Cleaning out the book bag
In the post-school summer cleaning that is my first reaction to freedom, my daughter and I have been cleaning out her book bag. Fourth grade was pretty good to her. She ended up with good grades—As in everything but math and science. (I hate we’re already going down the girls making Bs in math and science road, but I swear, if the entire western culture can’t figure out how to solve this problem, I am not going to allow myself to feel personally responsible for it either.)
She was the top reader at O. Elementary—the most Accelerated Reader points in the whole school at 267.4 points. She came home with her shiny gold certificate and a big smile. Every time a kid reads an AR book, she takes a little test on it and earns points for correct answers—small prizes like free ice cream cones and chocolate parties and big prizes like t-shirts and bowling at the end of the year. To give you an idea of how points are scored, consider this: Fourth graders have to earn 85 points to go to the bowling party. The average point value for a fourth-grade reading level book in Oakdale’s library is 2.556. (I, also a B scorer on math, calculated this figure myself with the handy dandy cut and paste feature in Excel. Yes, I can write formulas in Excel, thanks very much to my science guy friend.) The very highest point value for any book in her school library is the fifth Harry Potter book, at a whopping 44 points. (And just to scare the older and wiser readers out there, by the way, Tolkien’s books are rated on a six-grade reading level.)
And while I don’t measure reading success by AR points, given the number and sophistication of the books she’s read this year, I think she probably was the top reader at school. I have really struggled particularly the last couple of months with my occasional desire to say the terrible words my parents uttered so often in my younger days: “Are you ever going to get your nose out of the book?” It started at Will’s birthday party, the family one, where we only had a couple of kids his age and the aunts and uncles and grandparents and the family dog and whatnot. She spent a good portion of the afternoon on the couch reading and completely ignoring all of the chaos around her. I spent literally years of my adolescence doing the exact same thing (although I generally preferred to read outside by the creek). I have a new understanding now of being torn as a parent: wanting her to read, loving that she loves to read, and understanding that books may be her way of removing herself from our family one day too.
My sense that she’s a reader and a storyteller was confirmed today when we pulled this crumpled brown paper bag out of her backpack, and I started to wad it up and throw it away. It was full of these scraps of paper, nothing else, and it certainly didn’t look important. Turns out Mrs. H. had her class do this really interesting last-day-of-school activity with the bags, which when you look at them a little more closely are decorated just like the bags they use to swap Valentine’s—crayon names and hearts. (Or at least that’s what Laura’s bags always look like. Probably when Will’s in school he’ll draw Darth Vader on his.) Each child had a bag and twenty little slips of paper. The class celebrated the last day of school by sitting on the floor (not at their desks, those rebels!) and writing something about every child in the class on a slip of paper. Laura told me the kids were supposed to write something nice about each other, or to tell what they thought of each other. I thought this constituted a considerable risk, but that Mrs. H, she can carry it off. Laura got several of your basic “have a good summer” type remarks, but she also got “Have a nice time reading” and “I love your scarey stories and I think you have a big and happy smile” (I loved that one). A total of 10 of her notes mentioned her reading or ghost stories. She was five people’s best friend—and she also has a stalker: “Dear Laura, I’m watching you always.” Hm.
We celebrated her AR status (and her squeaking by in Math with a B) by pre-purchasing Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. And of course, we had to buy two copies.
She was the top reader at O. Elementary—the most Accelerated Reader points in the whole school at 267.4 points. She came home with her shiny gold certificate and a big smile. Every time a kid reads an AR book, she takes a little test on it and earns points for correct answers—small prizes like free ice cream cones and chocolate parties and big prizes like t-shirts and bowling at the end of the year. To give you an idea of how points are scored, consider this: Fourth graders have to earn 85 points to go to the bowling party. The average point value for a fourth-grade reading level book in Oakdale’s library is 2.556. (I, also a B scorer on math, calculated this figure myself with the handy dandy cut and paste feature in Excel. Yes, I can write formulas in Excel, thanks very much to my science guy friend.) The very highest point value for any book in her school library is the fifth Harry Potter book, at a whopping 44 points. (And just to scare the older and wiser readers out there, by the way, Tolkien’s books are rated on a six-grade reading level.)
And while I don’t measure reading success by AR points, given the number and sophistication of the books she’s read this year, I think she probably was the top reader at school. I have really struggled particularly the last couple of months with my occasional desire to say the terrible words my parents uttered so often in my younger days: “Are you ever going to get your nose out of the book?” It started at Will’s birthday party, the family one, where we only had a couple of kids his age and the aunts and uncles and grandparents and the family dog and whatnot. She spent a good portion of the afternoon on the couch reading and completely ignoring all of the chaos around her. I spent literally years of my adolescence doing the exact same thing (although I generally preferred to read outside by the creek). I have a new understanding now of being torn as a parent: wanting her to read, loving that she loves to read, and understanding that books may be her way of removing herself from our family one day too.
My sense that she’s a reader and a storyteller was confirmed today when we pulled this crumpled brown paper bag out of her backpack, and I started to wad it up and throw it away. It was full of these scraps of paper, nothing else, and it certainly didn’t look important. Turns out Mrs. H. had her class do this really interesting last-day-of-school activity with the bags, which when you look at them a little more closely are decorated just like the bags they use to swap Valentine’s—crayon names and hearts. (Or at least that’s what Laura’s bags always look like. Probably when Will’s in school he’ll draw Darth Vader on his.) Each child had a bag and twenty little slips of paper. The class celebrated the last day of school by sitting on the floor (not at their desks, those rebels!) and writing something about every child in the class on a slip of paper. Laura told me the kids were supposed to write something nice about each other, or to tell what they thought of each other. I thought this constituted a considerable risk, but that Mrs. H, she can carry it off. Laura got several of your basic “have a good summer” type remarks, but she also got “Have a nice time reading” and “I love your scarey stories and I think you have a big and happy smile” (I loved that one). A total of 10 of her notes mentioned her reading or ghost stories. She was five people’s best friend—and she also has a stalker: “Dear Laura, I’m watching you always.” Hm.
We celebrated her AR status (and her squeaking by in Math with a B) by pre-purchasing Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. And of course, we had to buy two copies.
posted by Lisa at 6/03/2005 08:11:00 PM
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