She then moved on to the more challenging “The Gruffalo” by Julia Donaldson, devouring it in a single sitting. This suggests that her reading journey is not just about decoding words, but also about engaging with narratives and characters. This observation led me to explore the importance of narrative-driven learning. Narrative-driven learning is a pedagogical approach that emphasizes the use of stories, narratives, and characters to engage students in learning.
The problem wasn’t the books themselves, but the way they were being presented. The way they were being read. This is a common problem, a universal struggle, a shared experience of parents and children alike. The gap between what we want to read and how we read it can be a chasm.
It is designed to encourage reading for pleasure and to improve reading comprehension skills. The software program is based on a point system, where students earn points for reading books and completing quizzes. These points are then converted into a personalized reading record, which helps students track their progress and identify areas for improvement.
We were proud of her, but also concerned. The concern stemmed from the fact that she was reading about these topics independently, without any guidance from us. We were worried that she might be exposed to misinformation or biased information. We were also concerned about her ability to critically analyze the information she was reading. This is a common concern among parents today. Many parents are worried about their children’s access to information and the potential for misinformation.
The Women of Troy is a work of historical fiction, set in ancient Greece, while The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian novel set in a future America. The two books are worlds apart, yet they share a common thread: the exploration of female power and its consequences. The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, is a chilling tale of a totalitarian regime that has seized control of the United States.
The quiz, once completed, turned out to be a huge disappointment. Ready to discuss how Helen might have felt and whether she missed Menelaus, she was asked for only the rudimentary details of the story – who kidnapped who etc – and this all on a screen without a teacher or librarian present. ‘I’m still an accelerator though,’ she said, heaving a large tome about elephants into the car. Ask any teacher about Accelerated Reader and they, too, may start to look like Helen of Troy trapped in a burning fortress against their will. As a programme, it promises to boost ‘engaged reading time’ using the Average Book Difficulty Level (ATOS) to determine the ‘readability’ of a text. By its own admission, Renaissance Learning concedes that ATOS ‘does not analyse content, age appropriateness or literary merit’.
One friend, a teacher in an Oxfordshire prep school, laughed uproariously at the mention of literary merit in relation to AR: ‘The AR bot just directs children to Diary of A Wimpy Kid and Gangsta Granny because it’s notionally in what they term the “zone of proximal development”, and then they wonder why the reading level isn’t high enough.’ Parents, too, have their gripes. One mother, whose son has always been a keen reader, tells how he was ‘aghast to be made to read books he had read three years prior’, which she says led him to ‘lose his love of reading’. ‘I think it helps the teachers more than the kids,’ she concluded with frustration.
Based on data harvested by AR, schools have traded time spent with teachers explaining a text in all its complexity for a blunt algorithm that can’t match the idiosyncrasies of children’s reading choices, the brilliantly crackers reasons why any of us choose to read what we do. The power of group discussion is also lost. Some of the texts I remember best from my prep-school days – Huckleberry Finn, Animal Farm etc – are the ones we debated in the classroom, each opposing view spurring me to think more critically. Asking children to read a book and then answer questions silently on a screen seems a terrible loss.
This is a wonderful opportunity for us to reconnect with each other and with the joy of reading. We’ll be reading aloud together, sharing our thoughts and interpretations, and discussing the themes and characters. It’s a chance to rediscover the magic of storytelling and the power of words. The summer holiday is a time for exploration and discovery, and this is a perfect opportunity to explore the world of literature.
