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?

Sounds like a shite school tbh. This is exactly how to put children off from reading for pleasure.

A book a week?!! I love reading and read an entire 300 page book on Saturday when it was too hot to do anything else but it took me all day. I would guess that the average book takes about 8-10 hours to read. Most of the books in my library on Audible are 9+ hours. So that means reading for at least an hour every day. How on earth are pupils meant to fit in an hour of reading every day and go to school, do homework, revise for GCSEs, take part in extra curriculars and have a life...? If you add in the book report, that's 10 hours a week extra "homework". Sounds like a good way to put them off reading for pleasure for life.

This isn’t going to encourage a love of books or expand language if it’s enforced.

I’d also be explaining my child has enough of screens ( if it’s a school iPad they are already looking at it for other stuff I assume?) and will not be using them to read books on in their evening .

what will they do every Monday when countless kids haven’t done their Maths/English/Geography homework because they were ‘finishing their book and book report‘ - it’s going to be Interesting!

And this specific scheme sounds completely overambitious and unachievable even for keen readers. It might help with the essay subjects (English/history) but is not going to help with maths or science gcse.

I cannot think for one minute that you are the only parent OP thinking this. Use strength in numbers - start asking about!

Nope. She is much better off destroying her mental health on a phone. Bastard evil school. Whatever were they thinking?

My thinking too.

Would audiobooks be a good compromise. Lots of libraries have free schemes like borrow box app for audiobooks.

Instead of doing that, email and ask for a list of shorter, more accessible books. Reading is the gateway to the curriculum. Work with the school to support your dd to read more.

This is what Chat GPT is for...

That would be a hard no from me. I’m a voracious reader, and passionate about kids reading. That’s an awful and misguided policy.

Tbh, I would be with encouraging kids not to read this stuff.

OP has indicated that this is a task on top of DD’s GCSE work and therefore will take up more of her spare time. I think it’s perfectly acceptable not to be forced to read books in your spare time where one of the main themes is women being abused.

If she likes biology textbooks would they allow her to read those instead? She may enjoy reading National Geographic magazine.

Perhaps you could suggest the staff trial it for viability first? ;)

Unless reasonable accommodations can be put in place, a simple message saying that your DD won't be taking part will suffice. Unless it counts towards coursework, it's meaningless.

Speaking as someone who works in school, this is an ofsted box-ticking exercise, and will be forgotten as quickly as it started. Especially as they'll find the uptake is small to begin with, and microscopic within a month.
I consider myself a "big reader", and I'd struggle to get through a 300 page book a week. And that one would be one I chose myself, AND didn't have to write a report on!

If she was in a workplace she'd be entitled to reasonable adjustments. It's completely unreasonable of the school not to make allowances for her. I'd absolutely be fighting her corner over this.

As a former English teacher myself, ALL reading is good reading. I had plenty of kids who wouldn't have been able to read a 300 word book. But reading a (decent) newspaper, reading an illustrated encyclopedia, reading Manga or other graphic novels were all considered acceptable in my classroom. I had 1 year 10 lad who brought in his Dad's copy of Private Eye every reading lesson. To force your DD to focus on 300 page books that she can't possibly cope with is ridiculous and counterproductive.

Oh god, we had something similar to this in Y3 of primary. I made DD1 wade through it - she had been a very keen reader, it nearly put her off!! With DD2 (a fluent but less keen reader) I told the teacher we didn’t want to risk putting her off and wouldn’t be doing it. Teacher agreed…

I think your DD’s time is far better spent doing her GCSE work and ideally reading something she enjoys.

My issue with this though is that this a ridiculous task for anyone, regardless of reading ability or additional needs. So it does need to be challenged.

Also agree with a PP who made a good point about too much screen time if they have to read these books on an ipad.

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Reading currently, she has overlays. I reprint stuff off n smaller paragraphs. Again, i cant do this with books.

Try this app... on ipad or PC... gives the overlays and other dyslexic aids like font changes:

https://www.texthelp.com/en-gb/products/read-and-write-education/

She does read through my nursing text books at times, and im a handwritten notes kind of person so she has read through my (rather colourful) old uni notes on anatomy and physiology too. Unfortunately i dont think the school will accept these

i really like reading, loved English at school however am dyslexic so found it difficult to understand some of the books we read. I read every day as a child, I loved stories and disappearing into my own world and relaxing so I read a lot for pleasure. Being forced to read those kind of books in a week would’ve killed it for me. AND then having to write about it, write what?

It just isn’t reading for pleasure, being made to read a book you haven’t chosen yourself and write about it is not fun, not for someone who likes reading and absolutely not for those who don’t like reading or have dyslexia, Asd/adhd - my son wouldn’t be able to do this. All well and good saying trying and reading a bit more each time but that’s fine in class where it is for your exam subject but this seems a waste of an opportunity, especially if your daughter is also trying to do exam coursework, a lot of pressure on top of what’s already going on.

Just producing reports isnt going to help either, as the app tracks time spent reading and the % of the book that is read too. Theres no way to "cheat" the app.

Quite frankly i’d love to see what the school does when no kids do the report because they haven’t had time to finish a whole book in 1 week as they actually had GCSE work to focus on and lives outside school.

If your daughter was in year 7 then I would think this was reasonable (your adjustments I mean)...

however your daughter is I assume in yr11- GCSE year. She does not need this nonsense to add to her workload. Tbh as a year 11 parent without the SEND involved I'd be thinking they were having a laugh...

As a yr10 parent of a dyslexic I'd be approaching her english teacher and asking them what the benefits to DD are of this scheme and what they were going to do to support her - or would they just withdraw her.

Good grief; this cannot be real! That’s a really random list! The thing about reading for pleasure is we often find an author we like and read more of their books. Or we may read more around a theme. You would never be able to do that with that list.

And good luck with Crime and punishment; that’s about 100 pages a day, well more like 120 if you leave a day for the review!

My DD would just pretend to read and write a description from an Amazon review