When I was in second grade our school had a program called Reading Around the World. It worked like this: students had reading sheets where they kept track of the books they read every night, parents signed off, and when the student returned to school their reading totals were updated with a marker on a giant colorful cartoon map of the country/world in the longest hallway in the school. I ate this up. I was either first or second in my class for the Reading Around the World totals, mostly because I wanted to earn the cool prizes that came with it, especially the little rubber sneaker erasers that were so coveted by my classmates.
Ever since then, I have yet to see a system that created such a strong focus on reading, although there are some great programs out there being used by some of the charters schools I've worked in. Let's just say if I ran a school, this would be my number one academic priority. Forget the tests, gimme the books!
Photo: Rachel Beth Polan
So when I came home to see my family and I asked my sisters what books they were reading and got embarrassed stares, I decided to do something.
Our family is now keeping track of our reading and competing against one another using a GoogleSpreadsheet. Let's just say the results have been stunning so far.
Highlights:
- Of my 4 initial invites to edit the doc, 3 of them are already using it, including the 2 targets.
- We took an emergency trip to 2 local libraries yesterday to stock up the family with family (reading) feud ammo.
- I crept upstairs at 12:30am last night and found my youngest sister reading near the end of her first book already. This morning when I checked she'd already updated that she finished the book and was on to the next one.
This is definitely happening again for my students next September!
very nice picture!
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