Spring Reading Challenge

 This spring, I wanted to do a school-wide book promotion that could include everyone, avid and reluctant readers.  I found inspiration from this blog post by Might Librarian Tiff.  She chose ten categories and left a lot of room for free choice within those categories, such as read a book with green on the cover, or read a book written in 2012-13.  I was also inspired by this post by my friend the Eliterate Librarian, who created a reading challenge for her faculty based on The Hub's 2013 Reading Challenge. 

I loved Tiff's beautiful header, and she is glad to share what she creates, but I wanted to try creating my own.  You can see the results.  I think it's pretty.  I used Photoshop Elements and learned how to insert a shape and how to make a gradient line.  That's two new things!

To get the faculty involved, I printed signs that said Mrs. or Mr. NAME is reading.....  I used the pretty header and laminated them.  I gave all of our school staff members, including administration, teachers, and office staff, a copy of the reading challenge and the sign and asked them to participate by putting the sign outside of their door and using a dry erase marker to write the title of the book they are currently reading.  I also asked them to post their reading challenge to let their students in on their progress by adding titles.

It was great to see the teacher signs appear in the hall and to have students coming to the library to pick up a Reading Challenge Sheet. It has been especially fun to have them come in and ask for a book in a specific category.  To save a little browsing time, I set up a table with nothing but books published in 2012-2013, and "crowd-sourced" a list of books made into movies by sticking up piece of poster paper with a marker so students could add titles.  I'll make something pretty out that later. 

Yesterday was our last day before Spring Break, and several students and teachers came in looking for books for the challenge to read over the holidays. The best thing of all is that our students in LD/Resource are participating with their teacher.  They are excited about reading, and I'm excited that they are excited. Awesome!

I'm not sure what kind of celebration we will have, but I know it will be just before school gets out, held during the day (so students can miss class), and will involve food and door prizes.  That's all you need to keep a middle schooler happy!

Here's my Spring Reading Challenge.  I kept some of Tiff's categories, but added some of my own.  I need to get that blog onto my website at school pretty soon....

Spring Reading Challenge by Monique German