Accelerated Reader Crud

Daily Dose /

The Other Mother: ~Sigh~

We’ve got 3 kids still in public school and AR tests are all the rage, at least with some teachers. Those tests seem a little ridiculous to me – and they seem a little ridiculous to the kids too. It’s pretty darn easy to get a perfect score on them, they aren’t all that challenging and they aren’t actually learning anything from the testing process either. NOthing in there is challenging their thinking at all and nothing in those tests will help promote discussion amongst other students who may read the same books.

Why do they have to take silly little tests to prove they are accelerated readers, anyway? I don’t really get it at all, surely there is a better way.

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Boston.com / News / Local / The tempest

Daily Dose /

Boston.com / News / Local / The tempest

“There are only two enduring questions in life: What do women really want, and what to do with ninth-graders?”
and
“They loved Twain, Poe, John Irving, Haruki Murakami, he reports, but rolled their eyes at ”The Great Gatsby.” Bauer was dumbfounded. How could they miss the allure of this haunting classic? Because they were forced on pain of death to expound on the meaning of the green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan’s dock. Enter the Godzilla of high school English — the dreaded metaphor.”

I loved this article and it’s pretty timely since I’ve been sitting here avoiding work and thinking about what “school work” Michelle (who is a 9th grader) had done for the last year – in preparation for her homeschool evaluation. I started with her reading list, fast and easy and most interesting to ME. I have no idea if it was most interesting to Michelle – she hated some of the things that “I made her read” and enjoyed others. We did Shakespeare, which she hated reading but loved talking about, thinking about and WATCHING in movie and play form. We skipped The Great Gatsby but she will be doing To Kill a Mockingbird shortly.

I was thinking about having her do a little mini survey about her homeschool experience thus far, this article has given me some ideas about what to ask and maybe what not to ask…

Here’s what I’ve got for her reading list from the past 12 months – there’s more, I haven’t finished, but this is the bulk (in order of when they popped into my head):

  • The Danish Girl
  • The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
  • The Lord of the Flies
  • Frankenstein
  • 1984
  • Midsummer Night’s Dream
  • Lies My Teacher Told Me
  • Yoga for Beginners
  • Everyday Math for Everyday Life
  • Being Good: An Introduction to Ethics
  • Ethics for Everyone: How to Increase Your Moral Intelligence
  • The Deluxe Transitive Vampire
  • The New Well-Tempered Sentence
  • How to Think Like Leonardo DaVinci book and Workbook
  • 33 Things Every Girl Should Know About Women’s History: From Suffragettes to Skirt Lengths to the E.R.A.
  • Short Tails and Treats from Three Dog Bakery
  • 101 American Superstitions
  • Kids at Work
  • Witch Child
  • Sorceress
  • Virgin Territory
  • Why Girls are Weird
  • I Was a Teenage Fairy
  • The Virgin Suicides
  • Dangerous Angels
  • Flipped
  • Witchcraft
  • White Oleander

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