As part of our celebration around the 2015 Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge, we're highlighting the stories of participating schools around the world. We've asked representatives from several schools to share with us how their school used the program to motivate students around reading. In our second post, we hear from Sylvia Ibarra, Principal at Jackson Elementary School in McAllen, Texas. After logging 21,285,863 minutes, they ranked #1 out 6,229 participating schools!
Can you share a few quick stats about your school?
Jackson Elementary is a Title I school with 800 students.87% are economically disadvantaged and 53% are English Language Learners.
What drew you to the program?
Jackson has been participating in the challenge since 2013. We were drawn to the challenge because we saw an opportunity to motivate students to read during the summer and prevent the summer slide.
How did your school community get behind the Summer Challenge?
The community is very supportive of campus initiatives. We promote reading throughout the month of May during parent events, including end-of-year celebrations. We also send letters and phone messages to parents during the summer to remind them to keep their children reading.
As the school principal, what did you do to motivate your students around summer reading?
As a principal, I take a very active role in promoting summer reading to my students, staff, and community by demonstrating my full commitment to the initiative through my actions and message. I not only speak about the Summer Reading Challenge every opportunity I get, but I also educate my stakeholders about the importance of summer reading and share research to support it. In addition, I allow my students and staff to have fun with the challenge by holding school-wide reading marathons and reading contests between classes and grade levels. I also reward those classes that read the most minutes with inexpensive rewards (15 minutes to play board games; 20 minutes to use tablets for educational games; extended recess for one day, etc.).
What’s your plan for encouraging independent reading during the school year? Do you set aside reading time during the school day, encourage students to read at home, or both?
Independent Reading plays an important role in our instructional program. Teachers implement structured independent reading on a daily basis, and monitor the progress that students make throughout the year using various progress measuring tools. Independent reading is an expectation and requirement at Jackson Elementary.
How do you plan to celebrate your school’s success?
We are planning to celebrate our school’s success with the summer reading challenge by rewarding all students with a fun day filled with games and classroom visits from book characters. In addition, we hope that the folks from Scholastic and the first lady of the state take time to visit our school to meet my staff and students (keeping my fingers crossed).
