I work in a Title 1 school, teach fourth grade, and have similar problems with
homework. I used reading logs for a few years but felt it was a waste of time.
I saw forged initials, parents signing a week's worth of reading on Monday,
etc. I felt it was just for show. Here is what I do now for reading at home
and it has worked extremely well. I stole an idea I saw out of a Really Good
Stuff magazine. I created a front and back worksheet template. It simply has
two boxes on each side. Each box is labeled with a day (Monday-Thursday) and
has a place for initials in it. I print off enough at the beginning of each
year for one a week. Each week, I handwrite questions for each night. I try
to focus on whatever strategy we have been working on (Create a Venn diagram
comparing and contrasting 2 characters or ideas from what you read. What genre
did you read tonight? How do you know?). I call these RAH-RAH Sheets (Read At
Home! Read At Home!). Students read for 30 minutes and then respond to the
night's question. I don't expect a long response. 1-2 sentences is all I'm
looking for. Now the place for initials is not for parent's initials.
Students have a RAH-RAH partner. Every morning, they must get with their
partner and share their response. Their partner initials their sheet. If they
didn't do it, the partner puts an X in the initial box. This is part of their
morning work and does not take away any class time. I take the sheets up on
Friday and grade them at 25 points a night. If their partner initialed the
box, they get 25 points and if not, they get 0 points. I average all of their
sheets together each nine-weeks for one RAH-RAH grade! Students who continue
to have problems with this are usually students who are never going to do any
homework. These students must take a book to lunch with them to read and
complete their sheet everyday at lunch. They don't have silent lunch, they
just have something they need to get done before they can socialize.
Another assignment I do to get my kids reading outside the classroom is Book
Bingo. I give one each nine-weeks and the kids must turn it in as a test
grade. Each quarter is a different Book Bingo sheet - Genre, Author, Subject,
and Create Your Own. These are wonderful to get kids to read things that they
normally wouldn't. I have had great success with this!
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