Well, when I tell people that I’ve gotten rid of reading logs in my classroom, they’re often horrified because they think I got rid of something that worked. We all know students who can log pages and minutes forever and never actually finish a book. The first fall I taught, I assigned reading logs because everyone in my department did. And my colleagues really convinced me that if I didn’t tie some sort of grade to every piece of reading that the children were asked to do, they wouldn’t do it, and I believed them.
And it was wrong. That first fall as I’m sitting there at my desk every Friday looking through the reading logs that I received and marking off the reading logs I did not receive, I could see clearly that there were some students that I never got a reading log from. And they were often my students who struggled the most with reading or also lacked home support. So, what was I really assessing there?
Even the students who did turn in their reading logs, I would get them filled out Monday through Friday in the same color ink, in the same parent handwriting, in the same slant. So, what was I really assessing there? Parents’ ability to find a pen in the car on Friday mornings. Those logs were no evidence that any reading really took place. The only thing a reading log is evidence of is the parent and child’s ability to fill out the reading log.
And so we don’t really have control over how much students are reading at home. All we can have is influence there. So, where is our effort best spent; chasing kids down the hallway for the reading log again or making sure that they’re engaged with the reading choices that we offer them at school because we know from several studies that students who are more engaged with reading at school are more likely to read at home.
If you’re reading The Hunger Games and you’re in the woods with Katniss and Rue, you’re not waiting until second period English class tomorrow to find out what happens. That’s something where we have some influence. That reading log is not.
