Spark Student Motivation: Read-a-thon

 

Happy Saturday Friends! Today is officially my first day of Spring Break! I wanted to share something I did with my students to motivate them to READ!

I present to you a..............

 

READ-A-THON!!

 

I kept my students after school for 4 hours to READ. Yes, it's that simple...to READ. EVERY single one of my students attended. :) (I actually had to change the day so three could attend-they were so upset about missing "reading", that I had to change it for them.) I can't tell you what this does for my teacher heart! Even some of my parents commented how excited their child was to attend. I could tell they were a bit surprised that their child wanted to stay after 4 extra hours just to read! LOL!

 

 

I wanted to keep the anticipation and excitement up all day so I displayed this sign on my light up frame and created a bulletin board to track their reading progress during the Read-a-thon.

 

 

What would a Read-a-thon be without food? We had snacks and drinks at our reading buffet because with all that reading we would definitely work up our appetites!

 

 

And, bookworms! My students loved the worms!

 

They took off their shoes and brought pillows and blankets to get cozy with their books. (I think taking off their shoes was their favorite part!) They read everywhere in our classroom!

 

 

 

After about two hours, I had pizza delivered.

 

 

We watched the Gotta Keep Reading video to inspire us to keep reading for two more hours. I love how the entire school collaborated to create this video-it's amazing! A must see!

 

 

Well, if music is playing, we HAVE to dance!

 



 

After every Reading Counts test they passed, they got to ring the bell! That bell was ringing all afternoon, but it's ok, it was music to my ears!

 

 

After they rang the bell, they got a book Post-It for each point they earned to display on the board. This was a great visual for us to be proud of as a class and each individual student. Some students had to make a second row of sticky notes!!

 

 

Here are the final results...

 

 

There wasn't a contest, but this young lady earned 38 Reading Counts points during the Read-a-thon! Pretty impressive! The goal was for each student to earn 20 Reading Counts points. I was excited and inspired by my students' excitement to read, ring the bell, and post their book notes on the board! They celebrated each others' successes too!

 

 

I've done this a few times with other classes and will for sure keep this as an annual event in our classroom!