Bookworm Challenge

At the beginning of the year, I wrote a post about a book I read, that seemed to reenergize my passion for wanting to help students enjoy reading. The title of the book is The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child by Donalyn Miller. In looking for a new way to challenge my students with their reading, I teamed up with four other Title I school librarians within the district and we wrote a grant for our Bookworm Challenge.

We were looking for a way to expand our students’ horizons, so to speak.  So many times as readers, we tend to read the same type of books or genres.  We wanted to get them out of their comfort zone and let them explore other options.  The book really stresses the importance of students having a choice in what they read, so we wanted that as well. However, we did create some guidelines for our challenge in an effort to encourage them to try new genres.

For our Kindergarten students we challenged them to read 15 books by our deadline of May 27^th. Seven of the books must be non-fiction and eight must be fiction.

For First and Second Grade students we increased the total number to 20 books by May 27^th.  We then broke it down to 4 biographies, 4 non-fiction, 4 fiction and 8 free choice.

Finally, for our Third, Fourth and Fifth Grade students, we challenged them to read 25 books by May 27^th.  They must read 5 biographies, 5 non-fiction, 7 fiction (chapter books) and 10 free choice.

The book also talks about the importance of teacher recommendations to students in choosing what they read.  Because of this, we are also challenging the teachers to read 30 books appropriate for the grade level they teach.

Each student will have a reading log to keep track of the books they read. We will also be creating a “bookworm” made out of paper circles.  The body will represent each book that a student or teacher has read. The bookworms will be displayed in the library for everyone to see. We hope this will encourage students to want to read more so that they can see their bookworm “grow”.

All students that complete the challenge will be recognized at our final school assembly with a reading certificate and medal.  All teachers that complete the challenge will receive a reading certificate.  We are just kicking this off this week, but so far the students seem very excited about our challenge.  I can’t wait to see what happens!