Readathon (kind of)

[dolmansaxlil]

One of the things we're trying to do at my school is build up our classroom libraries. We decided that we would host a Readathon of sorts to do this. I teach in a very low income school - I would say about a quarter of our kids do not have ANY books in their homes. Reading outside of school is something that very few of them do. What we decided was that we would have a full day readathon in the school. The money will be distributed evenly to the classrooms, and then spent on books for classroom libraries.

Part of the day will be spent in independent reading, though obviously 300 minutes of independent reading would be a stretch for some of our non-readers. So we'll also do some literacy activities - with my grade 7/8s I'm going to take one block and do a "novel in an hour".

This is the first time we've done anything like this, and we're hoping that responses will be good. Basically, we're going to send home a "pledge sheet" and people can pledge a dollar amount for the day. It basically is just a donation for classroom libraries, but hopefully with the readathon "twist", we'll get some response.

Any suggestions/thoughts on how to manage this? It's still in pretty early planning stages, but coming up fast. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

[mkreher]

I think that sounds great! I remember when I was in school we would have a pajama (sp?) reading party. Everyone would come in pj's and bring a flashlight and blanket. It was held in our cafeteria with the windows covered with black paper to block the sun (it was held early evening) and it looked like a big camp site. I heard it was fun! (Never could go :( )

[teach1027]

I do not know about managing this, but if you are in a low-income school you should contact scholastic and get involved in their Reading if Fundamental (rif) program. Twice a year they send free books to your school and each student gets to take 1 home.