16 Jul 2012 1 Comment
Do You Pay Your Kids to Read Books?
Why using reading incentives can backfire
Incentives (also known as brides) work well to encourage some kids to read more but don’t work at all for other kids.
Also, it’s interesting to note that reading experts are divided on the value of offering these incentives in order to motivate your child to read.
If you’re having a truly difficult time getting a child to embrace a love of reading and books, then a temporary incentive program might help jumpstart the habit of reading. But notice I used the word TEMPORARY.
So how does it work? Basically, you find something your child wants and you trade it to them for reading a whole book or for the amount of time they spend read. For example, you might negotiate that if your child reads six books this summer, you’ll all go to the water park for the day. Or, if they read for 30 minutes a day for 7 days, they can have a friend sleep over this weekend.
Other parents just use cold hard cash. They may pay anywhere from a couple bucks per book, up to whatever they deem to be a fair price.
The idea is that the incentives help form the habit of reading. They’re not something you want to use over a long period of time.
Using reading incentives can backfire if not handled correctly. Ask any teacher that has used incentives in their classroom. They’ll likely tell you that the kids eagerly embraced the challenge of plowing through books in order to win whatever prize has been dangled before them. But they’ll likely also note that many students begin picking the easiest and shortest books in order to bulk up their reading log. They’ll probably also tell you that they have their suspicions that more than a few of their students cheated by including books that they didn’t really read or only skimmed.
What’s your feeling on bribing….er, I mean, using incentives to get kids to read? Would love to hear your thoughts.
Jul 19, 2012 @ 22:56:55
Hi!
My daughter works at Reading Partners, a literacy program developed for struggling and reluctant readers developed by Stanford, and she is the source for all my literacy info on this count. She works out of a New York City Chapter.
Her very first student was a bright second-grader. They read together during afterschool hours, and then the children were encouraged to choose a book from the Reading Partners library to read at home. If they read it and filled out a short worksheet, they received a star.
My daughter’s student brought back a book and worksheet every time! Soon, her student had the most stars on the board. And all too soon, the board was full. There were no more spaces for stars. They put together an adhoc system for “extra” stars, but according to this student, the competition was over. The external motivation ceased to be effective. She stopped reading the books and she stopped bringing in her worksheets.
After some research, my daughter and her supervisor decided to focus on building the student’s internal motivators–the sense that reading was important in and of itself. This is a tricky process. It involves, perhaps, giving the child the right book at the right time; allowing them to create their own arguments for why reading matters over the long-term, etc. The second grader never quite found that internal light for reading. At least not that year. She continued to read for my daughter’s approval. Hopefully, the fact that she is a bright, capable, young girl will eventually light the spark that makes reading a personal pursuit. Until then, for her, at least, external motivators seem to have run their course.
That is not to say they were entirely useless! After all, she read some great books, so maybe that was worth the stars. I’m less certain about parents giving cash. In any case, here is a great article from reading rockets discussing the issue of internal and external motivation for reading:
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/35746/
Thanks for a provocative post!
Best,
Jewell