Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Okay, I have to let this out...

The head teacher at DS6 and 8's new school made a deal with a local pizza place. If a student reads a certain number of days during November and/or December, s/he will win a free personal pizza.

Okay, cool.

After DT (Dear Teacher; new acronym?) explained the rules, she said "I'll make out an entry form for your DD4. She can play too."

!!!

I don't think I could have imagined this in my dreams at the old school. Why can't more schools be like this??

Agog,

Val

Mmm, well, with the assumption that it's a good thing to start with, great that the teacher thought to include your DD4. But are you aware of the body of research work suggesting that this kind of thing is actually a fantastic way to put people *off* reading - i.e. that providing extrinsic motivation (pizza) actively damages intrinsic motivation (desire to read for its own sake)?

I've often thought that the damage done by people trying to "motivate" children may be a good reason to try to have one's child at the top of a class rather than in the middle of a higher one. If you've already mastered a skill by the time someone tries to motivate you to master it, at least their motivation attempt may not do you too much harm!

Val -

So wonderful that the school included DD4 too!

Smiles,
Grin

SWEET! i love hearing stories like this! it gives me hope!

Awesome Val!

We do the Pizza Hut program too! I consider afterschooling to equate to homeschooling!

BTW, the girls would read anyway, but this is a fun way for them to track their own milestones and take a second to feel good about the fact that they read.

Sports kids get accolades when they perform well. I'm all for kids getting recognized for academic pursuits as well.

Nice, but not mandatory!

Kcab, our son, now 27, never bought into those reward programs. The problem with them is they don't take into account encyclopedias which he read voraciously at meals. He was so miserable at school for so many years that I swallowed my sense of ettiquette and allowed the one consolation of reading at the table. Yes, it was the annoyance he felt of keeping track of time. Structure like this always seemed silly to him and the organization it took, a bother. Are you feeling that her resistance will dampen her classmates chance of getting the pizza party? Is that how the program works, on emtional blackmail, peer-pressure, guilt? Is she inclined to read other material besides fiction chapter books? Perhaps her teacher will let encyclopedias, science magazines, count if added up for comparative volume to novels.

I've never been wild about forcing kids to read from a defined reading list 30 min per night. Seems to me that policies like this force kids to read things they may not like, which will kill the enjoyment of reading.

I've seen messages here saying that the schools quantify the grade levels of books, and if I remember correctly, someone said that a book at a high grade 4 level wouldn't count for grade 5 reading. All I can say about that is that if I felt like I had to read only PhD-level books in my spare time at this point, I wouldn't be reading too much.

We're fortunate that our school "gets it." They don't require the reading and also don't care what the kids read: comic books are fine, encyclopedias or similar are great. My DS8 spent part of last week reading the Usborne Book of Rocks and Minerals.

Books for assignments are one thing, but I don't understand why schools dictate what kids read in their leisure time. If someone can explain this to me, I'm all ears.

Val

Val - I think it's nice that your teacher thought to include your 4 year old. I'm so glad you have a teacher you like!

That said, DS just had a weird experience with incentives/bribes, and I think we're getting perhaps a taste of how he'll act in school... He told me his preschool teacher gave everyone treats if they sang the song that went along with this big several-week-long project they completed. DS has not ever participated in any of the songs or hand movements that go along with songs, or anything like that, in preschool (this is his second year of not participating. He doesn't want to, and his teacher has never made him. He didn't sing, so he didn't get a treat. He was the only one. I asked him if that bothered him, and he said, no, he didn't want to sing, and he could get a treat at home. (I'm not too upset with the teacher, because she does truly "get" him, although my perfect image of her is shattered!)

I loved that book. I am sad (for you) to hear they are still doing AR in high school. I really like AR to get them started in elementary school, set some goals, but after 4-5 yrs...that's plenty! There have got to be some freedoms when you get to high school IMHO.

We're running into that problem, too. GS9 is supposed to log what books he is reading as well as time, and have me sign the log. He's having difficulty logging his reading accurately, and getting it signed off. He reads on the bus going to school, he reads on the bus coming home, he reads in class waiting on the rest of the class, he reads anything with words at any opportunity. In 3 weeks, he met his AR point goal for the quarter. I'm just praying that his AR log is not going to count in his grade for reading because once he finished his goal, his log is very spotty; but that doesn't mean he hasn't been reading.

I wrote in another post about AR - it is only based on vocabulary not content or depth of topic. That is why it is increasingly difficult for GT students to find books on their "required" level once they get past 6.0. There are also many books, as you are finding, that say 5.0 that are not books that 5th graders should be reading.

If my 10 year old son did a daily reading log, it would be filled with lots of history and science related Wikipedia articles and video game magazine articles and an occasional book like Ripley's Believe it or Not and magazines like National Geographic, because that is what he prefers to read on his own. I think the time he spends reading on his own probably adds up to several hours a day, so I never felt the need to keep track of it.

We read books about economics and government together because he likes to discuss those subjects. He even asks me to read the economics book on weekends when we are not doing any homeschooling, so I know he is enjoying learning about this subject.

He does not enjoy reading most of the books his public schooled friends are reading and even though his friends kept telling him how good the Harry Potter books were and numerous other books, he refused to read them. He would not change his reading habits for a reward or a bribe as he calls it, but he thinks most people would. When he listened to the debates, he said he thought most people would vote for the candidate offering the best bribe.

Heh. Loved those encyclopedias!! They never let me check them out of the library, so I skipped lunch a lot just to go read.

Just heard on the radio that the d.c. schools are paying kids to do right in school. I will have to dig around for an article on this.

Don't want to hijack the thread, but here's a middle of the road / pro-pay article. http://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/...ids-are-being-paid-to-attend-school.html

I think the incentives of a little pizza or an ice cream party at school are pretty minor and I wouldn't think could do much harm. This pay thing might be different...but I would say d.c. is definitely on the desperate to try anything list. I sincerely wish them success.

These things seem innocuous unless you have a kid with fatal food allergies. It's no fun to be the one left out of the ice cream party. I think that when rewards are used at school, they should be something that all the students can enjoy.

Chicago is paying kids for good grades as well... I think it's an awful idea. :-/

When I was in high school a local arcade gave free tokens for A's and B's. But that was just a promotional gimmick. It had nothing to do with the school.

I'd have loved the pay for grades idea when I was in school, since I got good grades anyway. But they wouldn't have changed anything about school for me...except my bank account!

For the record, I hate the idea! :p

Good Point!
Also - the rewards always seem to penalize someone - like the kid who has to read 6 600 page books in 3rd grade to get the ice cream that everyone else is 'Cat and the Hat'ing through. Or the kid who's fingers got sore from writing down the title and author of every blessed book they read...

Grins

Our teachers have been pretty sensitive about allergies - especially fatal ones! I can't believe there would be some out there who would set up an incentive that would be so completely exclusionary. I guess we are lucky in more ways than one. ( have we mentioned the kids who aren't able to keep up with the reading at all?)

I think that my main problem with the pay incentives is that it assumes it is primarily the fault of the kids that performance and attendence are off. Considering d.c.s problems with poverty, etc., this might just be another way to separate the kids who have a decent home life and those who just don't.
I figure there must only be a slim number who are just 'slacking off' for whom this incentive will make any difference.

Trinkets as incentives were pretty important to GS9 in 1st & 2nd grade. Last year they had no appeal. He still likes acknowledgement of his accomplishments. He is pretty self motivated to do all his assignments and is becoming more motivated to take more care in doing them. He mentioned his teacher complimented him on how neat one assignment was, now almost everything he writes is legible.
Kids are motivated by different things.