I’ve had a couple of requests via Instagram and Twitter to explain my 2017 Reading Challenge. This reading challenge started as a way to increase reading on my campus and hopefully facilitate growing our reading culture.

Background on Reading Challenge

In December, Carol Richmond the awesome librarian at Wilson Elementary, sent out an email about Reading Challenge that she was sharing with her staff. I loved the IDEA and quickly decided to adapt it for my high school students and teachers!

The challenge is to read outside of your normal reading zone. For my high schoolers, the challenge is to just get them reading! I also thought it would be good to challenge our teachers to read and share what they are reading on a regular basis. I’m planning on sending out a monthly email recapping what I read for the month and reminding my teachers of the different reading categories (and reminding them to submit reading responses via a Googleform on my library page.) My method is to pretty much hassle everyone to read all the time. 🙂

Here is a list of the categories (updated from Mrs. Richmond’s form to include high school reading materials like the TAYSHAS and Nerdy Book Club winners.)

Display

My first display is below, and I’m brainstorming ways I can update the Reading Challenge display by month… so if you have any ideas, let me know! I’m currently thinking of choosing a category  (recommended by a student) and making the whole display about that category. Plus I’ll update the “Reading Challenge” signage.

For this first display, I’ve included lots of categories and labeled what category each book will fill on small laminated speech bubbles.

I was hoping to make our Google Form for submitting reads more accessible by creating this QR code bookmarks. For teachers, reminding via email seems to work the best.

Submitting Reads

For students, I’ve also got the link to submit books open on a Chromebook right next to our dropbox. (Which also happens to be a Makey Makey Minion)

Promoting Reading and the Library