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Overcast Shaw Avenue sets six-figure goal
Book fair kicks off 100,000 minutes of reading for school
100 grand. That’s how many minutes of reading school officials at Shaw Avenue School want students to complete for the calendar rolls over to 2012.
The District 30 elementary school is going to be participating in the Read 100,000 program sponsored by Scholastic books. The program kicked off at Shaw Avenue on Monday, following the annual book fair last Thursday and Friday.
Students will be able to go online and log their minutes. They will get credit for the reading they do on their own at school or at home. “We really want to focus on independent reading at home,” Principal Johane Ligondé said. “We know they’re reading in school. The push is how do we get them to read more at home.”
Librarian Jacqueline Capewell is overseeing the program at Shaw Avenue. She said that the goal of 100,000 minutes will hopefully be an incentive for the students to read more.
There will also be prizes for the top reading class at each grade when the school completes its journey to 100,000 minutes. Capewell said students in each winning class will be able to take out an extra book during their weekly visit to the library. A prize will also be awarded to the class which read the most minutes in the entire school.
With 762 students, it would take only a week to read 100,000 minutes if every child did 30 minutes of reading a home. Ligondé said she know that is probably unrealistic, so she set the goal to reach the mark by the holiday break in December.
She will keep track of the progress on a weekly basis outside the main office, so students can see how much they have read, and how close they are to the school’s goal.
To get the students prepared for their reading task ahead, the school hosted a book fair last week. It was sponsored by the PTA. “We’re excited about the 100,000 minutes,” said PTA President Margo McKenzie. “The kids are buying a lot of books.”
McKenzie said this year’s most popular books are “The Diary of a Wimpy Kid” and “I Survived” series. The goal of the book fair, she explained, is to have every student go home with at least one new book.
This year, the PTA displayed a wish list of books from each teacher in the school. The goal, she said, was to have parents purchase one of those books and donate it to the classroom library.
