Does Accelerated Reader promote altruism?
Stephen Krashen
Accelerated reader (AR) is a reading management program in which students take quizzes on what they have read, and are awarded prizes for the points they earn on the quizzes.
Despite the failure of research to demonstrate that AR) promotes literacy development (Krashen, 2003, 2005) and the negative attitudes many students have about AR (Smith and Westberg, 2011), there may be one redeeming feature: Smith and Westberg (2011) interviewed children from grades 3-8 who were participating in AR programs; among their comments was were these:
“A Grade 5 student said, ‘We take quizzes for each other sometimes if we really need to get our points in. We know each other’s pin numbers so we can help each other out.’ Other children commented that it was common for students to take a quiz and then write down as many questions as they could remember and then tell friends what questions they needed to know.” (pp. 4-5).
AR thus appears to encourage the emergence of clever strategies that allow students to help their classmates with no benefit to themselves. In fact, helping their friends in this way places SKrashen: Does Accelerated Reader promote altruism?:
Accelerated reader (AR) is a reading management program in which students take quizzes on what they have read, and are awarded prizes for the points they earn on the quizzes.
Despite the failure of research to demonstrate that AR) promotes literacy development (Krashen, 2003, 2005) and the negative attitudes many students have about AR (Smith and Westberg, 2011), there may be one redeeming feature: Smith and Westberg (2011) interviewed children from grades 3-8 who were participating in AR programs; among their comments was were these:
“A Grade 5 student said, ‘We take quizzes for each other sometimes if we really need to get our points in. We know each other’s pin numbers so we can help each other out.’ Other children commented that it was common for students to take a quiz and then write down as many questions as they could remember and then tell friends what questions they needed to know.” (pp. 4-5).
AR thus appears to encourage the emergence of clever strategies that allow students to help their classmates with no benefit to themselves. In fact, helping their friends in this way places SKrashen: Does Accelerated Reader promote altruism?:
Judy Blume’s comments on Accelerated Reader
I love it when I hear from teachers that they've read the Fudge books aloud to their kids and how this has started kids on the path to wanting to read. "I want more funny books. Who else writes funny books like this?" There are certainly many, many, many wonderful books to recommend. I love to hear that they can use a book like Blubber or another one of my books in the classroom and that