Teachers — Sign your class up for the Scholastic Summer Challenge!
By Kristen on April 4th, 2011
Summer will be here faster than you know it (we hope so anyway!), which means that kids will be free of homework and required reading for a few months. Even though it may thrill them, we know that kids who don’t read over the summer lose valuable skills that in turn put them behind in testing when they return to school in the fall.
The good news is that, starting today, teachers can sign up their entire class for the Scholastic Summer Challenge! The Scholastic Summer Challenge is a free summer reading program that encourages kids to read for fun over the summer while they log their reading minutes on the site, play games, and win prizes.
The program also offers comprehensive resources for educators, including a dashboard that allows teachers to track students’ reading progress, downloadable book lists, printable summer reading activities, a Classroom Participation Guide, and an interactive map that lets users see how many summer reading minutes are logged in schools around the world.
Teachers who sign up their class can also enter for a chance to win a classroom library and a $250 gift certificate to the Scholastic Teacher Store, so be sure to sign up or encourage your child’s teacher to check it out!
The Scholastic Summer Challenge begins on April 27th with the WordGirl Definition Competition, a live webcast led by our Ambassador of Summer Reading WordGirl. To register for the webcast, click here, and for more information on the Scholastic Summer Challenge, visit scholastic.com/summer.
Posted: April 4th, 2011 under Books, Education, More News, Uncategorized. Tags: books, reading, Summer Challenge.
4 comments
Comments
I like the basic idea of this challenge, bu the ‘prizes’ part turns me off. Once again reading is the chore that needs to be rewarded with fun stuff. Research shows that when people are rewarded for a behavior, the behavior goes away after the rewards are withdrawn. I would love to have the tools you mention, but I won’t be participating.
Comment on April 5, 2011 at 9:37 am
Thanks for your feedback, Mary. At Scholastic we certainly don’t think that reading is a chore. We believe that summer reading can be really fun! To that end, all of the prizes will be book and reading related to encourage kids to read more this summer.
On April 27, you’re welcome to download the materials (activity sheets, participation guides – all available on 4/27) and to create your own summer reading experience for your kids.
Thanks, Kristen
Comment on April 5, 2011 at 10:03 am
What if most of my students don’t have internet access? Can they still participate?
Comment on April 5, 2011 at 9:40 pm
Hi Leanna,
The Scholastic Summer Challenge is a web based reading program, so most of the interactions take place online. However, we do have downloadable minute logs that teachers can print out for students. Students are welcome to log their reading minutes on these logs and you can create your own classroom summer challenge.
There is also a Classroom Participation Guide that introduces more class activities to encourage kids to read more books this summer. You can download it from here: http://www2.scholastic.com/content/collateral_resources/pdf/FINALClassGuide.pdf
This classroom guide includes the minute logging printouts.
Hope that helps.
Thanks for reading our blog!
Ivy
Comment on April 6, 2011 at 4:37 pm
