to not force my teenager to read a book a week?

[milafawny]

My 15 year old daughters school have initiated a new reading scheme that states every child must read a book "for pleasure" each week and produce a written report on it for every Monday.

I have a few objections to this.

Firstly, this is not "reading for pleasure", this is enforced reading with follow up home work each week.

The selection of books isn't open, they have to read books provided on the app on their iPad, again, making it not "for pleasure" when they cant select the book.

The smallest book in the selection is 300 pages long. Most are longer. The largest has 1200+ pages. Expecting a book of that size to be finished weekly along with a completed report, on top of GSCE level homework, is a big ask.

Specifically regarding my daughter, she is diagnosed with both dyslexia and ADHD. She has already be informed in school that this scheme is expected of her too. Reading is not, nor has it every been, an activity she does for pleasure. Its takes her time, she gets frustrated and upset when she cant understand or stay focussed. We have tactics in place for when she has to read, usually breaking it into smaller sections but this doesn't allow for reading longer texts, but these tactics are not enough to have her motivated to read a different book every single week. She cannot read something aloud at all. She still find its difficult to focus attention long enough to watch a film. In something she has no interest in, namely reading, she's not even going to manage 5 minutes. I have bought her many many books over the years that are ones she has expressed an interest in - most are non-fiction biology books. Ive tried with books of things she has shown interest in, such as horrible history's that are more factual. None of the selection of books are like this, they are all fictional story based. We have tried harry potter and hunger games as we broke the films down and watched it as you would watch a tv show, i think she managed the first chapter of book 1 of harry potter in a month. She gets no enjoyment from it.

Would IBU to email school and state my daughter is not participating in the scheme, and expect this not to result in a weekly detention due to the reasons i have outlined?

She can read and write. She just reads at a very slow pace about things that interest her (factual things about biology and natural disasters, Harry Styles, and rumours about One Direction reunions mostly)

Reading for pleasure means free rein on reading materials.

I love reading, but I have dyslexic children who find it hard going. DS1 has his autistic niches that he likes reading about, mainly non-fiction and Warhammer themed. DS2 is a tough customer. Humour is our best chance, but he gets tired very easily. I still read to him a lot and use audiobooks. He loves stories, he just finds them hard to access in text form.

DS1's secondary does "accelerated reading" and he has to read from a selected banding to challenge himself. Ironically he has a high reading age, but that doesn't represent his interest in novels. The end result was that he spent the entirity of y7 sitting in front of a substantial novel each day, with a page open, but never actually reading it 🙄

I would be challenging this hare-brained folly. It is ableist and unrealistic. There are other ways to incentivise reading. This is the equivilent of saying we want to encourage sport and all pupils must run a 30 minute 5k every week regardless of physical health and giving detentions to those too slow.

Oh good grief. Schools are getting worse

Yeah, it’s the More = Better approach to education. They might as well go the whole hog - students in China wipe the floors with ours in Science and Maths and that’s because their Year 7 equivalents have about 10 hours of Maths lessons each week and then do another 10-15 hours of Maths homework on top of that. Let’s go! Raise them standards!

This is awful & exactly why reading for pleasure rates are so shockingly low in our country.

I’m a big reader & so are my kids (so far) but this would suck the joy out of reading for anyone.

I’d be pushing back with the school - there are so many more creative, constructive ways to
encourage kids to read.

I have ADHD, there is no way on earth I could do a book a week. I think reading is important yes but enforced reading on such a level with reports isn't the right way to go about it at all.

My daughter reads quite a bit but at the height of GCSE stress in Y10 & 11 she spent all her free time on homework, barely any time for reading. She'd go out once a week with friends, on a Friday evening to let off steam, but the rest of the time she was busy. The only books she read were the required texts! To read a 1500 page book in a week now would be a challenge, maybe two weeks on top of her sixth form stuff is achievable. She's doing Eng Lit so reading is expected, but not all the set texts are fun subjects. I think she was reading The Bell Jar and The Handmaid's Tale concurrently last week! She doesn't have any challenges like Dyslexia or ADHD either.

I'm with OP, too much!

@milafawny and the way for her to speed up is to practice!

I'd love to see the actual list of books. I bet none of it is actually what people read for pleasure like the latest Colleen Hoover, James Patterson, John Grisham' Sophie Kinsella etc (the stuff that's basically always for sale in the local supermarket and is fine for teens to read).

If it's for pleasure it should be up to her what she reads and no report needed. If it's just extra homework they should be honest and say so. Reading on an iPad is no fun either. I think you have a point OP but I would go in with constructive suggestions rather than just decline outright.

You think "practice" overcomes the challenges of being dyslexic and having ADHD 🤔

Lol. Brilliant. You should go work in her English dept in school, you would fit right in.

Exactly..am a massive reader myself, but ideas like this piss me right off.

I agree. My son was a keen avid reader until he was half way through secondary school and they started forcing him to read stuff he hated. He's literally not read a book ever since. He didn't even read his set texts for his GCSE but still got a grade 7, just by reading the revision guides. His school sucked away all his enthusiasm and enjoyment. We'd spent years reading with him from a very early age, getting him to read himself, buying/borrowing all kinds of books for him. Only for the school to chuck it all down the toilet with their imposition of forcing him to read books he didn't want to read! To the OP, I'd say fight it all the way - it's likely to do more harm than good. My son is highly literate, even without having read a book for several years now - he got his literacy ability from his early years whilst he genuinely was reading for fun, not the forced fun imposed by out of touch teachers!

I would suggest she picks a book to read but set different time frames and no report

On top of this reading as well, which i forgot to mention in the original post, is bedrock learning platform that is vocabulary and grammar. She has to complete 2 lessons a week which should take, they say, 20 minutes each. It can take her 2 hours to finish these lessons, so most of the time i do it with her, then discuss the words, their meaning, and context with her after to make sure she understands the words for that lesson.

So she is accessing wider vocabulary and reading numerous short texts (with help granted) on that platform each week too.

Who is buying these books, that’s a lot of outlay for any family?

I love reading and would struggle to read a book a week AND write a report with everything else I have going on.

Speak to the school and tell them she's not doing it!

I enjoy reading, but would find it hard to stick to that kind of target!

I would email the school and say she isn't taking part.

I'd also point out how ridiculous it is to expect year 11 pupils to do this alongside GCSE work, terrible timing.

My DD is the same age and isn't dyslexic nor has ADHD and I still wouldn't expect her to complete this forced "reading for pleasure"!

What a pile of bollocks. No quicker way to put kids off reading than to force them like that. Discriminatory for children with learning difficulties as well. Pull a cliffs notes summary of the interweb and let them stick it.

I'm in a monthly bookclub and would struggle with 300 pages a week!
Could you get the audiobooks on Borrowbox (free with library card) so she could listen to them before bed?

School are being unreasonable here. This will take the pleasure out of reading for many of the kids rather than achieve the aim of encouraging it. Even worse for someone with dyslexia - torture, I should think.

I am a fairly keen reader. I certainly don't always read as many books as the school are suggesting, and I never write reports about them. That would suck all the joy away.

Despite being quite a prolific reader, I actually hated the set books and texts of my O Level English Literature course. I'm very much dating myself there, as O Levels pre-date GCSEs. 🤣

I'd email your child's tutor and set out your objections to this scheme, much as you have here. Are they really threatening detentions over this? Tell them that DD will not be going to these for all of the reasons you have highlighted.

To be honest, it does sound like one of those hairbrained schemes that some schools seem to come up with in order to look good at the start of each new academic year. Many of them do quickly fall by the wayside when it is realised that it is just unrealistic and unworkable. Hopefully this is one of those.

They wouldn't expect a wheelchair user to do a mile run everyday so why are they expecting your daughter to do this? It's discrimination. She can't read her way out of dyslexia. I have a daughter with ADHD and she would never be able to do this. I think a lot of pupils are going to struggle.

Just simply say no?

I mean, i don't like reading as an adult anyway, but this isn't even really about the reading. It's the additional work and pressure in an intense year.

You won't be the only parent thinking this! Plenty of children have commitments outside of school and won't fit it all in either. I had horses to do before and after school, i would never have time to add in anything above and beyond GCSE coursework!

I don't think it should be no reading, for your DD it should be over a longer period of time per book.

Forcing someone to read a book, onscreen, from a restricted selection within a short period of ti e is not promoting a good reading for pleasure ethic.

It's more likely it could a person off reading completely, let alone with with dyslexia.

I'd hate it and I love reading and read every single evening, on my Kindle in bed.