AIBU to have had it with reading diaries?

[cakefanatic]

Wondering which way this one will go - I’ll probably be flamed.

Family life is busy, it’s busy for all of us. But this morning I am totally sick and fed up of filling in the reading diary. I read with/to/listen to my kids read all the time. Every day, in fact, and have done since they were very small. It is totally mandated by school that we have to record in their reading diary every day and it’s the one thing that’s just slipping. With the laundry and the cooking, and the never ending activity drop offs and working full time I just never quite get round to it.

School make a big deal of it, and the kids get stressed, but honestly, unless there is a problem can’t they just ease up on the bloody diary? We’ve been filling it in religiously for years now but just lately I can’t handle it.

It just seems like one of a never ending stream of requests from school, including eleventy billion fancy dress costumes, donations to worthy causes, random pieces of fruit for maths class. I could go on...

YABU - reading diaries are crucial to life on Earth
YANBU - enough already, I read with my kids and that’s what is actually important

Are you writing lot's? Ours has a massive box for comments and I started the year filling it with waffle about which bits DS likes, words/letters he recognised (nursery so I read it to him) and chats we had about the story. 6 months on and my standard have dropped to "X enjoyed it" and a signature, which takes seconds.

Hats of to you if you've kept up the detailed commentary for years, but it is absolutely fine to scale it back to the minimum if it's causing you stress.

How long does it actually take though? Are they expecting a paragraph every night? I used to just write - read well/enjoying this story/expressive reading/learned the meaning of the word XXX/a million other two or three work phrases on rotation for about 10 years.

Such a waste of time. They were barely looked at by our teachers are far as I could tell, seemed like a box-ticking exercise. I don't for one minute think teachers sit down and review 30 reading records every single day. We ditched school reading books by Year 3 though because they were as dull as shit. They were getting nothing from it.

Not the point but I haven’t seen a reading book or a reading diary since March 2020, are you still getting them?!

@NicolaDunsire

Not the point but I haven’t seen a reading book or a reading diary since March 2020, are you still getting them?!

My eldest's school put reading diaries on an App. Where there's a will to be bloody minded about these things there's a way.

Mine is only a toddler so we’re not at school yet but I didn’t know this was a thing, it sounds horrible! And a way to make reading a chore to be honest. DC is 16m and we must read twenty books a day some days, one or two on other days, and I’d hate to be tasked with recording it somewhere formally. He just picks books up when he fancies a read and it’s nice and relaxed. To people saying ‘just fill it out while they’re reading’ I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that as it feels disrespectful to me, your kid is reading to you and deserves your attention surely?

Wonder if it also makes reading out to be a chore to kids, mandated by school, rather than something to do for pleasure. Isn’t the joy taken out of a lot of things once you’re forced to do it?

I’d rather something more meaningful like a weekly task where they write what they’ve learned from a book that week, any book. Not just writing down every time they read.

With classes of 30+, teachers haven't got a chance to read with kids.

It won't kill you to update the damn thing at breakfast, it takes less 2 minutes at most for the youngest ones, the older ones can fill it in themselves.

YOU might be miffed because you are reading with your kids bladibla. Other families don't. How do you expect the teachers to keep track and try to help those who need the most?

You don't have to write an essay about it. Add a word they just learnt during their reading, or couldn't pronounce and you are done.

My kids teachers look at the diary once a week, give them appropriate marks for days when they are filled in. They know they've read, they can concentrate on other things.

In an ideal world, there would be an adult listening to kids reading every day in the younger classes, but that's what volunteers were for pre-pandemic - as school already don't have enough staff.

Don't make a big deal out of it. Bet half the class doesn't either, but help out the teachers a bit. It's in your kids interest.

Did your lip curl up when you posted that demelza?

YANBU op.

To people saying ‘just fill it out while they’re reading’ I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that as it feels disrespectful to me, your kid is reading to you and deserves your attention surely?

hahaha it's very sweet, but wait until they are at school, you work, you have other kids to look after. Once they are fluent readers, it's fine to leave them read independently 5 or 6 days a week .

I think lower your expectations OP
Surely 100% of other parents are not writing extensive commentary on their child's engagement with the text every night
You are already doing better than the people that CBA at all so any sporadic comment a few times a week is better than nothing were my thoughts

Sometimes it is jobsworth following of school policy.
My dsis once got harangued by the school for not filling in the diary when her DD was in Y5 or Y6 although it was acknowledged by all she was an exceptional reader and was reading stuff like Lord of the Rings. She had more trouble trying to get her to stop reading to eat or cross the road than to start.
She was told that the lack of reading diary meant there was 'no evidence' that her DD could read well and she might be 'demoted a table ' They told Dsis she was unsupportive of her DDs education when she tried to argue that it had got a bit pointless by then.
She was actually a literary editor and had done loads to fundraise for books for the school, get authors in and volunteered to read with worse off kids herself
She was slightly miffed to be called unsupportive.

In general I comply with school rules etc because I support the school and want DC to obey their rules but just occasionally if it makes no sense to me and seems a bit futile my compliance would be the minimal effort required and reading diaries come in that category for me.

I’ve put YANBU because when you do read to your kids, it feels like a pointless chore. BUT it takes 20 secs if that to write the page numbers and “super reading DC!” Or “lovely intonation!” Or “great character voices” or “struggled with the word ‘procrastination’” etc etc

@apooagnuandyou

To people saying ‘just fill it out while they’re reading’ I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that as it feels disrespectful to me, your kid is reading to you and deserves your attention surely?

hahaha it's very sweet, but wait until they are at school, you work, you have other kids to look after. Once they are fluent readers, it's fine to leave them read independently 5 or 6 days a week .

Haha, as I wrote that I was like actually maybe I'm being a bit idealistic there! Though I thought the idea of the diary was for them to read to you and you to fill out how it went? If it's just to record that they have read then fair play, they can read independently, they can fill it out themselves after too. Would be a bit crap if the diary was independent reading but then needed a parent to say it'd happened!

LimeCoconut
to start they need to read to you, they are learning. Then it depends on the child frankly. Even if you have to listen for 10 minutes, it really takes 30 seconds to fill the diary.

Once mine are older (as we have the reading diary until y6!), they read mostly in bed because they haven't got the time otherwise anyway, and fill the thing at breakfast, usually recording the pages they read and writing a quick comment about the book when finish. When I say comment, I mean a sentence.

We add a word they struggled with and done.

It doesn't benefit my own kids (or me) to spend 10 or 20 minutes a day to read aloud to an adult and to answer questions. Once a week works for us.

Our schools use the reading vipers (Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval, Sequence or Summarise)
I am not interested in doing that every day! Neither are the kids, they have to learn to read for fun.

I did it when it was a 2 way thing, but when I dutifully kept completing and knew no one at school was looking at it then I stopped.
He was a confident reader at this stage, I had no concerns and he used to tell me if he did group reading or whatever.

I love reading to my kids. I hate the constant stream of random admin. And the attitude from school that if it’s not in the reading diary that means we are not reading at home

It's all very well to say you're too busy, but how would you feel if your child's school report came home and noted "not sure on progress, I was too busy to keep notes"?

Just sign the thing to show its been done, maybe a quick roundup note at the end of the week to summarise

Thanks for the info @apooagnuandyou!

We're a few years away from this kind of thing but it's interesting to learn about. It wasn't a thing when I was at school I don't think. I'm very passionate about reading and encouraging/supporting my DC to read so tbf I'd probably be the parent filling it out with a bit too much useless info but I can definitely see why it can feel like pointless busywork if it isn't really marked or looked at and that info isn't used anywhere. I'm sure the parents who aren't able to facilitate their child reading regularly just make something up for it anyway.

It's a communication channel.
They don't have CCTV into your home.🤷

@cakefanatic

I love reading to my kids. I hate the constant stream of random admin. And the attitude from school that if it’s not in the reading diary that means we are not reading at home

but how do you expect the school to guess?

You can argue and refuse to write an essay and just record book, page, very quick comment but really, how long does it take?

When they had volunteers, they filled the reading diaries too. How else is anyone supposed to keep track in a class of 30!

@TheOrigRights

I did it when it was a 2 way thing, but when I dutifully kept completing and knew no one at school was looking at it then I stopped. He was a confident reader at this stage, I had no concerns and he used to tell me if he did group reading or whatever.

Yes, this. It seemed more important in Reception, Year 1 etc when the teachers were interacting and sending messages back, moving them up bands etc. But once we got nothing back from school it felt like it was a pointless exercise.

That doesn't mean we didn't read - I am specifically talking about the pointless reading diary! My kids read tons.

@cakefanatic

I love reading to my kids. I hate the constant stream of random admin. And the attitude from school that if it’s not in the reading diary that means we are not reading at home

That's terrible of them if that's the case. Our nursery recently asked parents to do a sponsored thing where you'd record how many minutes per day your child listened to you reading a book and get relatives to sponsor you or something. It was for an MLM (Usborne) so I chose not to do it from that standpoint ethically but I didn't like the idea of trying to amalgamate and record all of the little chunks of time throughout the day we pick up a book and read for a while. I like that I tend to take DC's lead now he's old enough to bring books to me and choose what he wants to look at. I guess it just feels all a bit like the antithesis of fostering a genuine love for reading.

LimeCoconut

what you could do, is ASK at the beginning of each year what exactly is supposed to be in the diary - and possibly complain if they expect a full essay which is unreasonable. And frankly, most of the class will agree with you

The teachers don't have time to read war and peace that some parents will write. They just want to know children are reading at home regularly. I know every 20 seconds add up when you're busy but really, it's not that onerous, just fill in the diary when they are on the last page of their reading. Lots of busy people manage to do this because reading is one of the most important skills and they make it a priority.

I got a snotty email because I had not filled in the diary one week. I wrote a snotty email back. Stating that my child read every night and that it was the fact they read that was important and that me writing “read well” makes no difference to the child's reading. Also maybe if they tried asking the child or the parent personally about the reading rather than the generic snotty email they might get a better response.

Parents who don’t read will lie and fill in the diary anyway if they want so it doesn’t catch anyone out just those who forget to write it in because they are busy doing stuff with their child or whatever.

Bit like parents evening. Rather pointless if my child is struggling talk to me before, if I don’t hear from you I shall presume all is good just like if you don’t hear from me all is good this end.

@apooagnuandyou

With classes of 30+, teachers haven't got a chance to read with kids.

It won't kill you to update the damn thing at breakfast, it takes less 2 minutes at most for the youngest ones, the older ones can fill it in themselves.

YOU might be miffed because you are reading with your kids bladibla. Other families don't. How do you expect the teachers to keep track and try to help those who need the most?

You don't have to write an essay about it. Add a word they just learnt during their reading, or couldn't pronounce and you are done.

My kids teachers look at the diary once a week, give them appropriate marks for days when they are filled in. They know they've read, they can concentrate on other things.

In an ideal world, there would be an adult listening to kids reading every day in the younger classes, but that's what volunteers were for pre-pandemic - as school already don't have enough staff.

Don't make a big deal out of it. Bet half the class doesn't either, but help out the teachers a bit. It's in your kids interest.

The teachers don't actually read the diaries though. They just flick through to check something has been written and hand out the next lot of books. If they had bothered to read it, they would have realised weeks ago that the books sent home for my eldest was far below his reading/comprehension level and he wasn't being challenged in the slightest. Which is part of the point of school books, is it not?

I'm all for supported home learning, as long as the teacher is taking any notice of it. Sometimes I think I could write 'Boris Johnson is a big hairy ballsack' rather than anything about the book, and I'd get no note about it. Just the next Biff and Chip wankery in rotation.