KES NEWS SY 2013-2014: Do you read every single day?

Do you read every single day? Well, in our school, if you read a certain amount of books every one to three months, you get to participate in the reading campaign celebration!

Now let's start from the beginning. Our whole school does a system where students read books every day and the teachers count how many books that student read in a quarters worth (1 to 3 months of reading). If you meet or exceed the number of books needed to be read, then you get a star. That star means that you made the reading goal for that quarter. In grades K through 3, you are required to read 25 non-fiction and 25 fiction books. In grades 4 through 6 you are required to read 3 fiction books and 4 non-fiction books. In grade 4, 125 pages equal one book, in grade 5, 150 pages equal one book, and in grade 6, 175 pages equal one book.

Remember I said that you get a star if you meet or exceed you reading goal? There is something it goes on. Every year, students draw a picture of what they think would be great for a reading campaign design. When a picture is selected, the student's teacher makes button for the selected grade level to wear. Two drawings are chosen. One for grades K-2 and another one for grades 3-6. The button contains the design that the student drew and a bar for the stars to go on. There are 4 quarters that are in a school year. Each square represents a quarter. If you exceed (meaning that you read more books than needed) the reading goal for the quarter, you get a gold star. If you meet (meaning you read just enough books) you get a silver star. If you don't meet or exceed the goal, than you don't get a star at all. If you have a star for each quarter, then you get to participate in the end of the year celebration.

The end of the year celebration is only for the kids that met or exceeded all of the quarters. They do really fun activities which include water games, clothes relays, and basically having a ton of FUN! All of the students look forward to this event and it motivates us to read more and write better!

I interviewed the student that won the button contest for grade 3 to 6. I won't tell you who it is until the end of this interview.

1) How does it feel being picked as the winner for the campaign button?
It feels really great to be the winner because grades 3-6 get to wear my button. It is an honor to be the winner.

2) How did you come up with the idea of having a worm reading a book?
I came up with the idea of the worm reading a book because I play a game called "Book Worm", and worms love to read books.

3) What was the purpose of the design?
The purpose of the design is to have kids imagine the things that you would learn from reading. You can get smart by reading non-fiction and fiction books.

4) Lastly, what would you say to get kids to read more?
Something that I would say to kids is that "If you read more, you will come better at reading and you will learn lots of things. This is what I would say to kids.”

What a great person right? He is such an inspiration and I could tell he really expects a lot from kids. Are you ready to find out who won the button contest?

The student is.......a boy........named......DHAYDREN!! He is in our 6^th grade class and is really funny, yet hard working!