[CALIBK12] Accelerated Reader question

[Blanche Woolls]

Anne,

Ask your principal:

Should you put yellow stickers on children reading below grade level and 
green stickers on children reading at grade level and blue stickers on 
children reading above grade level?

Maybe they should all wear football helmets like players who wear all 
those stars or whatever indicating some level of success. Then children 
who read each book, but below grade level, could have one yellow sticker 
for each below level book they read, a good indication that they child 
is probably not very smart. If they read at grade level, a green sticker 
would help the librarian and other teachers know the child was average. 
And, behold, the marvelous blue sticker indicating the child was YEH! 
above grade level. This would really show those children they hadn't a 
clue about what they might be able to read. Might keep them from ever 
taking a book that would stretch them.

This all reminds me of my days as an elementary librarian. The yellow 
birds in first grade became the brown bears in second. All the yellow 
birds and brown bears read together all through elementary school. They 
knew they were yellow birds and bears, and comets (or whatever they named 
the reading group in third grade.) They seldom if ever moved out of their 
group.

The most interesting thing about it was that when the children came 
to the library to choose books on their own, they sometimes took one that 
was a little too difficult, but they wanted to read it anyway.

We also sent classroom collections to their rooms and I didn't have time 
to pull them, so every month, one yellow bird, one red bird, and one blue 
bird would come to collect 60 books for their room. They would ponder each 
book trying to find ones for their group, and they knew what their group 
members were interested in and what they could read. It was amazing. They 
also took an enormous amount of time choosing because they didn't want to 
return to their room with armloads of books that no one in their group 
would want to read if they needed a book and couldn't come to the library 
right them.

I love it that this commercial company sends out those little stickers.
Oops! if I know the company, they charge you for them.

Blanche

On Mon, 1 Oct 2007, Anne Jones wrote:

> We are gearing up for Accelerated Reader at my K-5 school. The principal
> asked me today how I felt about putting little AR level stickers on all
> the books. Being a prudent woman, I held my tongue and told her I would
> ask experienced users about their results and the pro's and con's of
> stickers vs. none.
>
> Many thanks to you all.
>
>
>
> Anne Jones
>
> Walnut Heights Library
>
>
>
>