Literacy Milestone: Her First Reading Log
September 08, 2015
My daughter started Kindergarten a couple of weeks ago. On September 1st, we started her first official reading log (actually labeled "Reading Chart"). The teacher explained it to us during Back To School Night. It's a very simple sheet with 30 numbered lines in two columns. We just have to fill in the title of each book that we read together, and turn in the log at the end of the month.
I believe that parents who can't show 30 titles read will be gently (?) reprimanded. Me? The first thing I did was go into Excel and make my own version of the Reading Chart, so that I could print out more pages. I logged our 56th title this morning, September 8th (though we cheated by starting a couple of days early, since we received the reading chart on August 28th). Getting to 30 titles in a month would only be a problem, maybe, if we moved exclusively to reading chapter books this year. But I have no plans to do that.
I've been logging the books read to my daughter as part of my blog for years (this year's titles are here). So for me, this written reading log is actually helpful. I leave it on the kitchen table, and add books as I read them during breakfast. My babysitter fills in the titles that she reads in the afternoons, too. Then I just need to bring the piece of paper up to the computer every so often, instead of carrying up a big stack of books. My daughter, being rather a Type A sort of person, will remind us to add titles to the list.
I'm not sure what our future will look like with school reading logs. I'm leery of anything that turns reading from something that we do for pleasure to something that feels like a chore. But so far, keeping a very simple paper list of titles read is working well for us. Maybe I should get a binder for completed pages, so that my daughter will have a tangible record of her Kindergarten reads. What do you all think?
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