suggested a school wide
collaboration (ongoing documentation of books and pages read by the
whole school), where everyone works together toward a common goal.
Our current Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, has pitted schools
against schools and teachers against teachers with his stupid Race to
the Top program. High stakes tests pit schools against schools and
teachers against teachers and students against students.
In my classrooms we always kept a running tally of how many books and
pages kids read, throughout the year. The end numbers were pretty
impressive; frankly, I think they were way more impressive than
cafeteria displays of students names who had reached the "Millionaire's
Reading Club" or classroom displays of race cars racing along on race
tracks made of Accelerated Reading scores.
Am I really the only one out there?
Does anyone read Alfie Kohn or Daniel Pink?
Renee Goularte
20 years teaching, all grades, ELL, at-risk, GATE, multiage, and Art.
On Apr 10, 2012, at 10:14 AM, Phyllis Oliver wrote:
At a school where I was reading specialist we used to have
competitions between classes.(We only had one room per grade level.)
We might have 3rd and 4th and 5th and 6th compete for the most AR
points or most pages read. We did this by the month. The losing class
would serve the winning class a treat (such as homemade sundaes or
popcorn with a movie, or pizza) the losing class then served
themselves and all enjoyed the treat. This seemed to work especially
well with 4-6 grades.
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."
~William Butler Yeats
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