Mrs. Kathryn Thomas’ 1st grade class at Meadowcliff Elementary just celebrated a spectacular reading achievement: the class has read 3,247 books! At the beginning of the school year, Mrs. Thomas promised the students a pizza party when, as a class, they had read 1,000 books. This was measured by students successfully completing the Accelerated Reading test for each book. The class reached their goal of 1,000 books around the end of February. At that time, Mrs. Thomas noticed that several students had almost reached 100 books, so she decided to start the “100 Book Club.” When students read 100 books, they were able to sign the “100 Book Club” poster, receive a balloon and a book for achieving this goal. As more students achieved this goal, Mrs. Thomas found that students needed to see their progress toward the 100 books and made 50-book and 75-book posters. Students who signed these posters knew they were getting closer to 100! Even after reaching 100 books, students continued to read. Several students reached 200 books and celebrated with a lunch “out”--an off-campus lunch to the restaurant of their choice.
While this initiative has had a definite effect on student achievement (the average oral reading fluency for Mrs. Thomas’ class is 54 words per minute), the effect on student confidence and motivation to learn is phenomenal. Conversations that once were “he took my pencil” or “do we have to?” turned to “do you have another book I can read?” and “may I have that book when you have finished reading it?”. Students began to come to school early so they could read in Mrs. Thomas’ class. Most of the classroom conversation was centered around books, the characters, the illustrations, the problems and the new concepts learned from the stories. The class celebrated their 3,247 book accomplishment with Happy Meals!
The class is no longer taking Accelerated Reading tests and counting the number of books read, but as photos were being taken for this story, they were all reading! The love of reading Mrs. Thomas teacher has instilled in her students cannot be measured!