For reading month, she orchestrated a month-long "Amazing Race" complete with daily challenges where a student from each classroom had to listen to a clue on the announcements, race to find the "marker", find the question inside for his/her classroom, race back, read the question, write down the answer, and return it to the library for bonus points!
Kids completed a reading "passport" that had them reading 7 different genres and taking tons of AR tests... each class had a marker on this bulletin board in the hallway and she moved the pieces along the path according to how many points the class had accumulated. Each grade level needed a different number of points to move a continent. We needed 50 classroom points to move to the next continent...
Here's another view of the bb...
The kids checked it every morning before school and couldn't wait to leave at the end of the day to check it again!
Each grade level had one winning class... the class that reached North America first! It was mine! My kids were so excited... we had to wait until an assembly after spring break to find out who won and mine were on pins and needles! One of my girlies said, "Yes! I always knew were were awesome!" when we took our trophy back to the classroom!
All together, for the month of March, here is how many books were checked out of the library, AR points were accumulated school-wide, and how many words were read by students in my building...
Do you see those cards between the points and words signs? Each class had tons of those squares- the "vehicle" on them matched each class' marker on the main BB. For every 100% on an AR test, students wrote their name on the paper for their class and dropped it off at the library. Those are hung all up and down our hallway. It's pretty impressive!
I'm proud to say that my 3rd graders got almost 600 of those points in the month of March!
How did you celebrate Reading Month in your school?
That is SO COOL! We have a wonderful media specialist as well - I'm going to share this with her. Maybe we can do something similar. Great idea!
ReplyDeleteMs. BBZ: Integrated Learning in Second Grade
I love this!!! Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteAmazing - I just LOVE this idea. I am definitely sharing it with our librarian :)
ReplyDeleteLynn
That is one cool bulletin board. Congrats on winning!!!!
ReplyDeleteI wish my school 'believed' in AR :(
Tania
My Second Sense
That is sooooo cool!
ReplyDeleteWeb Design and Online Marketing 4 Teachers
Such a good idea! Our reading specialists run reading month and this year we were reading around the world. Each grade was given a continent and the classes chose a country from that continent to decorate our door in. We learned all about our countries and then had an "Around the World" day where the high schoolers (we're k-12) worked with the elementary and did presentations. It was actually pretty cool. I might pass on what your school did for ours next year!
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea. I am so sad, though, because we have no elementary librarian any more. In fact there is only one librarian for our entire district. :(
ReplyDeleteWe did something similar for just my class, but with a map of the USA. For every 40 minutes the students read, they got to cross a time zone. They were so excited about reading. I wish we had AR to motivate them even more, though.
ReplyDelete-Maria
Everyone deServes to Learn
What an amazing idea! CONGRATS!!
ReplyDeleteMisty
Think, Wonder, & Teach
I am a pre-service teacher and it makes me happy to hear that the children are so excited about this idea! I want my students to be active readers, but I know that some students need a little motivation. I wondered how the idea could be modified for individual classroom use and Everyone deServes to Learn gave a wonderful idea to just use the USA with time zone markers! Thank you for the ideas, Christina and fellow commenters!
ReplyDelete