We had so much fun with our January & February Book Challenge, that we’re having another one!
First, my reflection on the January & February Challenge. I was blown away by how intensely some of our students got into reading for this challenge. There were a total of 15 tasks in the challenge for a total of 15 books, and we had 5 students complete the entire thing and a number of other students come very close! About 40 students turned in their logs to me at the end of the challenge, but I know more participated. We had a total of 39 join the group on Schoology.
I could have done a better job in a few areas. First, I should have made more announcements/reminders to keep pushing students along. The ones who did participate were very much self-motivated. I didn’t even post the updates on Schoology as regularly as I should have. I’ll definitely be better about this next round. I also planned to do some type of leader board. That didn’t happen at all. The points and such were too difficult to keep up with and organize on a larger scale.
I’ve had questions from my blog and Twitter followers about a few things. First, I said I was going to do prizes. I ended up nixing the prizes. I’m not much of a prize person because I want them to be intrinsically motivated, and these kids really were. Instead, I opted to do an “event” at the end of the challenge. We had nachos, discussions, and activities including make your own bookmark. Once again, my communication skills were a bit lacking (and I had to reschedule it). I only had 7 students show up for the after school event, but we had SO MUCH FUN that it was completely and totally worth it. I have no doubt that I’ll have more show up next time. And they felt that the event was plenty enough “reward” for them.
I also had the question of how I was going to verify if they actually read the books or not. This is another reason I went away from the original idea of prizes. I wanted this to be completely on the honors system (with a little help/monitoring from their ELA teachers). Â For the most part, I think the students were pretty honest about what they read. Like I said earlier, the students who truly participated in this were self-motivated and pushing themselves to read more. And WOW, did they ever!
SO, I’m very excited that today was the start of the Spring Book Challenge!
Spring Book Challenge by librariantiff
After getting feedback and seeing how things went, I made a few changes. First, I did away with the “points” for different categories. I also went from 15 tasks to 10 tasks. And we cut down the time frame from two months to one month. Some students felt overwhelmed by the length of the first challenge, so this one is pared down a bit.
I’m excited to get this new challenge started! And I love the graphic I created! And I love the 10 tasks! Yay! So, as always, feel free to take this and make it your own! I’m excited to share something that my students and I are enjoying so much.
I love this! I am at an elementary school (K-4), so I reduced the number of tasks to five. Also, our PTO is donating a Walmart gift card. So everyone who completes the challenge will receive a piece of candy, and then all entries are entered for a chance to win the gift card. Our deadline is May 3– I am so excited to see how this goes!
Great challenge, Tiff! Thank you for sharing the pitfalls as well as the successes. For those of us who want to try it, you have already shown us some mistakes to avoid, and what worked really well. Thank you!
What a terrific idea! I am so happy to have stumbled upon your idea through Pinterest and even more thrilled that you shared the challenge! I love it! Lisa
I told you I was so going to steal this idea, and I definitely did! I started our Spring Reading Challenge two weeks ago, and I’ve gotten great responses from students and teachers (and administrators!) alike. I liked the point values, so I kept those, and added 20-point challenges as well. I have some students with already over 100 points (the max is 250)! I’m with you on the monitoring – I ask students to tell me a little bit about the books just to get them talking, but nothing like a book report. I trust them, and they know that. I have yet to implement my random prize drawings, but I don’t plan to make a big deal about them. We have a PPT show of announcements that runs on our TVs all day long, so I include the top 5 high scorers on a special slide – I don’t mind the competitive spirit, especially when they’re talking about books! I also showed our little animoto commercial on the morning video announcements when we first started out, created a HUGE display in our hallway showcase, and have been a walking advertisement for it for the past 2 weeks! Hmm, this makes me think I should blog about it too… Thanks for sharing this FABULOUS idea! 😀
I like the culminating event idea, but I am curious if you invited all the kids who “participated” in the challenge to attend or just those who actually completed the challenge (or met some other criteria). I am sure this questions sounds terrible, but I have students who sign up for things just for the treat at the end and don’t actually do the reading. How do you handle this?
Thanks!