How to kill a love of reading ...

[dippymare]

in a few easy steps, by my dd's junior school.

Anyone else think this is bonkers? My 8 year old dd has to complete a 20 question double sided A4 sheet called a "book review" every week on a school book she has read. If you had to do this every week on a book you had read, wouldn't it put you completely off reading. It would me, but maybe I'm just lazy?

God I wish I'd had to do that when I was that age.

I came a right cropper when I was a little older and had to write about entire novels - I didn't even know where to start as I'd never been expected to sit down and think about the characters, or any of the other stuff they expected in Standard Grade/Higher English essays.

I quite like the approach taken by Space Hop (or similar summer reading projects in libraries) where the dc have to go up to the librarian and answer questions about the book.

Much fairer and more interesting than churning out the same-format review week after week.

One of the reasons I liked the book group idea was that children could share their excitement about books they'd read and inspire their children to read more. - I did go one step further and suggest the kids got a juice & a biscuit to make it more of a social/treat session.

I suggested it to the school but they weren't interested in any part of it.

My friend's son has to write a book review for every reading scheme book (ORT) he reads no wonder he doesn't want to read them.

writing an analysis of a book is a sure-fire way to kill any pleasure there might have been in the story!!

Maybe you could give her "fun" books to read at home that are just a good, well written story and she doesn't have to do anything with them except enjoy.

My Ds also has to fill in a book review each time he completes a book. The result is he takes even longer to read the book in order to delay writing the review. For the question 'what did you enjoy most about the book?' he wrote 'the easy words'. (It was a very dull book tho').
Guess it works well with some children - my older son would be quite happy to do this - but it's not motivating for DS2.

My DS has just started reception and I think the ORT books are killing his love of reading - he can read Roald Dahl but they are making him work through all the ORT levels and from Level 6 onwards write a short book review for each book. Therefore he's writing one every night of the week. Hopefully it'll at least improve his handwriting

I honestly cannot understand this. YOu know for a fact that something is stopping your children reading and/or enjoying reading, but you carry on imposing it on your kids. Why?

I had to do this for every CHAPTER of the Hobbit when I was at school. Two things happened:
(1) I never finished the Hobbit
(2) I changed schools!

I was the same with The Wizard of Oz when I was age 8. We read a bit at a time and wrote about it. Hated it, hated it, still hate it!!

I would quite like to write my book review of an ORT book In fact, might be cathartic to do it anyway. Do hope Biff and Chip et al have met a grisly end by the time ds starts school.

By the time my youngest was reading ORT, the older dc used to do parodied version in which Biff & Chip bunk off to score heroin and Mrs May is actually a front for a major gun-running enterprise.

It was v. funny tbh, but I had to rein them in for fear that dd2 would repeat all of this at school. They do a nice line in parodied Rainbow Fairies titles too, eg: Claudia The Crack Cocaine Fairy, Geraldine the Gonorrhea Fairy, Violet the Vodka Fairy.

[snurk]

Brings whole new meaning to the Magic Key

Loving the new line in Rainbow Fairies too

Agony...thats soo funny, oh the joys of having teens in the house with younger ones!!
Dd1 and 2 were always taking the mick out of ort although have to say I think Dd1 was jealous cos she never got the chance to read it. .
Writing book reveiws for every book is a joke and would seriously put Dd3 off reading.

Point the teacher in the direction of "100 Awesome Writing Prompts to Use with Any Book". I got it as a download for under £10 from currclick and it is fab! Far better than book reviews. There are activities on plot, characters, settings, genre vocabulary and loads more. Most importantly they are fun activities.

I got it partly because we home ed and it makes a change from book reviews and also to use at our book club. I don't think we will be doing book reviews nearly as often now!

See, I didn't even do English Lit so I wouldn't have my love of reading tarnished by having to dissect and answer questions on the books. So - for me it would have been a PITA.

Oh I used to LOVE doing stuff like that at school! It made me want to read more.

Sorry.