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Does your school use this program, and if so does the school give out prizes at assemblies? What do you think of AR? There is a lot of negative research about it and I'm trying to avoid looking at towns in Bergen/Morris that use it.
Accelerated Reader is not a program that I'm familiar with, but after several years of teaching in public and private schools I've seen a ridiculous number of packaged curricula for reading.
Some are more effective than others, but they all pretty much "prove" some level of effectiveness with research - often done by the publisher, of course.
You might avoid AR, but then you'll end up with Read180 (Scholastic) or Direct Instruction (SRA) or any of the many other programs out there.
I offer this advice as someone who was raised in a household filled with reading (not as a smug teacher): the best way to make sure your child is a capable and enthusiastic reader is to read together, set a good example by taking up reading as a leisure activity for yourself, and encourage your child to love books by visiting the library, story tellers/public readings, and quality bookstores. I was fortunate to have an easy time learning to read, but even my younger brother who has both a learning disability in reading and a mild cognitive delay is an enthusiastic reader because our parents did these things for us.
Thanks, Snixy, for your awesome response. I do all the things you mentioned, and for those reasons I want to avoid schools that use a basal reader series and/or AR. AR is more of a supplemental program, basically taking the "free voluntary reading" away from kids and making them take factual recall multiple-choice tests on trade books. They earn points and everyone knows how many points they have because there are prizes at assemblies--it's horrible! There are even schools that have AR plus a basal series like Scott Foresman's Reading Street!
I know that there are schools that only use Teachers College Readers Workshop (authentic literature), I'm just trying to find them...
When we lived in NJ (Fair Lawn), my kids elementary school did not have AR. We moved to Tampa, FL and they had this. It was a BIG thing for the schools to push reading. I felt it embarrassed the kids to read. Everyone knew who the poor readers were and who excelled. If you excelled, you got a ribbon on ribbon day and wore it proudly. They posted the grades on the board how each student was doing. I don't like this program, or at least how this school tried to motivate the kids. I always read books to my kids like Snixy said to and I read myself. However, my first grader struggled at first. She came home near tears that she did not do as well as most of her classmates. I hope NJ does not adopt that program.
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