Parentella

The latest saga in my 5th grade daughter’s book report dramas. In order to make the reports “fun,” they are never assigned to do  just a written report. There’s the diorama book report, the book-in-a-bag book report, and this month, the cereal box book report. The assignment: make your book into a cereal, complete with name, “ingredients” of facts from the book, and games for the back of the box. Sounds simple enough.

Until, that is, you throw in the fact that the monthly genre is Biography, and the biography my daughter read was on Anne Frank. There is simply no way to accomplish this assignment without trivializing the Holocaust.

My daughter made her picture of Anne Frank for the front, made up a scramble word game on the back using the names of those  that lived in the Secret Annex, and we even came up with the “toy prize” to put in the cereal: a mini-diary. But what to name it?

My daughter picked “Concentration Cookies.” Terrible, right? Completely offensive. I tried to talk her out of it. Until I realized there was simply no way to name this cereal that wouldn’t trivialize the subject matter. (It had to be based on an already existing cereal, and couldn’t be the title of the book. For example, King-O’s for Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Not to mention, the report could easily have been done without reading the book. Skim a little, check out the Chronology, and have an older sister and mother who have read the Diary, seen the movie, seen the play, and you have everything you need to complete the assignment without actually having read the book.

My daughter read some parts, and skimmed others. I’m not really sure how much of the book my daughter absorbed, but since the assignment doesn’t call for any actual depth, it really didn’t matter. Which I find totally depressing.

I want my daughter to love reading. I’m always in the midst of a book. I read some books over and over. They’re not always deep, they’re not always educational, but I love to read. I want my daughters to find that same joy, and relish quiet time curled up with a good book.

The school book reports have never been on books that they truly enjoyed reading . The books they like always seem to be ones I, or other relatives, have given them to read. Instead of the school letting them choose a book they want to read, every month, I scour the bookshelves to find a book that matches the assigned genre. And every month, I wish they’d let us choose a report format that works best with that particular book. I think both my daughters would enjoy book reports more if they could do that, but they’d be graded down if they tried.

So Concentration Cookies it is. And we at least can mark one more month, done.

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April McCaffery is a single mother to two daughters, in 5th and 8th grade.

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2. A Parent’s Perspective on Homework
3. My Dream Report Card
4. Parenting the Procrastinator
5. Snow Day Game, App, Book and Movie Ideas

Tags: April McCaffery, book reports, Homework, Learning Activity

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 17th, 2011 at 12:01 am and is filed under April McCaffery, Homework, Parent Perspectives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.