Spring Reading Challenge

I don’t think I’m the only teacher who understands how long the days are when summer is around the corner.  Schedules, grading, procedures – all of it – gets monotonous and tedious.  The students think so, too.  I believe the day I came up with the Spring Reading Challenge was the day that a kid sprayed me in the face with a water bottle.  Or maybe it was the day one of them backed me and another teacher into a wall and mildly threatened us.  We all get a little tired of each other is all I’m saying.

So I see a fitness challenge in the gym I worked out in at Notre Dame that has to do with the students racing each other to their Spring Break destination.  Every hour they workout equalled one mile travelled towards the place they chose to go to for their vacation. As I’m lacing up my workout shoes and think, “Why can’t I apply this idea to reading?”  In other words, my students pick a place they want to travel to, figure out how many miles it is from their home, and the number of pages read transfers to miles they travel.  Look at me integrating math, geography, and reading all into one project!

I worked with a great bunch of teachers at the time I came up with this idea, and they decided that not only stories could count, but assignments the kids do for Science, Math, etc. could be logged as miles, too.  The idea was to show how much the kids actually read during the day.

It was a fun project.  We had a pizza party for reaching goals,and gave away prizes, but the point was to have a little fun at the end of the year with reading.  All the kids created a boat, plane, or car, set it on a huge map in my classroom and moved their mode of transportation towards their destination as they read.

This spring, Hadley and Harper are going to participate in the challenge.  Last week, we set up a map, picked a destination, and made some boats to sail away on as we read.

 Hadley decided she wants to travel to Spain.  Harper’s going to the Artic Ocean.  You know, because it’s blue.

Once we set up our map, made some goals, we set off for the library where we picked out stacks of books.  Hadley loves the “I Can Read” books, and has recently finished the Mercy Watson series so I introduced her to Amelia Bedelia.  Harper likes dinosaurs, aligators, lions, basically anything kind of ferocious animal.  So we looked for those kinds of books.

 

I picked out some books and magazines, too.  Since I’m starting school in July for creative nonfiction, I figured, How ’bout some decorating books?  That’s CNF, right?

I’d like to invite you to join in on this activity as the school year comes to an end.  Maybe you’d like to read a book as a family, or you’re taking a trip this summer and want to read about the area you’re travelling to.  Maybe you want to figure out how to work the new XBOX you got for Christmas so your kids can play “Dance, Dance Dora,” and you have to read the manual.  It all counts, folks!  And it would be fun to hear what kinds of books you and your children are reading.

If you’re interested in participating, Christian Home and School is running an article I wrote about the challenge on their Facebook page.  If you click on the article, you will find worksheets (free!) that you can print out and use with your kids.  And every Thursday in May, this blog and the CH & S Facebook page will have a post about what Hadley, Harper and I are doing with the challenge.  We’d love to have you join in on the fun!