I was really interested by our class discussion about reading incentive programs. I was surprised to see how negatively they can impact students considering how popular they are. I researched the topic some more on the internet and came across two interesting websites. First is an article that talks more about how reading incentive programs are teaching children to read only if they can get a reward for it. Also, it talks about how children begin to change their book selection so that they can earn more points, or they only choose books that are a part of the accelerated reader program. The second website has comments from teachers and their opinion about the accelerated reader program. Many of the teachers seem to like the program and they say that they have seen an improvement in their students reading ability after using AR. So while critics seem unsure of the program teachers seem to like it.
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/readingincentives.htm
http://teachers.net/FAQ/accelerated_reader.html
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I find it interesting that these teachers seem to think it is having a positive impact on the abilities of her students, especially from my own experiences with programs like Accelerated Reader and the Book It! Program from Pizza Hut. Many of these teachers talk about even more incentives that their schools are giving the students, for instance, with the Accelerated Reader program, the points are converted into a type of currency that students can use to buy toys for themselves. I feel like this would create even larger problems. While students could have the opportunity to read a more difficult book for more points, it is more likely that the shorter, easier books would be read more often to accumulate just as much. My personal opinion is that these programs are ineffective when trying to achieve what we really want to see in our students and that is better reading ability and reading comprehension skills. With these programs, instead we have students who will only read in order to get a prize of some sort. When this prize is taken away, in many cases I feel that we are left with students who have lost their passion for reading as well. I feel that as future teachers, we need to develop new and interesting ways to get our students to want to read. In fifth grade, I had a teacher who would make us do book reports every month, however half of the time we got to chose the book we wanted (with the teacher’s approval) and our book reports were not at all typical. We could present the information we wanted to convey in any number of ways, which always led to fun classes that inspired the creative side of everyone. These are the types of activities that need to be implemented in more classrooms around the country.
I think that these programs have some benefits but I also agree that there are some things about them that I am not a big fan of. I think that using incentives to get a child that doesn't read at all to explore books might be necessary. I think that if it is a choice between a student not reading at all or reading with an incentive, the incentive plan is the lesser of the two evils. Even though incentive plans may not help a student to be intrinsically motivated to read, I do think that they might help a child to come across a book or genre that they really do like. I think that there are some benefits to these progams but I do agree that they may sen the message that reading is "something that you need to be bribed to do." I think that the way I was motivated to read in school was from solid modeling from my teacher. I do not remember many of the books I read in elementary school but the ones I do rememeber were usually recomended by a teacher. Most of the time the recomendations from teachers were based around topics that I was already interested such as sports. I don't think that incentives are the best way to get kids to read but I do think that they could end up playing a part in building an interest in some students. I think that a teacher needs to know their students and build on what they know about them to help kids in the interest to read.
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