Life with Liz: Fighting the reading battle

Does your school have Accelerated Reader? AR? If you do, you know what I’m talking about. If you don’t, a short summary: AR is a reading program that assigns grade levels and points to books. Your student needs to read a book and take an online quiz to earn points. Each grade requires progressively more points, and your child is periodically tested to make sure they are reading material that is appropriate and challenging, but not too far beyond their comprehension level.

Sounds simple, right? Since two-thirds of my kids are avid readers, this should be almost a no-brainer, right? Ha. I want to LOVE this program. I should love this program. This program should NOT be bringing stress into my house. We love books. We love to read. And yet somehow, we hate the drama that has been brought on by AR.

AR is not just about quantity of reading, it’s about quality. A has no problem meeting and exceeding the minimum number of points that he needs to get a perfect grade. However, he needs to read books that are at or above his reading level.

A reads at a “grade 13” level. Do you know how many books out there are “grade 13” and appropriate reading material for a 12-year-old? Do you know how interested in “grade 13” level reading material a 12-year-old is?

For example, “War and Peace,” Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel, is a level 10.1 and will earn you 118 points. How excited do you think a seventh-grader is going to be to read an “epic of the Napoleonic wars, a philosophical study and a celebration of the Russian spirit?” Quite simply, he isn’t. He wants to read about wizards and magic and middle-school shenanigans.

We’ve had some success with “the classics,” Sherlock Holmes, the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and recently, he’s discovered Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot. The books are interesting and appropriate, and while maybe not quite the difficulty level he should be reading, it’s getting the job done. He’s also interested in history, so nonfiction works about World War II and historical biographies are filling his plate. With A, the problem is just keeping him in books. This is the best problem to have.

G hates to read. It’s that simple. He’s a more than competent reader, so it’s not that it’s a struggle for him. I tried taking the advice of many others who had faced the same battle, I went out and got every book about basketball, baseball, soccer and every other sport I could find. I found books on hunting, fishing and other outdoor adventures.

I thought I had hit upon the perfect book for him in “My Side of the Mountain,” a story about a young boy who goes to live in the wilderness and survives off the land. While he did finish that one, he read it as a “how-to” manual. G’s problem with books, simply put, in his own words, is “why would I want to sit and read about something when I could be out doing it?”

This is a valid point, and again, a good problem to have. The AR system does appeal to G in that he knows exactly how many points he needs to earn, and he methodically plans his attack for the marking period. G will hit the target exactly: no more, no less.

Last year, however, during the fourth marking period, he miscalculated, and the edition of a book he read was actually worth 2 points more than he thought it was when he made his plan. Never in my life did I see someone so disgusted to earn more than they should have.

“Well, that was a waste of points,” he said, sad that he couldn’t convince the teacher to carry them over to this year.

I’ve lost hope that G will ever read for fun, although he’s finally starting to get into the “Star Wars” series. I guess intergalactic space wars are something that he can’t quite be out doing right now, so he will suffer through reading about it.

This is E’s first year in the AR program, and she has been looking forward to it, because she wants to do everything the brothers do. So, I thought this would be smooth sailing.

It took a few weeks to get into the rhythm of school, and she plugged away at her current favorite, the Lemony Snicket Series of Unfortunate Events. And, promptly came home in tears the day that she did her “level” testing for AR.

Turns out, the Snicket books are above the grade level that she’s supposed to be reading at, so she felt that all her hard work was going to waste. I also told her that if she enjoyed a book, she should continue reading it, not just for points or a score. This little incident, however, made her refuse to start reading any book until she knew it would count for AR.

“Yes, Mom, I see that you’re in the middle of trying to paint the bathroom, cook dinner and fold laundry, but I MUST know what grade level this book is, RIGHT NOW!”

Then, we had another breakdown over her finding out that most of the books in her grade level were only one- and two-point books. Since she only needs to earn five points this marking period, I thought that was a good thing, but living in A’s “I read books that are worth 75 points” shadow, this seemed insignificant to her.

If these are the battles that rage with kids who do well in school, and mostly like reading, I can’t imagine the struggle this brings to households with kids who don’t. It should be a simple program. Read books. Earn points. Read more, earn more points. Somehow, though, something is being lost between theory and execution.

Other than putting my fingers in my ears and repeating “la la la la la la la” to myself over and over, I haven’t found a way to get through it without the drama. At the end of the day, the net result in our house is everyone reading more, so I guess we are winning the war, even though we’ve lost a lot of battles.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.