As the school year wound down, Pittman Elementary School students revved up their reading efforts by competing in a school-wide reading challenge.
“Part of this is to keep kids engaged until the end of the school year, and the other part is to just get them interested in reading,” said Laura Baton, Pittman principal. “We did it for the first time last year, and having some kind of incentive to read gets kids hooked on books, which is what we want.”
As a building, students were challenged on May 10 to spend 50,000 minutes reading before May 20. Students shattered expectations, reading more than 50,000 minutes by May 15. Now, students are encouraged to meet a stretch goal of 75,000 minutes to unlock prizes for reading, like a participation pizza party, fun with their principal on the school’s roof May 21 and more, said Melissa Agnew, learning coach at Pittman.
“We believe that the more you read, the better reader you become,” said Agnew. “Our teachers are pushing that end-of-year independent reading, with kids reading what they want to read. Time and choice are the two biggest factors to get kids to read more and more.”
A number of the school’s community partners are supporting students as they read. Freddy’s Frozen Custard Dessert donated frozen custard that students could receive after they read five new books in the Pittman Library and submitted a grade-appropriate book review.
And on May 16, every classroom was visited by Laura Loffler, a storytime reader and librarian at the nearby Schweitzer Brentwood branch of the Springfield-Greene County Library System. In her presentations, students were encouraged to read all summer long and participate in the Library’s Summer Reading Program to qualify for prizes.
“We’re all about promoting literacy, and it’s really important to start young,” said Loffler. “Reading has such a great impact for their entire lives.”