Tuesday, February 3, 2009

More about Reading/Read 180

I wanted to discuss Read 180. While I think Scholastic is a fabulous company and I use them often, I am very opposed to canned reading programs. Then, while discussing this with colleagues today, they informed me that students are making some reading progress using this system. One person told me: "Basically, we're making up for the lack of being read to as a child." Read 180 involves lots of audio in addition to other forms of reading comprehension improvement. How sad that educators must do this! Let's try and figure out how much money it would SAVE school districts if everyone read to their children on a daily basis! Each system costs around $60,000 for a district. How many districts in the US use Read 180 or a similar program? We could take that money and make sure that books were in the hands of parents when kids are born so they can read and read and read to them.

Here in Michigan, (and specifically my town) there is a group called Baby Book Club. Actually, now it's now called The Family Book Club. Look it up and see if you can help! http://www.familybookclub.org/history.html

1 comment:

BookChook said...

I'm with you on canned reading. I don't know the exact program but it sounds a lot like a sort of textual fish finger - ugh!

We spend so much money and time and heartache on trying to fix problems when the sensible, frugal idea would be prevention. I truly believe reading aloud to kids, immersing them in print, sharing the joy of language and good old-fashioned talking and listening would save billions.

Not to mention making them so much happier!