SPOTLIGHT . . .
Sally K. Ride and Target Announce “Look What I Read!! I’m Right on Target!!”
Sally K. Ride Elementary School, the SKR PTA, and Target are proud to announce a partnership that sponsored a reading incentive program encouraging children to read on a daily basis. The main goal of this program was to show children that reading is fun, important, and should be part of their every day lives. Too often, reading is considered a chore. One method used to combat this attitude was to encourage children to read whatever interested them, either alone or with a friend or adult, without the pressure of concurrent instruction.
The program also tried to change the fundamental way that reading is encouraged. Children are very social beings, yet reading is usually a solitary task and therefore, it is not an activity that caters to their natural tendencies. However, talking about books that children read can be a very social activity. Children share their thoughts about their favorite cartoon, game, TV star, or sports hero, but they seldom talk about books. This program attempted to add books to the list of things about which children talk. To accomplish this, the children were encouraged to talk about the books they read with family, friends, and teachers. As an optional activity, children were given a rating form on which they could rate the books they read and share what they thought in age-appropriate terms that included “Awesome!” or “Boring!”. SKR teachers did a phenomenal job in promoting participation in the incentive program and providing time for discussion of the books that their students read.
A total of 276 students completed the incentive and rated 183 books. Amazingly, of the 183 books rated, only 12 were read by more than one student showing the wonderful diversity and plethora of books that SKR children read. The SKR PTA made a compilation of these books and the ratings and provided them to teachers and parents.
All students who completed the incentive were rewarded with the opportunity to choose a Scholastic book as their prize, the cost of which was primarily covered by a generous grant from Target. Perhaps the greatest proof that this incentive was a success was that after children took their prize books back to class, numerous teachers remarked that they had some difficulty getting children to put down the books so that the teachers could continue lessons. Even the children who did not complete the incentive sat with someone who had and together they read the new book. The irony of teachers telling children to stop reading was not lost on SKR staff or parents!
The staff at SKR, the SKR PTA, and Target are all very excited about the success of this program. The title “Look What I Read!” is meant to convey the pride in reading so many different books while “I’m right on Target!” is an obvious play on the name of the financial sponsor that shows that SKR children are right on target in reading every day.
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