Learning Log 6

One thing that I found very interesting from this reading that I can actually compare to what I have experienced is the reading logs that are used to record the amount of minutes that a student has read. When I was in school, the teachers did not require students to record the amount of time that they spent reading outside of school. I read just because I liked to read; however, I also had reading role models at home as both of my parents were avid readers. My kids, on the other hand, have had to record their reading minutes at home since they started school. They had the Book-It reading program in which they get a free personal pizza in the early grades (My youngest one still has this program, and he is the only one who it has really mattered.). When my two oldest children entered fifth grade, they had to record their minutes for a letter grade in home reading. This was not an incentive for either one of them to record their reading time. My daughter, however, was reading all the time, wherever she found an opportunity to read. I remember her teachers constantly calling me telling me that she did not turn in her reading minutes, and I would tell them that she was reading all the time. At her eighth grade graduation, the communication arts teacher handed out awards to the students for the amount of minutes that they read throughout the school year. My daughter had only recorded around 3000 minutes, but I know that she read at least double that if not more. She was (and still is) a motivated reader who did not feel that she had to justify it; she knew that her dad and I were aware of her reading passion. My oldest son has not been very motivated to read, and it is not from a lack of trying on our part. I am an avid reader, and I have always made sure that there are books in the house as well as looking through the book orders with my children and buying books for them out of those book orders.