So we've reached that part of the year when teachers have to dig into the bag of tricks to keep kids motivated until the end of the year.  As a reading specialists, this proves to be even trickier.  Kids have to come to see me while often times they are doing fun things in class.  The goal for our meetings right now are to keep up the momentum of reading, as they have done throughout the year, and plan and prepare for what they will read over the summer.

While reading the April issue of The Reading Teacher, I came across an article by Tim Rasinski and Nancy Padak titled "Who Wants to be a (Reading) Millionaire?".  The article discusses how schools are getting kids to read at home by logging their minutes, with the ultimate goal being the whole school reads for one million minutes. What a great idea!  But, for us it was too late to get started on that goal.  So, my friend and fellow reading specialist and I came up with an end-of-the year challenge for our kids called Minutes to Win It!  We did some math and challenged the kids to read 25 minutes a day, including the weekend, to see if we could reach 10,000 minutes in 3 weeks.   We tally their minutes, which have to be signed and followed up with an adequate summary of what they read.  Students who reached the personal goal of 250 minutes get to participate in our Minute to Win It challenge in May.  Based on the tv game show, we will have minute challenges for the kids to participate in.  While they are excited about the end of the challenge Minute to Win It party, I haven't really heard them discuss this much.  Many of them are focused on reading and accumulating minutes.  The pride in their eyes when they see how many minutes have accumulated so quickly has been worth it.  Sure, there are those few who aren't participating, but they are starting to catch on. 

We have a bulletin board with pictures of kids participating.  As they accumulate more minutes, they move along the board.  We reached 10,000 minutes well before our target date.  We upped the auntie and are very close to reaching 15,000 minutes. The kids love hearing their names during announcements and have a renewed desire to read.  I love to see the kids challenge themselves with "I am going to read 45 mintues tonight," or "I want to finish this book!"  It's hard to get kids who don't want to read to do so, but we've had fun picking out great books and mee