Along with the end of school also comes the requisite "Summer Book Project" that my middle school son unpacked from the bottom of his knapsack the other night, creased a bit. My husband and I consider ourselves fortunate. We have a terrific son who still loves to read, even after years of book reports. Nonetheless, we're a bit worried given the way some teachers' assignments fail to recognize why people actually read and how literacies continue to change. Failure to understand both is detrimental to learners.
I was thinking a lot about this when I learned that earlier today my son purchased Jing Pro in order to upload his "How-To" Minecraft films to YouTube. He learned and continues to learn the ins and outs of playing Minecraft through chats, YouTube videos, and people who leave comments and post work on his Minecraft server. He began playing Minecraft mid-April of this year. This play has led him to begin to learn Python, a programming language. Rob and I recognize our son's play (composing in minecraft, making films, commenting on line, engaging in chats, negotiating code) as important literacies. Unfortunately, his teachers do not.
At school, my son performs averagely (underneath the book report was the report card). He does his homework, aces and fails tests and quizzes, is a voracious reader, writes a lot at home via the comics he designs and pamphlets he makes-- but he is clearly not an "honor's role" kid. Neither Rob nor I have any aspirations that one day one of those shiny stickers announcing to the world that your child is on honor roll will ever grace the bumper of our car.
I should be honest here and say that I think all book reports are an odd way to respond to a text and do more to discourage reading than encourage. But nothing prepared me for the "Scavenger Hunt Book Report" that Dev is tasked with doing during the summer. I get that teachers want children to read during the summer. I support that desire 100%. However, the Scavenger Hunt Book Report will only make children miserable and may well lead learners to believe that reading is about finding oddities in a novel. There is no learning connected with this report that helps readers experience joy, pleasure, interest.
Choice is severely limited. Students "MUST" select one novel to read from a list of 15. All of the authors are white, save one who is African American. As the mom of an Asian child, this disappoints me. I have to sign the paper to indicate a book from this list has been read and my son will earn 5 points. I find such things like this insulting. The directions require students to hunt for prescribed information while reading. The project is a list of 26 tasks that readers must complete on the furnished paper. "NO partial credit" will be given for anything incomplete. The reader can earn an F (64 points or below), D (65 - 69 points), C (70-79 points), B (80 to 89 points), or A (90 to 100 points) which will influence their English grade next fall.
So what are readers "hunting" to find? I won't outline all of them as they are equally inane but here's a few:
What makes me sad about this, apart from the quality of the assignment, is the larger issue of how out of date the educators are who assigned this work. There is not one task that requires my son to demonstrate in some manner meaning he has made while reading. Isn't making meaning a purpose for reading? The very literate life he leads at home via his gaming, reading, discussion (real and virtual), movie making, texting, and drawing is in many ways antithetical to what is valued at school and that's the problem we face.
Curious as to how you would attend to this assignment as a parent.
I was thinking a lot about this when I learned that earlier today my son purchased Jing Pro in order to upload his "How-To" Minecraft films to YouTube. He learned and continues to learn the ins and outs of playing Minecraft through chats, YouTube videos, and people who leave comments and post work on his Minecraft server. He began playing Minecraft mid-April of this year. This play has led him to begin to learn Python, a programming language. Rob and I recognize our son's play (composing in minecraft, making films, commenting on line, engaging in chats, negotiating code) as important literacies. Unfortunately, his teachers do not.
At school, my son performs averagely (underneath the book report was the report card). He does his homework, aces and fails tests and quizzes, is a voracious reader, writes a lot at home via the comics he designs and pamphlets he makes-- but he is clearly not an "honor's role" kid. Neither Rob nor I have any aspirations that one day one of those shiny stickers announcing to the world that your child is on honor roll will ever grace the bumper of our car.
I should be honest here and say that I think all book reports are an odd way to respond to a text and do more to discourage reading than encourage. But nothing prepared me for the "Scavenger Hunt Book Report" that Dev is tasked with doing during the summer. I get that teachers want children to read during the summer. I support that desire 100%. However, the Scavenger Hunt Book Report will only make children miserable and may well lead learners to believe that reading is about finding oddities in a novel. There is no learning connected with this report that helps readers experience joy, pleasure, interest.
Choice is severely limited. Students "MUST" select one novel to read from a list of 15. All of the authors are white, save one who is African American. As the mom of an Asian child, this disappoints me. I have to sign the paper to indicate a book from this list has been read and my son will earn 5 points. I find such things like this insulting. The directions require students to hunt for prescribed information while reading. The project is a list of 26 tasks that readers must complete on the furnished paper. "NO partial credit" will be given for anything incomplete. The reader can earn an F (64 points or below), D (65 - 69 points), C (70-79 points), B (80 to 89 points), or A (90 to 100 points) which will influence their English grade next fall.
So what are readers "hunting" to find? I won't outline all of them as they are equally inane but here's a few:
- Write a sentence from your book that includes a metaphor and the page # where it can be found. (5 points)
- Find a four-syllable word and the page # where it can be found. (5 points)
- Find a word that required dropping a silent e before adding the suffix and the page # where it can be found. (5 points)
- Write two separate sentences from your book that include adjectives and the page # where it can be found. Underline the adjectives in each sentence. (5 points)
- Write a sentence from your book that includes personification and the page # where it can be found. Underline the word demonstrating personification. For example: The fire crawled its way up the wall to the ceiling. (5 points).
What makes me sad about this, apart from the quality of the assignment, is the larger issue of how out of date the educators are who assigned this work. There is not one task that requires my son to demonstrate in some manner meaning he has made while reading. Isn't making meaning a purpose for reading? The very literate life he leads at home via his gaming, reading, discussion (real and virtual), movie making, texting, and drawing is in many ways antithetical to what is valued at school and that's the problem we face.
Curious as to how you would attend to this assignment as a parent.
