A parent I recently met, who is positively involved in her child’s education, noted her distain of having to document the amount of time her child and the family spend reading. There is nothing that sucks the joy out of reading more than the homework assignment of timing how many minutes a child and the child’s family reads every night as proof to their teacher they are reading. This is, by the way, a prominent feature of Common Core State Standards, starting in 2nd grade, although it has been used for many years.
Why is this assignment so troublesome? First, reading fluency is important. If you read slowly and every word is a chore you will not enjoy reading. But pushing fluency at an early age can be devastating to students who are slowly acquiring new vocabulary and learning to read. Common Core Standards have raised some red flags among educators and parents when it comes to age/grade requirements. Some of the requirements are too advanced. Pushing a child to read too quickly, when they are not developmentally ready, can make them feel like a failure even though they are developing normally.
Second, reading fluency problems, discovered later, may signify a learning disability like dyslexia. Students who fall into this category will require special assistance. Fluency practice should be a part of reading remediation. It can be accomplished at school where a teacher monitors reading passages and works to help the student increase reading speed. Done in the right way, students are proud to improve upon their speed and comprehension. But even with students who require reading remediation, they should be able to read for fun when they go home at night. Parents and students with the added burden of timed reading at home, when reading is difficult for the student, could make matters worse for the student. Encourage reading, just don’t time it.
Third, the vast majority of students do not need reading remediation. What they need are lots of opportunities to read books (e-books), magazines, comics, etc. they choose, for pleasure. Of course a certain amount of passage reading and comprehension questioning may not be out of line in school, but it is a waste of time to do fluency and timed homework for these students. Dragging the family into it makes reading a chore and can turn readers quickly into nonreaders.
In fact, I would say expecting every child to do fluency and/or timed reading is actually detrimental. I speak of personal experience here. My daughter, who learned to read quite early and who never met a picture and/or chapter book she didn’t like, almost turned into a non-reader with the timed reading assignment. What had been a tremendously pleasurable activity went sour quickly. I have since heard countless complaints by parents who hate this timed assignment. It puts the parent on the spot because teachers require parental signatures to sign off that the student did the timed reading. Students who want to do the right thing make a big deal about getting the signature.
Better to encourage students to check books they want to read out of the school library. You can make time for family reading without timing or recording it. The more you enjoy reading the more you will want to read.
If you are a parent who faces timed reading as a homework assignment, I suggest you rally other parents, who feel like you do, and approach the teacher respectfully to request they replace this assignment with free untimed reading. Good luck.
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