6 ms·

The Christian library one town over from where we live does a "reading summer" event every year for the school holidays: kids who borrow books, read them, and w

by kleiba 1y ago

The Christian library one town over from where we live does a "reading summer" event every year for the school holidays: kids who borrow books, read them, and write a small book report (2-3 sentences) for them enter a lottery and can win a small prize at the end of the holidays. And I believe every participants gets a certificate also. You'd think that this would not appeal to anyone, but they actually have a great turnout every year. Quite amazing actually.

soco 1y ago
Primary school kids in Switzerland used to (and maybe they still do) run class-wide "competitions" on the points earned on a similar reading challenge - Antolin if I remember correctly and my kid was quite in for it.
- kleiba 1y ago
  Cool. Although my gut reaction would be that this mostly incentives the kids who already enjoy reading to read more, while the ones who are not great at reading know that they don't have a chance, so perhaps are discouraged from reading even more?!
- gsck 1y ago
  We had something like this in our school called Accelerated Reader. Read books answer a quiz on it get points, best class/student got rewarded. Was really easy to game though. Our school library had a selection of books for what I can only assume were for special needs kids, really really simple books very few words with even fewer pages. These books rewarded an appropriate amount of points however so you got less, but you could easily bang out 20 of those books in one class and get a lot more points than you'd be rewarded for reading a real book. A few of us would just go over grab a bunch of those books and read through them in like 2 minutes and complete the quiz. They ended up not letting those books get used for AR
  - hombre_fatal 1y ago
    We had Accelerated Reader in my public school in Texas in the early 2000s. It was a pretty cool system. The lottery system described upstream is terrible. But with Accelerated Reader you would accumulate points that you could spend on things like the Scholastic Book Fair (buy books), slices of pizza for lunch, and various toy gadgets. Sometimes a teacher would sell some gimmick like a get out of homework ticket. Of course, you'd have to read a good number of books to receive any of these prizes. But you were always working towards something unlike a lottery system which isn't motivating at all.
  - 44520297 1y ago
    My friend group got busted for gaming AR and we were banned from it. The interface allowed us to sort the books by points, so we took the top 10 books, split them up among us, summarized them, took the tests, and gave each other the answers. The jig was up when they printed a leaderboard and we were all way ahead with an absurd number of points. They took them all away and we weren’t allowed to participate anymore.
    - jshier 1y ago
      I gamed AR in the early '90s when it was much simpler. I was in elementary school, and they counted a book as a certain number of pages read (as certified by a parent), the multiple of which increased as you grade number increased. So in third grade every 30 pages counted as a book. So I read my family's complete collection of Dr. Seuss books, as well as my own, like the Boxcar Children. By the end of the program I'd read "93" books.
- z2 1y ago
  As yes, my school in the US did that (sporadically) and awarded medals based on tiers. I remember thinking the silver one looked the nicer, and so was careful not to read too much over the summer.
  - gowld 1y ago
    Contests run by smarter people have a prize pool, with prize selection priority assigned by performance rank. https://usamts.org/about/prizes/ https://usamts.org/about/prizes/
xtiansimon 1y ago
As a yuth in the East Bay my Alameda Co. library had a summer reading program with a treasure map. For each book you read, you got a stamp on the map. Then at the end there was a forgettable prize, though, after 45 years I’ve not forgotten the journey.
- cadr 1y ago
  I miss our east bay library. Not saying other places aren’t good, but that’s where we were when our kids were little and the staff was just so amazing.
jvm___ 1y ago
Our local library had a summer reading program. You needed to talk about the book to a librarian, so we were waiting in line. The kid giving the book report was under 3 so it wasn't much of a book report, she asked the usual questions including "what was your favorite part of the book?" The book the kid had read was Dinosailors which is about some dinosaurs who go on a sailing trip. The memorable part of the book is the page with no words that's just the dinosaurs throwing up because they all got seasick. So, the non-verbal child happily reenacted their favorite part of the book.
- passivegains 1y ago
  There's something beautiful about the kid using performance as language. They've hit upon the greater truth that reading and speech are important because text and the spoken word are powerful mediums, but what truly matters is what they allow us to express to each other. Though I have worked with children enough to sympathize with the not-beautiful part of this story too. (also that book sounds rad as hell.)
- kjellsbells 1y ago
  Heave Ho! They cry. It won't stay down! The next page illustration is epic. https://youtu.be/M8p4FSYUqi4?feature=shared https://youtu.be/M8p4FSYUqi4?feature=shared
RheingoldRiver 1y ago
> You'd think that this would not appeal to anyone, Why would this not appeal to anyone? Summer reading games are super popular and kids love getting small prizes
- Forgeties79 1y ago
  Idk read a book and do homework to get a chance to win a small thing during your summer break? That would’ve been a hard sell to me as a kid. I’m glad to hear that my skepticism about such a program is wrong though!
- dessimus 1y ago
  My local library still does Summer reading programs for both adults and kids. My teacher spouse does the adult one since she has a lot of free time in the Summer. She gets at least one gift basket each Summer that includes a $25 gift card to a local restaurant, as I'm pretty sure its just her and maybe 2 other adults doing it.
bigmadshoe 1y ago
Growing up in Scotland my friends and I all partook in a similar program
kyleblarson 1y ago
Pizza Hut's BOOK IT! program in the 80's where I would get a free personal pan pizza for each book read was a huge motivator.
- whycome 1y ago
  the obesity-literacy pendulum
  - AlwaysRock 1y ago
    The Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizza has about 600 calories in it. Maybe slightly indulgent, but that is a very reasonable reward and trade off for getting kids to read more.
    - medfield 1y ago
      People troll too much with their low effort comments. The thing was tiny, but it was a cool reward as a kid. I may be mistaekn but there was a limit too, it was either one per week or once a month.
      - 4d4m 1y ago
        +1 this was a really neat carrot. In retrospect I am thankful for these carrots as they boost curiosity and self-learning, without much harm. People are going to eat out anyhow, what's the harm in marketing that also supports good behavior?
      - jasonjayr 1y ago
        And it was a brilliant marketing gimmick too. The kid would need their family to bring them, and siblings & parents would probably pick up some drinks (fountain drinks are what, 90% margin?) or their own food that they might not have otherwise ordered out that night.
      - whycome 1y ago
        I wasn't trolling. It was just an attempt to highlight something. this is a conversation about habit building. Do you think that pizza hut was doing this because of their love of reading? Is eating pizza regularly the good habit to build? Is using food as a reward a good habit? It's not good to associate eating foods with that elation that a child gets when they "win the prize" -- that's how people have issues later when their brain associates the two states.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

by kleiba 1y ago

soco 1y ago

Primary school kids in Switzerland used to (and maybe they still do) run class-wide "competitions" on the points earned on a similar reading challenge - Antolin if I remember correctly and my kid was quite in for it.

kleiba 1y ago
Cool. Although my gut reaction would be that this mostly incentives the kids who already enjoy reading to read more, while the ones who are not great at reading know that they don't have a chance, so perhaps are discouraged from reading even more?!
gsck 1y ago
We had something like this in our school called Accelerated Reader. Read books answer a quiz on it get points, best class/student got rewarded. Was really easy to game though. Our school library had a selection of books for what I can only assume were for special needs kids, really really simple books very few words with even fewer pages. These books rewarded an appropriate amount of points however so you got less, but you could easily bang out 20 of those books in one class and get a lot more points than you'd be rewarded for reading a real book. A few of us would just go over grab a bunch of those books and read through them in like 2 minutes and complete the quiz. They ended up not letting those books get used for AR
- hombre_fatal 1y ago
  We had Accelerated Reader in my public school in Texas in the early 2000s. It was a pretty cool system. The lottery system described upstream is terrible. But with Accelerated Reader you would accumulate points that you could spend on things like the Scholastic Book Fair (buy books), slices of pizza for lunch, and various toy gadgets. Sometimes a teacher would sell some gimmick like a get out of homework ticket. Of course, you'd have to read a good number of books to receive any of these prizes. But you were always working towards something unlike a lottery system which isn't motivating at all.
- 44520297 1y ago
  My friend group got busted for gaming AR and we were banned from it. The interface allowed us to sort the books by points, so we took the top 10 books, split them up among us, summarized them, took the tests, and gave each other the answers. The jig was up when they printed a leaderboard and we were all way ahead with an absurd number of points. They took them all away and we weren’t allowed to participate anymore.
  - jshier 1y ago
    I gamed AR in the early '90s when it was much simpler. I was in elementary school, and they counted a book as a certain number of pages read (as certified by a parent), the multiple of which increased as you grade number increased. So in third grade every 30 pages counted as a book. So I read my family's complete collection of Dr. Seuss books, as well as my own, like the Boxcar Children. By the end of the program I'd read "93" books.
z2 1y ago
As yes, my school in the US did that (sporadically) and awarded medals based on tiers. I remember thinking the silver one looked the nicer, and so was careful not to read too much over the summer.
- gowld 1y ago
  Contests run by smarter people have a prize pool, with prize selection priority assigned by performance rank. https://usamts.org/about/prizes/ https://usamts.org/about/prizes/

xtiansimon 1y ago

As a yuth in the East Bay my Alameda Co. library had a summer reading program with a treasure map. For each book you read, you got a stamp on the map. Then at the end there was a forgettable prize, though, after 45 years I’ve not forgotten the journey.

cadr 1y ago
I miss our east bay library. Not saying other places aren’t good, but that’s where we were when our kids were little and the staff was just so amazing.

jvm___ 1y ago

Our local library had a summer reading program. You needed to talk about the book to a librarian, so we were waiting in line. The kid giving the book report was under 3 so it wasn't much of a book report, she asked the usual questions including "what was your favorite part of the book?" The book the kid had read was Dinosailors which is about some dinosaurs who go on a sailing trip. The memorable part of the book is the page with no words that's just the dinosaurs throwing up because they all got seasick. So, the non-verbal child happily reenacted their favorite part of the book.

passivegains 1y ago
There's something beautiful about the kid using performance as language. They've hit upon the greater truth that reading and speech are important because text and the spoken word are powerful mediums, but what truly matters is what they allow us to express to each other. Though I have worked with children enough to sympathize with the not-beautiful part of this story too. (also that book sounds rad as hell.)
kjellsbells 1y ago
Heave Ho! They cry. It won't stay down! The next page illustration is epic. https://youtu.be/M8p4FSYUqi4?feature=shared https://youtu.be/M8p4FSYUqi4?feature=shared

RheingoldRiver 1y ago

> You'd think that this would not appeal to anyone, Why would this not appeal to anyone? Summer reading games are super popular and kids love getting small prizes

Forgeties79 1y ago
Idk read a book and do homework to get a chance to win a small thing during your summer break? That would’ve been a hard sell to me as a kid. I’m glad to hear that my skepticism about such a program is wrong though!
dessimus 1y ago
My local library still does Summer reading programs for both adults and kids. My teacher spouse does the adult one since she has a lot of free time in the Summer. She gets at least one gift basket each Summer that includes a $25 gift card to a local restaurant, as I'm pretty sure its just her and maybe 2 other adults doing it.

bigmadshoe 1y ago

Growing up in Scotland my friends and I all partook in a similar program

kyleblarson 1y ago

Pizza Hut's BOOK IT! program in the 80's where I would get a free personal pan pizza for each book read was a huge motivator.

whycome 1y ago
the obesity-literacy pendulum
- AlwaysRock 1y ago
  The Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizza has about 600 calories in it. Maybe slightly indulgent, but that is a very reasonable reward and trade off for getting kids to read more.
  - medfield 1y ago
    People troll too much with their low effort comments. The thing was tiny, but it was a cool reward as a kid. I may be mistaekn but there was a limit too, it was either one per week or once a month.
    - 4d4m 1y ago
      +1 this was a really neat carrot. In retrospect I am thankful for these carrots as they boost curiosity and self-learning, without much harm. People are going to eat out anyhow, what's the harm in marketing that also supports good behavior?
    - jasonjayr 1y ago
      And it was a brilliant marketing gimmick too. The kid would need their family to bring them, and siblings & parents would probably pick up some drinks (fountain drinks are what, 90% margin?) or their own food that they might not have otherwise ordered out that night.
    - whycome 1y ago
      I wasn't trolling. It was just an attempt to highlight something. this is a conversation about habit building. Do you think that pizza hut was doing this because of their love of reading? Is eating pizza regularly the good habit to build? Is using food as a reward a good habit? It's not good to associate eating foods with that elation that a child gets when they "win the prize" -- that's how people have issues later when their brain associates the two states.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]