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SOURCE: The Greater Kansas City Community Newspaper Group • September 17, 2008 STUDENTS SET GOALS, BUILD READING SKILLS THROUGH PROGRAM By Kelli Bamforth, Staff Writer At Bonjour Elementary School, healthy competition is prompting students to get ready, get set, read. The school is on pace to exceed this year’s goal of reading for 500,000 minutes. As of Friday, students had read for about 95,000 minutes in three weeks. Students are reading more and more each week, library media specialist Sarah Pauly said. “Some kids are far exceeding the average (of 105 minutes) and reading 1,000 minutes each week,” she said. “I’m really impressed so far that they’ve read so many minutes. We’ll probably reach our goal by January if they continue.” This is not the first year the school’s staff has challenged students to incorporate daily reading into their lives. For last year’s challenge, instead of setting goals of reading minutes or pages, students took accelerated reading comprehension tests when they completed a book. Based on their performance on the test, students earned paper Broncos and were challenged to wrap the Broncos around the entire building. “It took 2 1/2 years to do that, longer than we wanted,” Pauly said. “We wanted to encourage kids to read and get them excited to read outside of school. They seem to respond better to competition-type formats.” Pauly and reading teacher Diane Waers approached Bonjour Principal Alejandro Schlagel with a new reading idea based on accumulated minutes. Based on a school population of 300 students, they determined that if each student read for 20 minutes each night, the goal of 500,000 minutes would be met by the end of the year. The school held a kickoff celebration in August with Overland Park’s Bongo Barry, a children’s entertainer, to get the students ready to read. “If we continue this trend we will exceed our expectations, which I’m very excited for,” Schlagel said. “We planned for another celebration at the end of the year, but since we’re already doing such a good job, we’ll probably do something at the halfway point to let everyone know we’re still focused. If we end up aiming for 1 million or 750,000 minutes, that would be great.” Weekly reading logs are sent home with students and class reading minutes are recorded on a computer chart. Individual and class prizes are awarded monthly. Parents can read aloud to students who are still learning to read, Pauly said. “I like this program better than the last one because it includes the entire school. Last time it was more the second- to sixth-graders because of the tests they were taking,” Pauly said. “This one can include the younger kids because the parents can read to them. It includes the family, which I like.” Students can read anything, Schlagel said, as long as they read. “Whether it’s a newspaper, comic book, textbook, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “We ask that it’s outside class time, an additional 20 minutes on top of their schoolwork.” Through the competition, students learn to set goals and build their reading skills, Pauly said. “They have to figure out how many minutes they can read on how many nights,” she said. “It’s good for organization as well. It gives them the intrinsic drive to want to do something.” Fourth-grader Ezkial Crapo, 9, said he likes to read graphic novels. “I’ve been able to read since pre-kindergarten, so I read for at least three hours every day,” he said. “It gives you brain power in many different ways.” Fellow fourth-grader Abby Gardner, 9, prefers books from the Harry Potter series. “I like all the adventures that he takes,” she said. “I’ve always liked reading because it’s sort of like watching movies, just in your head.” As of Friday, Abby had read 959 minutes last week. “Reading does make you smarter,” she said. “I want to be one of the school’s top readers.” Schlagel and Pauly said the kids are excited about the competition and read because they want to. “It’s visible and I think the kids want to do it,” Schlagel said. “Data proves reading helps with all core subjects. The initial results are successful.” www.kccommunitynews.com |
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