Biography Club Idea and More

Greetings!
I enjoy getting emails from you and I enjoy learning about what some of you do in your libraries and classrooms to motivate reading.
Jan mentioned casually to me about the Biography Club she runs at her school. It sounded really interesting, so I asked her for the details of her program.

Students are encouraged to read biographies. Each biography they read is recorded in a notebook that Jan keeps for each grade level. The title and number of pages are recorded. At the end of the semester, the two students in each class that read the most pages are invited to a party in the library. Jan serves root beer floats and homemade cookies. One party is held in December and the other one is held at the end of the school year, thus giving the students plenty of time to read. Jan saves up prizes such as posters, books, and other items that come her way and each student at the party gets to choose a prize.

The program has become wildly popular and Jan did some tweaking of her original rules. Students in grades 2 and 3 need to read at least 300 pages to qualify and students in fourth grade need to read 500 pages to qualify. Students in grades 5 – 8 must read at least 1000 pages to qualify for the party invitation. Students have approximately 4 or 5 months to get the reading done in order to qualify for the party. Jan says that if more than two students read enough to qualify, she includes them anyway. Her club has gotten to be more than the 24 or so she intended, but the students are reading biographies and Jan is happy.

Because of the popularity of the Biography Club, the Buena Vista students do very well in history.

Thanks, Jan for your great idea. This could work for any school of any size.

I am doing something else to encourage reading across the library. I decided to focus on the 3rd and 4th grades this year. I made a card with their name on it and a space for each Dewey hundreds number plus other specific sections in our library. Our picture books are organized in a modified Dewey arrangement, so I included the picture books along with a couple of magazines and a biography. This card is intended to last for the school year. If the whole class finishes their cards, then the class will earn a celebration. I have many smaller easy books in the Dewey hundreds section so students won’t be intimidated by the thick books and I help students find books that they can read. They tell me a little about each book (What did you learn that you didn’t know? or What parts did you like best?) and I write the title on the card.

I’m a little discouraged with the results so far. I thought that I would have more participation and that classes would encourage each other to work on their cards, but it hasn’t happened that way yet. I have one student finished already and a couple more who will soon be done, but I think I will have to change my plan. Instead of having a party for the whole class after everyone completes his or her card, I will probably have one party for the students who have completed their cards and the students who have not completed their cards will have to miss out. Oh, well. I guess I can’t win them all.

If you have some kind of reading program or motivating program and would be willing to share with us, please let me know. I’ll be happy to include it in one of my weekly emails.

I hope you have a great week.

Audrey