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What Is a Reading Challenge?

If you work in education, you already know the value of incentivizing reading for students. It can be challenging to find new ways to motivate kids reluctant readers to pick up a book. Reading challenges or reading competitions offer a solution to this problem for any grade level, whether they are elementary school, middle school, or high school students. For more than 100 years, these programs have promoted community literacy and helped establish a culture of reading – and recently, they’ve received an upgrade. Today, libraries and schools can utilize software tools like Beanstack to quickly organize reading challenges and to provide valuable data that supports community-wide efforts to boost literacy rates.  These reading challenges can be set up not just during the school year, but also during the summer months. In this post, we’ll explain what a reading challenge is, offer a little history, and then talk about how the programs have changed over time. Ready to get reading?

Jump to a section: 

• What is a reading challenge?
• Choosing your reading mission
• Reading challenges move from paper to digital
• Using data to understand your readers
• Community literacy in the digital age

Many of us were introduced to reading challenges through our local libraries during summer vacations, but the importance of these programs goes much deeper than the fun worksheets we remember checking off as kids. Reading challenges offer a set of shared goals for a community of readers over a defined period. They typically target specific populations – for example, elementary school students in a local school district – and provide goals and incentives to encourage the target audience to track their reading. Unlike a reading log, where the focus is on individual growth, reading challenges center on community – often, the challenge goals are collaborative, and include both individual and group milestones. Ultimately, the goal of any reading challenge is three-fold: to build a culture of reading in a community, to increase book circulation, and to offer insight into the reading habits of students and library patrons. For school administrators and teachers, these insights can provide powerful data to support library funding and to understand how their students measure up to national benchmarks.

Choosing Your Reading Mission

When librarian Linda Eastman created the first reading challenge in 1895, her Cleveland Children’s Library League sparked a movement, inspiring summer reading programs in public libraries around the world. Though Eastman’s focus was on promoting student reading during the summer months, reading challenges have since evolved to encompass a wide variety of goals, timeframes, and themes. Today, reading challenges often focus on encouraging students to move out of their reading “comfort zones” to sample diverse authors or themes. To that end, Beanstack has developed reading competitions for observances like Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Women's History Month. Unlike summer reading challenges, where the focus is on fighting the summer slide, themed reading challenges encourage participants to consider new ideas and experiences and engage in community dialogue. If you’re creating a reading challenge, remember that it can be as specific or sweeping as you like, but it should have a defined start and end date, an attainable yet optimistic goal, and clear milestones for readers to measure their progress. For instance, you could also run a longer reading competition for schools during other times of the year, such as with a winter reading challenge.

Reading Challenges Move From Paper to Digital Reading Logs

Reading challenges work on the principle that the more students practice reading, the more likely they are to reach national benchmarks – and incentivizing students makes it all the more likely. Today, technology has allowed reading programs to move online, making it easier for parents to get involved, for students to connect with one another, and for educators to track progress through reading goals. Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) in Broward County Florida is a case in point. Instructional Facilitator Lourdes Meyer and Curriculum Supervisors Neena Grosvenor and Lynne Oakvick had developed an ongoing paper reading program, Read Across Broward, to support literacy across the district. But after studying reading proficiency among the district’s third graders, the team realized that their existing program wasn’t providing the support their students needed to thrive. They started a coalition called the Broward Campaign for Grade-Level Reading and made it their mission to find innovative solutions to increase participation in their independent reading program. Beanstack’s digital app was the solution they were searching for. Using Beanstack, BCPS ditched their clunky paper-based program, moving Read Across Broward into the digital realm. To make sure teachers and librarians felt supported, the team organized an official Beanstack launch, which included technical training and insight on Beanstack’s data analytics platform. The program was wildly successful, with more than 350,000 books logged from August 2018 to March 2019. At the top performing elementary schools, as many as 92% of students are now using Beanstack. As they move forward, BCPS is looking to take the ongoing excitement about Beanstack and use it to support other school-created challenges, including a Minutes Read challenge and Makerspace challenges.

Using Data to Understand Your Readers

With the ability to track readers’ choices and habits, online reading challenges also offer school districts an incredible opportunity to get to know their readers. Understanding students’ reading habits and where their interests lie can help educators target reading initiatives to support students the way they prefer to read, while the data can help identify struggling students who might need more help. This is where Beanstack shines. For administrators, Beanstack provides an analytics dashboard to understand student reading habits and demonstrate the role that school libraries play in academic success. The data also helps administrators and teachers determine how their students match up to national standards. For librarians, Beanstack offers insight into the books students are reading, which guides purchasing decisions and activities. And for students, Beanstack turns reading into a game, with a record of books read, interactive activities, the opportunity to write reviews their peers can read, and badges for reading streaks.

Community Literacy in the Digital Age

When you know your readers, you can fully support them – whether you are an administrator fighting for library funding or a parent tracking your child’s reading habits. Fostering a culture of reading is a community effort, and digital reading challenges provide the structure and motivation students need, along with the data to support long-term student success. Whether it is a single school reading challenge or a district-wide reading challenge, community literacy will grow, test scores will increase, and students will develop a lifelong love of reading.

Ready to kick-off a reading challenge at your library or school? Contact us today for a personalized demo of Beanstack and learn about our library of ready-made templates.

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12 Creative Book Report Projects Your Students Will Love

Whether you’re teaching a whole-class novel, or finishing a round of independent reading or literature circles, post-reading assessments are always more engaging when they’re more than just a test or essay.

Below, you’ll discover a dozen fun book report ideas for your middle or high school ELA students, curated by a team of experienced English teachers.

Choose your favorite projects to offer to students as options on a book report project choice board.

Create a Board Game

When I gave “create a board game about the book you read” as a book report option for my students, I was pleasantly surprised at the results! Quite a few students excitedly chose this option and created some really fun-looking games centered on their books. 

This is a great project choice if you’re looking for something that students can’t create by just Googling the book.

Here are some tips and suggestions for assigning a board game book report:

• Give clear parameters and requirements to keep students on track, such as requiring game elements to represent certain literary elements of the book they read.
• Provide suggestions for game components and materials – encourage students to consider the game play and elements of their favorite board games and to use materials they already have at home to create them.
• For a whole-class novel study, consider allowing students to work in teams to create the novel-based board games, then setting aside a class period for students to play each others’ games and see who wins!

If you’re looking to save time… clear directions handouts, lots of suggestions, and a handy grading rubric for a board game post-reading assessment are all included in this resource . Take a look! 

For more independent reading response ideas, check out this post with ideas for fun post-reading projects.

Create a Journey Box

Engaging students in authentic conversations about books is a passion for Carolyn of Middle School Café .  In traditional oral book reports, students simply get up in front of the class and read a summary of the book they read.  Carolyn found this method of oral book reports painful for both her and her students.

Wanting to find a way to help her students talk about their book and keep her class engaged, Carolyn began incorporating Journey Box Book Reports.  A journey box is a shoebox (or bag) that contains artifacts from the story that help the reader share important events from the story. 

Students predetermine what events of the story are most important to share, then they create an artifact to share with the class or small group as they explain the plot.  As an example, Carolyn had a student who read The Diary of Anne Frank.   He created a small 3D tree that he displayed on the desk as he shared about how Anne looked out the window and dreamed of her former life.  It’s a small piece of the story that helps the student explain the plot point and gives the audience something visual to look at and stay engaged. 

Journey Box Book Reports have been successful for Carolyn in both her middle school and high school classrooms.  She does suggest, if using Journey Boxes in older grades, to have students share their stories in small groups.  

Create a Literary Food Truck

If there’s one thing kids love, it’s food – especially high schoolers – and with this in mind, one of Simply Ana P’s favorite ways to recap a class novel or an independent reading unit is with Literary Food Trucks. This is definitely not a new idea, but it’s one that will have you coming back for seconds 🙂 

Ana first tried this project at the end of The Odyssey , where students were able to decide which book(s) they wanted to make the focus of their trucks. The main requirement was that every single choice made had to be intentional and clearly relevant. With this in mind, students could start the planning process. 

You can make the truck’s requirements as simple or as detailed as you prefer, but Ana recommends having students plan: 

• Truck name, design, and branding colors
• Menu design and items (5 items minimum)
• Employee uniforms
• Merch 

Ana includes a writing component by having her students defend all of their selections in the form of a proposal. This is later used in their presentations, and the better (more intentional) their proposal is, the more likely they will win the class vote. This proposal can be anywhere from a few paragraphs to a few pages, depending on what writing goals you have for them, and should definitely include text evidence. 

Part of the beauty of this type of project is that it can be done digital or paper-based. Ana likes to walk her students through a Canva tutorial, where there are even menu templates that students can use so they don’t feel overwhelmed starting from scratch. Or, for more creative students, they can create their trucks on chart paper, poster board, or even 3D dioramas.  After students finish making their food trucks, it’s always fun to take a day for the in-class Food Festival, where students are invited to bring in items from their menus or simply some type of snacks. Some students get super hype about this day and even make/wear aprons or themed employee uniforms. Students are able to walk around, visiting each of their trucks, and casting their votes for Best Food, Most Relevant, and Most Detailed. Have fun and bon appetit !

Create a Mood Board

It can be hard to come up with creative post-reading assessments for your students when they’re done with a full class novel, literature circles, or a choice reading unit. In an attempt to combine 21 st century skills with literary analysis, Samantha from Samantha in Secondary decided to try something a little different. Enter: The Mood Board.

A mood board combines images to elicit a feeling from a viewer much like a writer does with words. The possibilities for using a mood board with your class are endless. Students can create a mood board for an overall book, a character, an event, a theme, a poem, etc. Then, have your students carefully curate a board that is aesthetically pleasing and considers color, space, and design in the execution. As students explain why they’ve made the choices they have, the upper-level thinking comes naturally.

Canva is an excellent tool to use to create your mood boards. Having students interact with software they may be unfamiliar with is a meaningful learning experience in and of itself. If you want to learn more about how to use mood boards in your own classroom, click here to read Samantha’s blog post about it or check out the resource she created that includes done-for-you student instructions, examples, and a rubric here .

Create a New App

How would a character’s life change if there was just the perfect app to solve their conflict??

This is the question Krista from @whimsyandrigor poses to her students as they finish a novel and begin to reflect on the character’s journey. Students begin by discussing all of the details surrounding the protagonist and what they experienced. In small groups and in whole-class discussions, students discuss the conflicts, both internal and external, and then brainstorm all of the realistic and not-so-realistic ways the character could have addressed their problems.

Once students have generated a healthy list of ideas, Krista tells them they get to become an app developer and they must create an app that would greatly benefit a character from their reading.

The requirements are:

• The app cannot already exist.
• The app can be totally unrealistic/not probable.
• The app developer must be able to explain how its features would benefit the character.
• The developer must also create an icon for the App Store.

Here is a print-and-go handout students use to get designing. 

Here are some example apps students could create: to help Will from Jason Reynolds’s Long Way Down , maybe an app that predicts his future would help him decide what to do once he steps off the elevator. Or maybe Romeo from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet would have benefited from a life-detection app that would accurately determine whether or not someone was actually dead.

When students sette on the conflict they want to address and the app that would help, they write a Spill the TEA paragraph, as explained by Krista in this YouTube video .  Using this paragraph organization strategy, students will introduce their app, use evidence to explain how it is necessary for the character, and explain how the app would have benefited or changed the protagonist’s journey.

Now they get to be a graphic designer as they design the app’s icon. Students may want to peruse the actual App Store to get ideas about how an icon is designed, what elements must be present, and how to create something that is eye-catching.

If space allows, Krista encourages you to display the icons and Spill the TEA paragraphs in the hallway for other students to see the in-depth critical thinking and character analysis your students did after finishing a novel. 

Who says technology is only a distraction for our students?! This activity proves technology can help students dive deep into a text and its characters!

Write a Vignette

Lesa from SmithTeaches9to12 often focuses on character-based activities for novel studies including a character profile activity , character conversations through text messages , or the writing of a good vignette. 

Vignettes can be a great way to assess students’ literary analysis skills and understanding of the text. Students write a short piece of about 500 words that is descriptive of a particular moment in time focusing on one of the book’s characters. These moments could be placing the character in a new setting, writing about a particular moment in the story that was less developed, or even extending to a moment beyond the book’s conclusion. Lesa provides students with some mentor texts, including “My Name” by Sandra Cisneros in The House on Mango Street or “The Prisoner Van” by Charles Dickens in Sketches by Boz or even one from a novel being read in class. Review the stories for structure, language choice, sentence structure, use of figurative language, and so on. This helps to co-create the criteria for the assignment. Then students write their own vignette. Build in some peer review as an accountability piece and voila!

Create a Character Collage

It’s safe to say that most English teachers have a bin of cut-up magazines somewhere in their classrooms. While these tattered copies of People and Us Weekly have definitely seen better days, they live on in the many collage creations of our students.

Katie from Mochas and Markbooks loves to use collages as visual representations of comprehension. After reading a novel or short story, creating a character collage to show how a character has evolved from beginning to end requires students to use higher order thinking skills to analyze, synthesize and demonstrate their understanding of characterization by dividing their page in half and choosing words and images to represent the character at the start and conclusion of the story on each side.

The results will show the depth of your students’ interpretation of character as well as their ability to use critical and creative thinking skills to represent their knowledge.

Other ways to use this idea instead of showing character evolution are to show two different sides to a character, for example, who they are with different people in their lives. 

If you are looking for other ways to incorporate collage and magazines into your post-reading assessments, check out this blog post for more ideas!

Design Shoe Charms

Crocs are not Olivia ’s shoe of choice, but when she noticed her students bedazzling their plastic footwear with shoe charms, it was a learning opportunity she just couldn’t pass up. Here’s how to make it work in your classroom:

First, have your students choose a character from the book they have finished reading. Then encourage them to find quotes from the book that reveal the character’s interests, values, or personality. Once they have found their quotes (she has her students find 4), tell them to design and color shoe charms that represent those interests, values, or personality traits. This helps students with inferencing, textual evidence, and even symbolism!

When your students have finished making their shoe charms, they can either tape the charms to their shoes for a fabulous, foot-themed fashion show, or they can glue them to a picture of a Croc for quirky classroom décor. Check out this Instagram post to see the charms Olivia’s students came up with!

Create a Movie Poster

When was the last time you went to the movies? Did you notice the posters along the way? If yes then you have walked down the movie studio promotional lane. Like trailers, studios create movie posters to grab the attention of movie-goers before they even enter the theater. Yes, you may have already purchased your movie ticket, but those posters were created for the future. After you finish watching Sonic 2 , what movie will you see next? You probably already pointed to that poster on the way into the theater and said, “That looks like it is going to be good. I want to see that!”   As a post reading idea, Sharena from The Humble Bird Teacher has her students create movie posters based on the text read in class. This allows her to complete a formative assessment on what the students learned from the text. Before having her class create a movie poster, she shows them examples of posters from different genres such as drama, action, family-friendly, and comedy. Then she hands out a piece of construction paper and goes over the basic requirements. On the movie poster, the students are required to have their actors names or image (characters), the title of the movie, a visual (setting or symbol from the story), and a tagline, and a short two to three sentence summary of the movie. Once her students are finished with the assignment, she displays them outside the classroom, so the students can have their own movie studio promotional lane.  If you are looking for more after reading ideas, click here .

Try Novel Engineering

Whether you’ve been hoping to collaborate with another department, or just really want to try something new, Novel Engineering is an amazing way to get students thinking outside of the box ! Staci from Donut Lovin’ Teacher has found that Novel Engineering requires students to actively comprehend and interact with a novel and get creative about how to help improve the lives of characters! Basically, students work to create a product that will help solve a character’s problem. Here’s how it works…

Before reading : Choose a narrative text where the character faces tangible conflicts. Model and practice the design process in small ways. Try using picture books like Mucha! Muncha! Mucha! in order for students to see and practice what they’ll be doing with a text at grade-level.

While reading : Emphasize the conflicts characters face and give students time to brainstorm possible products that would help solve said problem. Make sure students record evidence from the text so they can later justify the need for the product they design.

After reading : Give students time to draft, craft, and improve their designs that will help solve a problem faced by a character. You can give students options where they draw their creation, make their creation, or even plan a digital app like this, depending on time and resources. Whatever you choose, students will be sure to be pushed to use some skills they may not always practice in an ELA classroom!

Staci has some FREE Novel Engineering Digital Planning Pages or you can read more about her experience with novel engineering on the Donut Lovin’ Teacher blog .

Create a Tik Tok Video

How many times have you passed a group of students filming a TikTok in a hallway? Have you had students ask to film in your class once they finish assignments? You are not alone. Students love TikTok and Yaddy from Yaddy’s Room has figured out how to get students using TikTok for academic purposes!

Yaddy likes to challenge students to create TikTok videos that track a character’s development, encapsulates the main theme of the story, or that exemplifies a key conflict. These easy, low stress videos are great at getting even reluctant students to participate.

To incorporate TikTok videos as a means of assessing students after a novel or story, try the following steps:

1)      Get students to brainstorm which part of the novel they would like to use for their video.

2)      Ask students to start combing TikTok for an audio that fits with the portion of the text they chose

3)      Ask them to plan out how they will realize their vision

4)      Rehearse and film!

5)      Bonus: ask students to upload their videos to Google Drive and share the link with you so that you can make QR codes to post around your classroom!

Want to get started using TikTok videos for book reports? Check on Yaddy’s free planning sheet here !

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17 Best Online Summer Reading Challenge Ideas for Kids

17 summer reading challenge ideas & summer reading programs for kids.

Ah, the dog days of summer. Memories of long, luxurious days in the warm sunshine with the pool sparkling and ready. I'm ready for popsicles, watermelon, and a beach vacation. Are you?

The nice thing about a day at the beach, by the pool, or inside with the air conditioner blasting is - they all go very well with a good book, and a summer reading challenge for our kids!

Here are some great ideas for summer reading programs - I hope one or all of them will work for you and your family as they have mine. Enjoy!

• Do summer reading programs work?

The dreaded summer reading slide is a big deal and yes - it's a real thing. When kids are not exposed to reading and learning over long breaks of school, such as over the summer months, they can backslide.

But the great thing about the summer months is the amazing amount of great learning opportunity all around you!

When you are on vacation, learn about the places around you. Search for facts about places you haven't been, even in your own hometown.

And of course - READ! Make sure your child's summer is full of reading and great books. This will give your child such a boost in their growth and education.

Here is a video I found on YouTube about a great mom who is not letting her kiddos take a vacation from learning, even though they are on vacation from school!

Planning a summer reading program  

Start in May or earlier to really have a great, solid reading plan in place to make your child's summer reading more successful. But of course, if you are reading this in June or July, just start today!

There are so many options for getting creative with summer reading challenges. You really only have to pick the program (or programs you want to do, print out whatever information is need, and go for it!)

If there are several programs you and your child choose to do, you can either do them at the same time and have books count for the same reading challenges, or plan to work the programs consecutively. You can't go wrong either way!

Don't forget your local public library for the reading programs they will put on, and you can always join or create a Kid's Reading Club too, for some added fun!

Get your Reading Summer Challenge here, plus all kinds of bookish freebies, like Popsicle bookmarks and Fourth of July bookmarks!

Online summer reading programs

I did a little research looking for online programs to get kids reading. Here is a list of options for choosing reading programs, although I'm sure you can find more! Lots of companies host reading programs as an incentive for customers and also to boost communities. 

• Barnes and Noble Summer Reading Program

The Barnes and Noble Summer Program is a great option to earn a free book! You can fill out this form to earn your book, and then take it into a Barnes and Noble store to redeem.

This is a great way to get your child reading this summer!

- Go here for more details.

• Feed Your Brain Summer Reading Program from Half Price Books.

Half Price Books has a great 15-minutes-a-day reading program to get kids and teens reading through the summer. Available are reading logs, online storytimes, weekly social giveaways, and free coloring sheets.

- Go here to find out more details.

• Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge

Here's a great way to keep kids engaged in summer reading - The Scholastic Summer Read-a-Palooza! Kids are encouraged to track their reading in a free online Scholastic-provided resource with books, games and events. As kids reach tracking goals, they receive rewards and unlock book donations for others. Double win!

Head here to find out more about this fun program.

• Coaching for Literacy Summer Reading Program

Not only does this one get your kiddo reading, but you are making an impact to increase literacy rates. Coaching for Literacy exists to raise awareness about the problem of illiteracy and funds for literacy programs serving students in grades K-3. They are connectors bringing individuals closer to the issue of illiteracy, with a core belief that literacy is a fundamental right of every individual. Here are the points to know about their summer reading program..

• This summer, Coaching for Literacy is challenging readers – young, old and in-between – to push their reading habits by committing to read as many books as they can having started May 31st – September 7th.
• Readers are invited to ask friends and family to support them by pledging per book read or by making a donation. This campaign is free and fundraising is optional.
• Everyone who signs up to challenge their reading habits automatically gets entered into a drawing for a Barnes & Noble gift card. PLUS, every 2 books a reader completes throughout the summer, their name automatically gets re-entered into the drawing!
• Every donation made will be matched 3x up to $5,000!
• Readers can join at any time and do not have to commit to the entire summer.

Go here to find out more.

• Join the Ultimate Book Adventure

Want your child to be independently reading? Then sign him up for this Ultimate Book Adventure - virtual delights await with this fun, free program.

Sort of a fun "gaming system" where kids who read at home log their reading, take little quizzes and make their way further into the game. A great positive reinforcement platform for encouraging kids to read. I particularly like the "virtual reading pet". Looks fun!

• Broncos Bookworms Summer Reading Program

Calling all football fans! The Denver Broncos have a fun summer reading program where kids get to log 10 books they read over the summer in their playbook.

Rewards include a certificate, bookmark, attendance at an event at Empower Field, plus other prize possibilities, presented by IHOP!

• Read Your Way to Fenway

Or.. maybe you are a Boston Red Sox fan? If you live in the area, or are traveling to the Boston area this summer, check out this deal for kids to read books and earn the chance to be entered into a drawing to win tickets to a baseball game!

This is a golden opportunity for baseball fans. Details look to be released in June.

Go here to find out more at the Boston Public Library.

• Books A Million Summer Reading Adventures

You know those funny Dog Man and Captain Underpants books that kids love? Well, last year the author Dave Pilkey teamed up with Books A Million to get kids reading in summertime. It will be interesting to see what they come up with in the summer of 2021~

• HEBuddy Summer Reading Club

I think you can do this one, even if you aren't from the great state of Texas! 

Use the available reading log on their website to record 10 books that your child reads, mail it in and get an awesome t-shirt!

Go here for more info.

• SYNC Summer Audiobooks for Teens

For teens ages 13+, this fun program gets teens reading with one free audiobook a week. That is a GREAT deal!

Go here to sign up and get more info.

• Showcase Cinema Bookworm Wednesdays

If you live near or will be by a Showcase Cinema, check out their Bookworm Wednesdays! Kids can show up with a written book report on Wednesdays to get a free movie ticket.

Movie lovers, this one is perfect for you!

• Free Online Outschool Summer Camps

Consider these amazing virtual (and free!) summer camps for your kids. There are just a ton to look over, and find out which one would fit your child.

This is a great way to keep learning over the summer, and to have fun doing it. 

• Lifeway Summer Reading Program

Get a free Bible and a free book with this summer reading program! 

Check out the page to find out when they update information for 2021.

• DOGObooks Summer Reading Adventure

This fun website is all about kids reading books and giving kid's book reviews. Join in on the fun by reading books, and giving as many book reviews as you can to be eligible to receive prizes.

Go here to find out more info.

• Reading Horizons Summer Reading

Check out the Reading Horizons summer reading program! Perfect for not only beginning readers, but older readers. Also great for anyone who struggles with reading to learn how or focus on strengthening skills.

Information for 2021 yet to be posted, but keep this page bookmarked for info soon!

• The Pizza Hut Book It Program

This program has been around for many years - I can even remember working on getting my pizza coupon as a kid back in the 80's! So you know it's a good program - and let's face it - pizza will never go out of style.

I'm calling this one a bonus because it's actually a Spring and Fall program. They also have a "Give Me 20" program for early readers to look into.

Go here to find out more about this deal.

• Braums Book Buddy Reading Program

Not a summer program, but a school-year program, like the Pizza Hut Book-It, the Braums Book Buddy Program is a great idea to keep kids reading, providing wonderful goal incentives to get lots of reading in, and being proud of book-reading accomplishments.

A great way to read good books, and enjoy up to 6 ice cream treats while doing it!

Go here for more info about the Braums Book Buddy Program.

• Local summer reading programs

Want to find a local summer reading challenge idea or program? Head over to your local public library to see what is available (or look for them online), or you can even Google it.

I can almost guarantee that your local library is going to have something fun planned for the summer, even if it is digital only!

Type it into the search bar of Google, check the map below, or click here >> Summer Reading Programs Near Me

More fun summer reading ideas:

~~ Reading Rewards Chart - Monthly Rewards Charts for the year!

~~ 1 2 Ways and Benefits of Reading with your Child - A Parent's MUST-READ!

• Summer reading challenge ideas

Come up with your own incentives at home to make up your own reading challenges, and/or try some of the local or online reading programs that you can find!

• Summer reading challenge printable

Come up with a challenge for your kiddo that is tailored to what she might like. Put up a reading chart or some kind of incentive to have a goal for reading a certain number of books or amounts of time.

The Great Summer Reading Challenge that I put together is sort of an "all the places you can read" challenge. It's free! Just print it out, tweak it, and use it to motivate your reader. That link signs you up for all sorts of free bookish goodies for your kids.

I also found a few other fun printable reading challenges for you! Check out:

25 Day Reading Challenge for Kids

Summer Reading Challenge

Highlights Summer Reading Bingo

Get your creative juices flowing to come up with your own ideas for a summer reading program!

As you can see there are lots of options that you can use for your own to create a reading program for your child. You can make one up at home, tape it onto the fridge and go for it, you can join online programs that help kids make great reading progress, or you can join local programs in your own community!

Whatever you choose for your summer reading challenges, be sure to MAKE IT FUN!

Let me know what your summer reading goals are in the comments and remember to download your Great Summer Reading Challenge printable for FREE!

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• Planning a summer reading program 

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For Enthusiastic Readers, the Plant-curious and those that need coffee to function

The ultimate master list of reading challenges.

Looking for reading challenges to up your reading game? Ready to try a different one than you’ve been doing for years or want something a little more niche? 

Check out the master list of reading challenges – where you’ll find yearly, monthly, and other challenges. This will be updated regularly so make sure to check back.

Want to add your reading challenge (or suggest one you’ve found) to the list? Fill out this Google form and we’ll get it added.  

Want to track your reading challenges in one spot? Here’s our tracker spreadsheet!

YEAR LONG CHALLENGES

• 24B4MONDAY Readathon
• Book Riot's 'Read Harder' 2022 Challenge
• POPSUGAR's 2022 Reading Challenge
• The Uncorked Librarian 2022 Reading Challenge
• The Unread Shelf Project
• Around the Year (ATY) in 52 Books Reading Challenge 2022
• Read Women Challenge 2021
• 52 Books Challenge
• NetGalley and Edelweiss Reading Challenge
• Diversify Your Reading Challenge 2021
• American Indian Library Association's Read Native Challenge
• AtoZ Reading Challenge
• Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge
• Back to the Classics Challenge
• Black Book Card Challenge
• Flourish and Blotts 2022 Harry Potter Challenge - The Ordinary Wizarding Levels (O.W.L.s) Reading Challenge
• Beat the Backlist Reading Challenge
• Books in the Freezer Horror Challenge
• Buzzword Reading Challenge 2022
• Monthly Moods 2022
• 50 States, 50 Horror Books

READING CHALLENGES BY MONTH

Four Nations Readathon

Bout of Books – January 3-9, 2022

Bout of Books – May 9-15, 2022

The Adventuresses’ Club Readathon – August 1-8, 2022

Bout of Books – August 15-21, 2022

Vault-A-Thon: The Disney Vault Read-a-thon – September 21-27, 2020

Queer Lit Readathon (Autumn Queer Weekend) – September 26-27, 2020

Hocus Pocus Readathon – October 1-31, 2020

Off the Grid Readathon – October 16-18, 2020

Queer Lit Readathon  – November 29-December 5, 2020

One of the biggest challenges you’ll face when running a Readathon effectively is keeping members engaged. If you happen to be a book club organizer, you can customize medals for your Readathon activities, and the medals are invaluable to participants who insist on finishing their readings. Interested in Readathon medals? Design now.

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15 Creative and digital book report ideas that will get your students excited to read

Not all students are excited to read a book. So how can you make reading a book more engaging and fun? This is a huge challenge for most teachers, so I hope I can help you out!

Here’s what you’ll find in this blog post (click on the title if you want to jump to the section directly)

5 tips to get your students excited about reading

• 15 creative and digital book report lesson plans (free & ready to use!)
• The complete collection of book report lesson ideas in one assignment (your students get to choose!)

Instructions on how to use these digital book report lesson activities

Before you dive into the book reports, you have to get your students excited about reading first. In this previous post about reading, I’ve listed 10 tips that will encourage your students to read . I’ve come up with 5 more amazing tips! Here we go:

1. Use AR apps

Here are a few apps with amazing storylines and AR books.

• Wonderscope , for example, is an excellent storytelling tool. It uses augmented reality to transform ordinary places into real-time stories. Students also learn to read with the app. They ask questions to the characters in the story and listen to the characters’ answers.
• The Ghostkeeper’s journal and field guide : This book is an immersive adventure for readers aged 10 and up, offering several AR experiences to enhance the storyline. These are accessed via a mobile app “ Ghost-o-Matic ”.
• Bookful creates an engaging reading experience and brings stories and characters in books to life. The app holds the world’s largest 3D/AR library with hundreds of titles from leading publishers and brands such as: The Tale of Peter Rabbit, DK’s Encyclopedia, and children’s favorites such as Barbie, My Little Pony, Thomas & Friends, Transformers, and The Smurfs.

2. Escape lessons

Here are 3 fun ready-to-use escape lessons to spark your students’ joy of reading:

• A Halloween Murder : Let your students investigate the murder of the victim: Brat Spook. When they find the murderer, they get their “inspector” badge. Let them look for evidence in the murder scene, talk to suspects, analyze lab results, and so on!
• Finding Rudolph : Save Christmas by helping Santa find back Rudolph. Students go through different challenges, talk to eye-witnesses, and follow Rudolph through a winter maze, so Santa can deliver all the presents to the children.
• Easter Bunny Substitute : Can your students find a good Easter Bunny replacement? In the last breakout game for the classroom, the Easter Bunny is hurt, so your students need to interview the possible applicants and take tests to replace the Easter Bunny themselves. If they succeed in the challenges, they get an Easter Bunny substitute badge.

3. Storytelling

If you bring cultural elements into your lessons by telling a story, your students will be more eager to learn. Storytelling makes students want to “live the story”. And they do this by reading it. If your story is strong enough, your students will love learning and reading. They will even remember the lesson content better.

Here’s a fun & ready-to-use example: The life of William Shakespeare

4. First chapters

5. Books & sleepovers

You can even add different parts to your sleepover. For example, let students read their favorite passage in a book of choice out loud, and 1 hour before bedtime, all your students take their book and read in silence. Or how about creating cozy themed corners? Fantasy, science fiction, detectives,… When your students are reading in themed corners, they get the full experience. They can even dress up as a character in their book whilst reading.

15 Creative and digital book report lesson plans

Step 1: Get your students excited about reading. ✅ Step 2: make sure they don’t lose their interest when you’re announcing the book report assignment! ☑️ This part can be demotivating.

As the lower grade students often still get fun book report assignments, the higher grade students often get a dull worksheet where they have to describe the characters and give a summary. Change up your book report assignments with these creative, free & ready-to-use lesson ideas.

Take a look at all these ready-to-use and free digital book report activities. They’re all made with BookWidgets . You can even make exercises like these yourself in your own BookWidgets account.

Keep on reading to find out how to use these exercises in your lessons.

How did your students experience the book? Let them fill the glasses with drawings of the storyline/the book. The glasses represent the view of the students. Students can get really creative and use the toolbar at the bottom to draw and type.

You can ask your students to present their book report artworks to the other students as well. This way, your students can explain what’s on their drawing.

2. Bookworm

3. Timeline

This interactive book report asks your students to create a timeline of the story. When did what happen, chronologically? The have to add the biggest events in the story to the timeline.

4. Comic book

In this book report exercise, your students have to write a comic book based upon the book they’ve just read. When they click on the “start” icon, they can choose fitting text balloons to go with their story.

Here are three other fun websites that let students create comic books: Storyboard That , Comic Life , and Toonytool . They already give you creative templates and drawings. This is a bit easier for students. This way, they don’t have to start from scratch.

5. Character portrait

6. Randomness task

Just… add a little spice. I’ve turned the ordinary book report task, where students have to describe characters, the setting, plot, etc., into an exciting one. Your students don’t know yet what they’ll have to describe. They spin the randomness wheel and their task appears. The fun thing about this one is that all of your students will write a different book report.

7. Book cover

Here, students get to be creative and invent their own book cover (front and back) of the book they just read. Or maybe just a cover for of a piece of text you’ve read out loud. They can use the whiteboard tools: pencil, type tool, switch colors, add images, etc.

8. Character family tree

This digital mind map exercise allows your students to add boxes with text and connect them to each other. This is perfect for a book report activity focusing on the characters in their book.

9. Facebook Profile

Modern days call for modern book report lesson ideas. Image the main character having a Facebook profile. What would be on it? That’s exactly what your students have to figure out here. Create a Facebook profile about the main character.

10. Book Collage

Here, students have to add 10 pictures or images that have to do with the book. They can do so by clicking on the photo icon and adding images into their collage.

11. Mirror selfie

In this creative book report, students have to dress up like the character in their book, including holding 3 attributes that refer to the personality of the main character. They have to take a picture or mirror selfie of themselves dressed up, and add that picture to the whiteboard. You can ask them to come forward and present their images and explain why they’ve chosen those specific attributes.

The fun thing about all of these exercises is that they work on smartphones as well. So in this case, students can just open the exercise on their smartphones, take a mirror selfie with their phones and add it to the mirror in the digital whiteboard exercise.

12. Email to the author

Your students have the chance to write a friendly email or letter to the author of the book they just read. Students have to share:

• their opinion;
• the character in the book they liked most, and why;
• their favorite part of the book and why;
• questions that they have about the book.

If you have an email address of the author, ask your students to submit their works to you, the teacher, first. After having given feedback on their letters, they can make some changes and send it over to the author.

If you have the author’s postal address, it’s much more fun to write a classic letter.

13. Conversation between characters

There is something called a “texting thumb” or a “smartphone pinky”. This shows that students like to send texts. A lot of them. So why not include it in your book report lesson plan? In this digital book report, students have to invent a conversation between two characters in their book.

14. Movie vs. Book

A lot of books have a movie version too. If your students choose a book that also has a movie, it’s interesting to let your students make a comparison. With this book report exercise, you’re also sure your students actually read the book instead of just watching the movie and write a summary of the movie and not the book.

15. Emoji summary

The last exercise is also one students can relate to. Nowadays, we use emojis after almost every sentence when we’re communicating with friends. Emojis also have a strong meaning and can be used to express feelings or say something without actually saying it.

The complete collection of book report lesson ideas in one assignment

All these book report exercises are so much fun and yet they don’t take up a lot of time. Perhaps they just ask your students to only describe a certain part about the book. Cue… the planner widget.

With this type of BookWidgets activity, you can combine several lessons into one. You can let your students take matters into their own hands and choose which book report activities they’d like to finish.

It’s actually pretty easy. Your students read the instructions in the instructions widget and then start adding at least three book report activities to their planner. They finish the activities, submit them to their teacher, check off their planner, and that’s it!

Above, you can find the 15 ready-to-use book report activities. You can use these lesson examples for free. Since they’re all made with BookWidgets, I’ve listed them in this BookWidgets group . Here’s what you need to do:

• Click on this link . It will immediately bring you to the group with all of the book report activities. If you don’t have a BookWidgets account yet, you’ll have to sign up first for free .
• Duplicate all the book report activities. Click on the settings wheel , select all widgets , click on the settings wheel again, choose duplicate selected widgets . Choose where you want to save the activities in your BookWidgets account.
• Go to your saved book report lessons. You can now click on the black dropdown arrow next to the ‘Show’ button of a particular exercise and select Edit . You can make some changes to this activity (if you want). If it’s perfect for you, click on Share in the upper right corner.
• Share this link with your students. When they click on it, they can fill it out. A lot of the book report examples above have been made with BookWidgets’ Whiteboard widget, in which students can use the tool menu at the bottom to switch tools (draw, type,…), and to switch colors. When done, they can submit the book reports to you by clicking on the envelope in the upper right corner.
• As a teacher, you go to “Grades & reporting” in BookWidgets to find your students’ answers.

Of course, now that you’ve got your own BookWidgets account, you can also create book report activities or other assignments yourself!

Attention! Once your free trial runs out, you’ll only be able to use the widgets you’ve already finished/shared with students. While your BookWidgets account will still work and you’ll still get your students’ results with the free BookWidgets version, you won’t be able to duplicate widgets nor create new widgets yourself anymore.

So that’s it! I hope these lesson ideas are useful for your classroom or at least give you lots of new ideas for your book report lessons! You can even create ones yourself!

Create your first digital book report with BookWidgets

Have fun, share this with fellow teachers and keep on rocking your classroom!

Join hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and get the best content on technology in education.

BookWidgets enables teachers to create fun and interactive lessons for tablets, smartphones, and computers.

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Top 5 Creative Book Report Ideas That Guarantee Success in Class

Assigned reading helps students develop their critical analysis skill, and book reports test their progress. But it is not enough to simply analyze a literary work — you also need to express your creativity while presenting book report ideas. In this article, you will learn the definition of a literary report, its purpose, and five alternative book report ideas to show off your creativity in class.

What is a book (literary) report?

A book report is an overall summary and personal assessment of a book that includes key details like the title, writer, text type, and genre. Literary reports also include a concise retelling of the story's plot. It typically examines the main protagonists, motifs, and the writer's intentions. 

These reviews often include the reader's personal reflections, assessing the story’s strong and weak points and the impact it had on the audience. This type of assignment helps students improve their critical analysis, writing, and comprehension skills by encouraging them to engage deeply with the story.

Main goals of book reviews

Literary reports serve several key purposes in the educational process:

• Improving understanding of the written material. Book reports encourage students to demonstrate how they understood the story's content, themes, and messages. By making a summary of the story’s plot, analyzing motifs, and discussing characters, students engage deeply with the writing.
• Developing critical analysis abilities. Preparing a literary review requires students to critically analyze what they've read. They must assess the book's strong and weak points, the writer’s purpose, and the effect the story has on its audience.
• Encouraging personal reflection. Book reports often ask students to relate the motifs or circumstances of the book to their own experiences or to the wider world, fostering personal reflection and a deeper connection with the written story.
• Boosting communication skills. By discussing their opinions and interpretations in a book review, students find new ways to express their impressions and defend their viewpoints, which is an essential aspect of effective communication.

These purposes make book reviews a crucial part of your learning process. That’s why you need to put effort into your submission. And to make sure you get the highest score for your project, we prepared five fun book report ideas that you can use as your inspiration!

Top 5 alternative book report ideas

1. book report board game ideas.

A book report board game would probably be the most unexpected way of presenting your book review in school. This is a great idea to include the whole class in a playful manner while allowing them to learn about the story’s main motifs and messages in practice.

Here is a brief tutorial on how to make your book review into a full-fledged board game:

• Center your attention on the main storyline, its protagonists, and events from the book to form the game's foundation.
• Decide on the game goal that reflects the book's story, like reaching a destination or solving a mystery.
• Establish clear rules for movement, challenges, and interactions that closely follow the book’s plot.
• Introduce cards or dice to add randomness and represent plot twists or special actions.
• Playtest the game, adjust as needed, and explain how it connects to the book's motifs and setting when presenting.

With this option, you will surely present a unique and well thought-out book report idea in your class.

2. Soundtrack playlist

Music is one of the most beautiful art forms. Combining music and literature can result in a wonderful blend of emotions.

To use music as one of the alternative book reports, you can compile a playlist of songs that reflect the mood, motifs, or key moments of the story. For each song, prepare a short explanation of its relatability to specific protagonists, events, or the general vibe of the story.

3. Write a character diary

Character diaries are a solid project idea for a book report. This medium allows you to capture a character’s feelings and reflect on how they change throughout the progression of the book.

To create a character diary for a book review, use these steps:

• Select a main character whose perspective will offer deep insights into the story.
• Draft diary entries from this character’s point of view, capturing their ideas, feelings, and reactions to central events in the book.
• Include flashbacks on how the character grows throughout the book, highlighting significant changes or realizations.
• Incorporate details about the character’s relationships and how essential plot events affected their personal journey.

This report idea provides an unorthodox, personal perspective on the book’s narrative and gives you an opportunity to relive the character’s emotions and decisions.

4. Newspaper front page

In fiction, newspapers are often used to underline the importance of an event. So why not copy this idea and choose a newspaper as one of your creative book report ideas?

To do this, design a newspaper front page featuring headlines, articles, and images that report on the book’s major events as if they were real news. Include interviews, editorials, and advertisements related to the story. Don’t forget about the style of newspaper writing, and use it as another tool to make your review more creative and entertaining.

5. Book in a box

This is one of the most creative book report ideas. A book in a box refers to a hand-made project where you create a 3D representation inside a box to illustrate a significant scene or location from a book. The hand-made diorama should include detailed elements such as characters, objects, and the environment from the selected scene.

To make a book in a box report, use this short guide:

• Choose a key scene or setting from the book to depict.
• Use a box to build a replica of the chosen scene, including detailed backgrounds, characters, and plot-relevant objects.
• Label the details inside the box to explain their relevance to the scene or story.
• Prepare a short description of the scene to give your viewers necessary context.

This approach provides an interactive opportunity to showcase key events of the book, bringing the story's environment and pivotal moments to life.

Create fun book report ideas with Aithor!

With our trust-worthy AI generator, you can find the most creative book report ideas and amaze classmates. Simply give Aithor prompt to create a creative book project ideas and become the talk of your literature class!

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Best Reading Challenge Ideas & Contests for Your Classroom

There’s nothing like a reading challenge to get kids excited about picking up a book! Whether they’re competing against each other, themselves, or working together to earn a prize for the whole class, reading challenges are a tried-and-true way to encourage kids to read. Below, we share some of our favorite reading challenge ideas and contests for the classroom.

How to Start Your Reading Challenge

First, pick a number of books to tackle. Younger children who are reading early readers and picture books will be able to read more than older kids who are reading chapter books—you want a challenge, not a cakewalk, but don’t make it impossible either! Four chapter books in a month or 10 picture books or early readers is a good place to start; if your students crush their goal, add another book to the challenge next month!

While 52 books in 52 weeks and challenges of that nature are common for adults, for classrooms it’s a good idea to set a more specific theme to help students broaden their horizons. Choose a theme that relates to a recent or current learning unit or choose from one of the themes below. Create a log for students to track their reading and make sure you have fun prizes to reward their efforts. Purchase small prizes so everyone’s individual work is rewarded, then plan a group prize like a pajama day or pizza party if everyone in the classroom hits their goal.

Here are some theme ideas:

Books About a Different Time

You can leave this open-ended so students can choose any timeframe they’re interested in learning about or you can link it up with a recent history lesson and choose a specific era. Make sure you provide a list of relevant books if you’re sticking with a certain timeframe so students have some ideas to choose from!

Books About a Different Place

Reading about different countries and regions in a textbook is one thing, but reading stories from the perspective of those living there is another. Encourage students to select books set in faraway places or choose a specific place you’ve recently been studying in the classroom. You can also move through a continent each month and travel the whole world by the end of the school year.

Books About Animals

Let kids choose to read books about their favorite animals, a type of animal, or any animal at all! You might want to have them read one non-fiction book and one fiction book about each animal they choose to read about.

Books About Magical Worlds

Books don’t just have the ability to transport us to different places on the globe—they also take us to make-believe worlds full of magic. Some of the most treasured children’s books take place in alternate realities where magic is real.

Books That Have Won the Caldecott Medal

Speaking of treasured books, one way to ensure your students are reading quality literature is to create a challenge that has them reading Caldecott Medal winners. There’s no shortage of books to choose from here and your school library may already have a section devoted to them.

Books That Your Parents Loved When They Were Kids

Here’s a great way to foster a love of reading within the family—have students ask their parents about their favorite books when they were kids, then read them for your reading challenge.

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Reading Competition Ideas for the Classroom

Right to Read Week Theme Ideas

Kids love a challenge, so why not combine that passion with the lesson plans for your classroom? When you make reading into a competition, kids who otherwise wouldn't want to read will be excited to read as much as they can. Find ways to incorporate reading competition ideas into your classroom and you'll find a new group of reading fans in your midst.

Raise Funds

Turn a reading competition into a way to raise funds for your classroom or school. Give students a reading goal sheet and ask them to collect donations from family, friends and neighbors. Adults can pledge a certain monetary amount per book read or a flat fee for the whole competition. Then as students read they can record their progress on a log or chart and use that to collect their donations after the reading competition is over. The money can be used to buy new books for the classroom or school to renew kids' interest in reading all over again.

Personal Goals Challenge

Sometimes a single classroom will have students who read voraciously while others struggle with reading on even a basic level. In order to even out this playing field, have students work with the teacher to set individual reading challenges. A strong reader might challenge herself to read 10 books in two weeks while a slower or reluctant reader might try to read one new book at a higher reading level than what he has read before. When students meet their own challenges they win points in the competition, so no one has to compete on exactly the same level as someone else.

Milestones and Major Rewards

One way to encourage students to read more is to reward them as they go. Give small prizes, such as stickers or bookmarks, for every book a student reads. When he hits a larger milestone, such as finishing five books or 100 pages, give him a larger reward such as a free homework pass or a visit to the classroom prize box. Sometimes you can even ask local businesses to donate prizes, such as coupons for free meals at restaurants or video rentals. These types of incentives will keep kids engaged in a reading challenge all year long. Track the progress that students make, and at the end of the year hold an award ceremony for family and friends to show off what they have done.

Around Town

Bring reading into the community by challenging your students to read in creative ways. Give students a reading scavenger hunt to complete, such as reading a book in public, reading a book to younger students and reading to residents in a retirement home. Challenge students to read as many pages as they can in one weekend, or to get their own library cards and bring them in to show you in order to win a prize. These types of activities work for students on any reading level, so no one has to feel left out of the competition. What's more, they remind students that reading isn't just for classroom use, it's for any time and any place.

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The Past The Present The Future Different Places Different Peoples Different Cultures, and New Skills

"A Reading Competition that provides FUN while you LEARN"

Instructions.

1. Register to start participating in the competition using the REGISTER button for your reading Level. (Ages 5 through 12: LEVEL 1 / Ages 13 though 18: LEVEL 2) REGISTER ONLY ONCE 2. To report on other books read throughout the competition, use the LOGIN menu (located in the header) to access your level’s LOGIN PLATFORMS and REPORTING PAGES.

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42 Creative Book Report Ideas for Students

Inspire your students to share their love of books.

Responding to what you read is an important literacy skill. Reading about other people’s experiences and perspectives helps kids learn about the world. And although students don’t need to dive deeply into every single book they read, occasionally digging into characters, settings, and themes can help them learn to look beyond the prose. Here are 42 creative book report ideas designed to make reading more meaningful for kids.

1. Concrete Found Poem

This clever activity is basically a shape poem made up of words, phrases, and whole sentences found in the books students read. The words come together to create an image that represents something from the story.

2. Graphic Novel

Have students rewrite the book they are reading, or a chapter of their book, as a graphic novel. Set parameters for the assignment such as including six scenes from the story, three characters, details about the setting, etc. And, of course, include detailed illustrations to accompany the story.

3. Book Snaps

Book Snaps are a way for students to visually show how they are reacting to, processing, and/or connecting with a text. First, students snap a picture of a page in the book they are reading. Then, they add comments, images, highlights, and more.

4. Diary Entry

Have your students place themselves in the shoes of one of the characters from their book and write a first-person diary entry of a critical moment from the story. Ask them to choose a moment in the story where the character has plenty of interaction and emotion to share in a diary entry.

5. Pizza Box Book Report

If you’re looking for creative book report ideas that use upcycled materials, try this one using a pizza box. It works well for both nonfiction and fiction book reports. The top lid provides a picture of the book cover. Each wedge of the pizza pie tells part of the story.

6. Book Jacket

Have students create a new book jacket for their story. Include an attractive illustrated cover, a summary, a short biography of the author, and a few reviews from readers.

7. Mint Tin Book Report

There are so many super-creative, open-ended projects you can use mint tins for. Teacher blogger Teacher Thrive describes the process of creating book reports using them. There’s even a free template for cards that fit inside.

8. Fictional Yearbook Entries

Ask your students to create a yearbook based on the characters and setting in the book. What do they look like? Cut out magazine pictures to give a good visual image for their school picture. What kind of superlative might they get? Best-looking? Class clown? What clubs would they be in or lead? Did they win any awards? It should be obvious from their small yearbooks whether your students dug deep into the characters in their books. They may also learn that who we are as individuals is reflected in what we choose to do with our lives.

9. Book Report Cake

This project would be perfect for a book tasting in your classroom! Each student presents their book report in the shape of food. Learn more about book tastings .

10. Current Events Comparison

Have students locate three to five current events articles a character in their book might be interested in. After they’ve found the articles, have them explain why the character would find them interesting and how they relate to the book. Learning about how current events affect time, place, and people is critical to helping develop opinions about what we read and experience in life.

11. Sandwich Book Report

Yum! You’ll notice a lot of our creative book report ideas revolve around food. In this oldie but goodie, each layer of this book report sandwich covers a different element of the book—characters, setting, conflict, etc.

12. Book Alphabet

Choose 15 to 20 alphabet books to help give your students examples of how they work around themes. Then ask your students to create their own Book Alphabet based on the book they read. What artifacts, vocabulary words, and names reflect the important parts of the book? After they find a word to represent each letter, have them write one sentence that explains where the word fits in.

13. Peekaboo Book Report

Using cardboard lap books (or small science report boards), students include details about their book’s main characters, plot, setting, conflict, resolution, etc. Then they draw a head and arms on card stock and attach them to the board from behind to make it look like the main character is peeking over this book report.

14. Act the Part

Have students dress up as their favorite character from the book and present an oral book report. If their favorite character is not the main character, retell the story from their point of view.

15. T-shirt Book Report

Another fun and creative idea: Create a wearable book report with a plain white tee. Come up with your own using Sharpie pens and acrylic paint.

16. Bookmark

Have students create a custom illustrated bookmark that includes drawings and words from either their favorite chapter or the entire book.

17. Rays of Sunshine Book Report

This is great for biography research projects. Students cut out a photocopied image of their subject and glue it in the middle. Then, they draw lines from the image to the edges of the paper, like rays of sunshine, and fill in each section with information about the person. As a book report template, the center image could be a copy of the book cover, and each section expands on key information such as character names, theme(s), conflict, resolution, etc.

18. Reading Lists for Characters

Ask your students to think about a character in their book. What kinds of books might that character like to read? Take them to the library to choose five books the character might have on their to-be-read list. Have them list the books and explain what each book might mean to the character. Post the to-be-read lists for others to see and choose from—there’s nothing like trying out a book character’s style when developing your own identity.

19. Character To-Do List

This fun activity is an off-the-beaten-path way to dive deep into character analysis. Get inside the head of the main character in a book and write a to-do list that they might write. Use actual information from the text, but also make inferences into what that character may wish to accomplish.

20. Collage

Create a collage using pictures and words that represent different parts of the book. Use old magazines or print pictures from the Internet.

21. Book Reports in a Bag

Looking for book report ideas that really encourage creative thinking? With book reports in a bag, students read a book and write a summary. Then, they decorate a paper grocery bag with a scene from the book, place five items that represent something from the book inside the bag, and present the bag to the class.

22. Timeline

Have students create a timeline of the main events from their book. Be sure to include character names and details for each event. Use 8″ x 11″ sheets of paper taped together or a long portion of bulletin board paper.

23. File Folder Book Report

Also called a lap book, this easy-to-make book report hits on all the major elements of a book study and gives students a chance to show what they know in a colorful way.

24. Public Service Announcement

If a student has read a book about a cause that affects people, animals, or the environment, teach them about public service announcements . Once they understand what a PSA is, have them research the issue or cause that stood out in the book. Then provide a template for a storyboard so they can create their own PSA. Some students might want to take it a step further and create a video based on their storyboard. Consider sharing their storyboard or video with an organization that supports the cause or issue.

25. Triorama Book Report

Who doesn’t love a multidimensional book report? This image shows a 3D model, but you can also try an accordion-folded book report, a quadrama, or an info-sphere.

26. Character Cards

Make trading cards (like baseball cards) for a few characters from the book. On the front side, draw the character. On the back side, make a list of their character traits and include a quote or two.

27. Book Report Mobile

This creative project doesn’t require a fancy or expensive supply list. Students just need an ordinary clothes hanger, strings, and paper. The body of the hanger is used to identify the book, and the cards on the strings dangling below are filled with key elements of the book, like characters, setting, and a summary.

28. Fact Sheet

Have students create a list of 10 facts that they learned from reading the book. Have them write the facts in complete sentences, and be sure that each fact is something that they didn’t know before they read the book.

29. Dodecahedron Book Report

Creative book report ideas think outside the box. In this case, it’s a ball! SO much information can be covered on the 12 panels, and it allows students to take a deep dive in a creative way.

30. Be a Character Therapist

Therapists work to uncover their clients’ fears based on their words and actions. When we read books, we must learn to use a character’s actions and dialogue to infer their fears. Many plots revolve around a character’s fear and the work it takes to overcome that fear. Ask students to identify a character’s fear and find 8 to 10 scenes that prove this fear exists. Then have them write about ways the character overcame the fear (or didn’t) in the story. What might the character have done differently?

31. Charm Bracelet Book Report

What a “charming” way to write a book report! Each illustrated bracelet charm captures a character, an event in the plot, setting, or other detail.

32. Mind Maps

Mind maps can be a great way to synthesize what students have learned from reading a book. Plus, there are so many ways to approach them. Begin by writing a central idea in the middle of the page. For example, general information, characters, plot, etc. Then branch out from the center with ideas, thoughts, and connections to material from the book.

33. Book Report Booklets

This clever book report is made from ordinary paper bags. Stack the paper bags on top of each other, fold them in half, and staple the closed-off ends of the bags together. Students can write, draw, and decorate on the paper bag pages. They can also record information on writing or drawing paper and glue the paper onto the pages. The open ends of the bags can be used as pockets to insert photos, cut-outs, postcards, or other flat items that help them tell their story.

34. Letter to the Author

Have kids write a letter to the author of the book. Tell them three things you really liked about the story. Ask three questions about the plot, characters, or anything else you’re curious about.

35. Cardboard Box TV

This cardboard box TV book report project is a low-tech version of a television made from a cereal box and two paper towel rolls. Students create the viewing screen cut out at the top, then insert a scroll of paper with writing and illustrations inside the box. When the cardboard roll is rotated, the story unfolds.

36. Board games

This is a great project if you want your students to develop a little more insight into what they’re reading. Have them think about the elements of their favorite board games and how they can be adapted to fit this assignment.

37. Foldables

From Rainbows Within Reach, this clever idea would be a great introduction to writing book reports. Adapt the flap categories for students at different levels. Adjust the number of categories (or flaps) per the needs of your students.

38. Timeline

Create a timeline using a long roll of butcher paper, a poster board, or index cards taped together. For each event on the timeline, write a brief description of what happens. Add pictures, clip art, word art, and symbols to make the timeline more lively and colorful.

39. Comic Strips

If you’re looking for creative book report ideas for students who like graphic novels, try comic strip book reports. Include an illustrated cover with the title and author. The pages of the book should retell the story using dialogue and descriptions of the setting and characters. Of course, no comic book would be complete without copious illustrations and thought bubbles.

40. Movie Version

If the book your students have read has been made into a movie, have them write a report about how the versions are alike and different. If the book has not been made into a movie, have them write a report telling how they would make it into a movie, using specific details from the book.

41. Wanted Poster

Make a Wanted poster for one of the book’s main characters. Indicate whether they are wanted dead or alive. Include a picture of the character and a description of what the character is “wanted” for, three examples of the character showing this trait, and a detailed account of where the character was last seen.

42. Wheaties Box Book Report

Recycle a cereal box and create a book report to look like an old-fashioned Wheaties box that features sports heroes. Include a main image on the front side of the box. Decorate the sides of the box with information about the book’s characters, setting, plot, summary, etc.

Come share your own creative book report ideas in our We Are Teachers HELPLINE group on Facebook.

Plus, dont’ miss 100 famous children’s books every kid should read (plus free printable).

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Expand Your Readers’ Palates With a Book Tasting

A perfect way for kids to nibble on a book. Continue Reading

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• Competition Increases Student Reading

"The Book Bowl makes a sport of reading!" said Bill Derry, supervisor of library media services for New Haven, Connecticut, public schools. "It is fun and challenging! It is exciting and educational!"

More than 1,500 fourth and fifth graders in the New Haven public schools agree! They read nearly 5,000 books this year as participants in the city's annual Book Bowl, a contest that tests students' knowledge of ten selected books. They kids compete against other students at the same grade levels.

"We had to read really slow and keep track of all the words," said Jordan, a fourth grader who competed in the Book Bowl from Quinnipiac School in New Haven. "They had questions that were just itty-bitty stuff that happened in the story."

Click here to read comments from some of the other kids who participated in the Book Bowl competition!

Each team selects a captain, who becomes the spokesperson during the competition. Team members form collective answers to the questions. "It's cute," Derry said. "They hide behind the counter and they talk to each other in a huddle."

To Shala, a fifth-grade student at Davis Street Interdistrict Magnet School, the best part of the contest was her team. "The most exciting thing about being in the Book Bowl was being on a team and working hard together," she said. "It gave me a chance to be with friends. It doesn't matter if you win or lose. It's all about fun!"

A committee selects ten books that are age appropriate for each grade division of the contest. You may want to start with only one age division initially, such as students in grades 6 through 8. You need to make sure copies of the books are available for all competing students. Outside judges and library media specialists can develop the questions. Find two or three outside readers who will develop ten questions for each set of challenges. The library media specialists also develop ten questions. Questions should get more difficult as students progress through the three rounds of the competition, school finals, district play-offs, and district finals. Encourage the people who develop questions to focus on comprehension rather than factual recall. Each team of five students who practice developing questions and answers with teammates and a coach. Each team selects a captain, who will serve as spokesperson for the group and answer the questions at the competition after consulting with team members. A local business might be recruited to help pay for books, trophies, and/or certificates. Local restaurants might donate food for the reception following the district finals, to make the celebration more meaningful. Televising the finals on local cable-access TV generates excitement. It also enables parents to watch from home. Students can watch the finals from their schools, and those not yet involved can learn about the Book Bowl. The winners from the school finals compete against other school finalists in the district play-offs. The four high scoring teams from the district play-offs then challenge one another in the district finals, held at the New Haven city hall. The local cable-access channel broadcasts the finals live. All participants receive certificates for the voluntary competition. All the district play-off participants receive medals, and all district finalists go home with trophies. A large trophy for the grand prize travels to the winning school each year. NATIONAL LIBRARY POWER SCHOOL The Book Bowl got its start in 1995. Gail Hall, a library media specialist at West Hills Middle School in New Haven, borrowed the idea from the Battle of the Books competition held in a nearby community. The contest isn't new, she says. She speculates that it originated during the 1940s as a radio show contest. "The Book Bowl really has become a hallmark of the New Haven public schools' reading program because kids do it voluntarily," Hall said. "It is a collaboration opportunity to reach out to the schools, to reach out to each other and to the community. It epitomizes the Library Power concept!" The National Library Power Program promotes the creation of new public elementary school and middle school library programs that improve the quality of services for children. In 1994, New Haven became one of 19 Library Power school districts in the nation. As part of the national program, the New Haven Public Education Fund received $1.2 million in a three-year grant from DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation. The foundation has poured $40 million in grants into the 19 Library Power districts. The Book Bowl is one aspect of Library Power and New Haven's eight-year plan, 2001: A Library Media Odyssey, to revitalize its library media services. Dr. Reginald Mayo, New Haven superintendent of schools, initiated the plan in 1993. The primary purpose of the Library Media Odyssey is to put a library media center in every school and to staff it with a full-time, certified library media specialist, Derry said. When the program began seven years ago, New Haven had 12 library media specialists. Today, there are 39. Next year, the plans call for putting a specialist in each of the city's 46 schools, Derry said. Other goals include increasing the number of volumes in book and reference collections, integrating the library into the school curriculum, promoting parental and community involvement, and supplementing and enriching classroom involvement. Library Power agreed to donate up to $10 per pupil for library allocation if the city matched it, Derry said. In 1993, per pupil allocation was $2.20. With the Library Power donation and the city's matching funds, the allocation increased to $20 per pupil in 1997. "Dr. Reginald Mayo was the key here," Derry said. "He agreed to [increase] the allocation per pupil." Other sources helped fund New Haven's efforts to improve library media services. The New Haven Public Education Fund, the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven, and the Carolyn Foundation also contributed. The University of Wisconsin in Madison is conducting research that is evaluating the impact of the National Library Power Program. Preliminary findings indicate libraries can be transformed from a passive and supplemental role to a central teaching and learning capacity. Fleet Bank also supports the Book Bowl. The bank provides funds and a site for the Book Bowl reception. A vice-president of the bank, Jeff Klaus, hosts the finals. The bank's contribution has helped the city purchase trophies and books. New Haven schools continue to improve their library media services. "The state said we can't continue to have outdated materials in these schools," Derry said. Two years ago, when the three-year grant from the DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation ran out, the state of Connecticut kicked in another $1.2 million to buy books for elementary school library media centers. ADDITIONAL ONLINE RESOURCES The American Library Association The American Library Association site offers information about a variety of issues that pertain to library and media services. American Association of School Librarians This site offers news and information, including Professional Resources , and Internet Resources for school library media specialists. It also offers a link to its journal, School Library Media Research . Article by Diane Weaver Dunne Education World® Copyright © 2007 Education World Related Articles from Education World Reading Activities for Read-In! From the Ed World Library Count on the Census for Math Lessons! Folktales of Cooperation for Your K-3 Class 'Talking Books Creates a Hook! Reading Aloud --- Is It Worth It? Challenge + Fun = Math Achievement in Middle School MathStories.com: The Solution to Finding Creative Math Word Problems Math and Reading Do Mix! Look Out Harry Potter! -- Book Banning Heats Up Great Sites for Teaching About Math Subtraction Action! EW Lesson Plans EW Professional Development Ew worksheets. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter and receive top education news, lesson ideas, teaching tips and more! No thanks, I don't need to stay current on what works in education! COPYRIGHT 1996-2016 BY EDUCATION WORLD, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. COPYRIGHT 1996 - 2024 BY EDUCATION WORLD, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. SchoolNotes.com The Educator's Network >> Return to Heinemann.com Dedicated to Teachers Donalyn Miller The Joy of Reading Middle School Education Policy Language Arts Lucy Calkins View All Topics On the Podcast: Creating Joyful Classroom Reading Communities In this episode, we explore the pitfalls of reading incentives and how they can undermine intrinsic motivation and create a culture of winners and losers. Instead, discover how to build a supportive and equitable reading community that truly values the joy of reading. Tune in for this thought-provoking audiobook sample from The Joy of Reading by Donalyn Miller and Terry Lesesne. Below is a transcript of the episode: In some schools reading competitions and contests offer the only community-wide attempts to celebrate reading or young readers. Students must reach a certain reading goal such as reading so many books, pages, or hours, and document proof or pass an assessment, and when they do, they receive better grades or earn prizes and awards. Children who do not meet such goals receive lower grades, punishment, or the public humiliation of failing to earn a desired reward. Such competitions send powerful messages to both the young readers who win and those who don't. First, that reading is not worth doing unless you can win a prize doing it. Second, if you can't read well enough to win a prize or if you lack access to resources that would help, you are a failure. Instead of fostering an inclusive reading community, incentives and contests for reading, create a culture of reading winners and losers. Research on the negative effects of external rewards on reading motivation shows that manipulating learners through extrinsic rewards and punishments, including the withholding of rewards, impedes real learning and seems most damaging to long-term motivation when the task being rewarded is already intrinsically motivating, like reading as noted in cones, punished by rewards. Unfortunately, these misguided contests and competitions continue often disguised as summer reading programs and battle of the book contests that control children's reading choices and misrepresent why reading matters. Simply put, rewarding reading indicates only that you do not believe reading is innately rewarding, or you do not trust kids with their own reading lives or both. Why any school would decide to set its students onto such a path of reading shame and failure is hard to understand. One particular example of the damaging effects of incentives and competitions that is close to my heart is the 40-Book Challenge. I described this student-focused reading challenge in my first book, The Book Whisperer. I explained that at the beginning of the school year, I voiced an expectation to my students that they would read 40 books from a variety of genres and then a variety of formats. My classroom centered independent reading used research-based practices for engaging children with reading and supported students informing a vibrant reading community. The result was that students were excited to read as many books as they could. In the decades since the book's publication, however, I've seen the 40-Book Challenge corrupted into a competition and incentive program in classrooms that don't center independent reading or support reading communities. The effect has been what you might expect, a joyless rush through as many books as possible with students competing against each other rather than forming a supportive community. Something that was originally used successfully to expand students' reading lives and build community had been turned into something that limited students' reading lives and damaged community, all because it had been infused with competition. I am unlikely to express how harmful this is to readers better than I did in a 2014 blog post. Writing the 40-Book Challenge isn't an assignment you can simply add to outdated, ineffective teaching practices. The book challenge rests on the foundation of a classroom reading community built on research-based practices for engaging children with reading. Assigning a 40-Book Challenge as a way to generate grades or push children into reading in order to compete with their classmates, corrupts everything I have written and said about reading. The 40-Book Challenge is meant to expand students' reading lives, not limit or define it. The 40-Book Challenge is a personal challenge for each student, not a contest or competition between students or classes. In every competition or contest, there are winners and losers. Why would we communicate to our students that they are reading losers? For some students, reading 40 books is an impossible leap from where they start as readers and for others, it's not a challenge at all. If Alex read two books in fourth grade and reads 22 in fifth grade, I am celebrating with him. What an accomplishment. Look how much Alex grew. He didn't grow because he read more books. He grew because he had 22 successful reading experiences. Conversely, when Haley read 55 books in fourth grade, reading 40 books in fifth grade isn't challenging her. Encouraging Haley to read biographies and historical fiction, which she claims to detest, does more to stretch her than simply reading more books. Honestly, I don't care if all of my students read 40 books or not. What matters is that students grow and evolve as readers and increase their competence, confidence, and reading motivation through their daily participation in our reading community. From an equity and inclusion standpoint, school contests also erode communities in school by ignoring the economic disparities and differences in access to resources between our students. Students with piles of books at home, library cards, and caregivers who can attend school literacy events during the day or read the likely English-only contest materials always have the advantage. Driving a wedge between groups of students, contests uphold the power and status of a few predominantly white and affluent families, teachers or administrators, and do little to improve the overall literacy outcomes or reading culture of the school. Donalyn Miller’s work champions self-selected independent reading, providing guidance and resources that foster children’s love of reading and the development of positive reading identities. A national and international consultant and bestselling author, Donalyn’s published works include  The Book Whisperer   (Jossey-Bass, 2009),   Reading in the Wild   (Jossey-Bass, 2013), and  Game Changer: Book Access for All Kids   (co-written with Colby Sharp, Scholastic, 2018) as well as articles in  Gifted Child International,   Education Week Teacher,   The Reading Teacher,   Voices From the Middle,   Educational Leadership,   Horn Book, School Library Journal , and   The Washington Post.  Recipient of TCTELA’s Elementary Language Arts Teacher of the Year (2011) and TCTELA’s Edmund J. Farrell Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award (2018) (for her contributions to the language arts teaching profession). Donalyn is also a co-founder of   The Nerdy Book Club , an online community which provides inspiration, book recommendations, resources, and advice about raising and teaching young readers. Donalyn and her husband, Don, live in Texas atop a dragon’s hoard of books. You can connect with her on her website  BookWhisperer.com , or on Twitter at  @DonalynBooks . Topics: Podcast , Donalyn Miller , The Joy of Reading , podcasts Recent Posts Popular posts, related posts, on the podcast: supporting multilingual learners, on the podcast: engaging students with book clubs, on the podcast: finding the right teaching job. © 2023 Heinemann, a division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt What is READBowl? Readbowl is the free global reading competition where prek-12th grade aged teams around the globe compete to read for the most minutes. the competition begins the week before the american college football national championship (2nd monday in january) and culminates with a live crowning of the world champions of reading on the morning of the national football league’s (nfl) super bowl sunday.. ONE PAGE OVERVIEW OF READBowl READBowl VIII Kicks Off January 13 2025. NEW FOR 2025: New Conference and Championship for HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS VARSITY CONFERENCE: 9th-12th GRADES If you are a high school educator please email us at [email protected]. We will get back to you asap when these new registration options are live! If you are a PreK-8th Grade Educator, you can sign up right now! READBowl VIII (2024) featured 280,000 students from a ll 50 US States and 14 Different Countries 181,579,472 Minutes of Reading Special Report from ESPN’s Mike Reiss Sign Up for READBowl New to our programs? Sign up as a new educator.  Existing Educator Login Participants Minutes read, readbowl is powered by. Send us a Message! Share the Magic Foundation 1776 Peachtree St NW, Suite 420N Atlanta, GA 30309 (678) 974-2668 [email protected] Add Impact To Your Inbox! Reading Contests Hold a friendly reading competition everyone can get involved in! Creating a reading contest is a perfect way to motivate readers. These programs are great for year-round, holding multiple contests throughout the year, or you can hold them seasonally. You can have them compete in a multitude of ways. For schools: Grade levels Rival Schools Students in one classroom For libraries: Popular sports teams in town Family Feuds These programs are easy to set-up and fun to run. Students love to be updated on who is winning by seeing the Leaderboard, it makes them want to read more! It’s a great idea to frequently post updates on social media or even pull it up for the class to see occasionally. You can run contest two different ways, you can have readers compete against each other individually, or you can have Groups compete against each other. Here's how to create a Reading Contest:  1 . Create a new Program and choose Quick Start. Create a fun name for your Program (Contest). To hold a contest, you need to create a "Reading Log" Program Type. Select "Hold a Contest" Now decide if you want to divide into teams or just have the readers compete individually against each other. We are using teams for this example so we chose Group vs. Group. Choose which metric you'd like your readers to use. Create a title for your first reading Group (Team). Decide how long you'd like the contest to run.         9 . This is an optional step to collect additional data. This is also an optional step. You can add books into the Book Bank at any time. Adding other Groups (Teams) Select the green Add Group button located in the bottom right corner. Name this Group and proceed by following the prompts, similar to the first Group you created. View the Leaderboard. Select the gold Leaderboard button. View the results and share Like the regular reading programs, you can still create an incentive for all readers by triggering awards around different progress points throughout the contest. Students will love to brag about their progress awards and where they are on the leader board. The other students will be dying to work harder! You can either create the awards to just be awards an images,you can put things such as “Come claim your prize!” and have little prizes or pieces of candy, or you can even partner with local businesses and change the image to be a QR code for a free ice cream or deal at a local shop. We're happy to answer specific questions and help you create and mange your reading programs. Terms & Conditions Privacy Policy 1-800-824-4789 [email protected] Download the Reader Zone App: The Reading Is  FUN  Program "where every child is everyone's child", like us on facebook, click here >, i'm a title. click here to edit me. I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It’s easy. Just click “Edit Text” or double click me to add your own content and make changes to the font. Feel free to drag and drop me anywhere you like on your page. I’m a great place for you to tell a story and let your users know a little more about you. This is a great space to write long text about your company and your services. You can use this space to go into a little more detail about your company. Talk about your team and what services you provide. Tell your visitors the story of how you came up with the idea for your business and what makes you different from your competitors. Make your company stand out and show your visitors who you are. 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The Reading Is Fun Program Schenectady, New York “Where every child is everyone’s child” First Annual Report      January 2014–January 2015 Program Overview Acting with vision and vigor, The Reading Is Fun Program (RIF) has made enormous strides toward its goal of becoming a permanent, integral part of the civic life of Schenectady and the learning life of Schenectady children. Currently, 70 Schenectady families are signed up to participate in the all-volunteer, free Reading Is Fun Program. Its 65 volunteers have been assigned families to contact and schedule meetings in public venues (library branches, Boys and Girls Club sites, churches, etc.) and begin working with "their" children and parents or other principal caregivers to teach reading-readiness (identifying letters, letter sounds, and letter combinations) and conversational skills and vocabulary—principally by the method of play, one-on-one, once weekly for 30–60 minutes. RIF has also evolved to have its volunteers go into Schenectady City School District elementary schools' after-school programs for 4-year-old pre-kindergartners and 5-year-old kindergartners to teach select students identified by the classroom teachers as needing extra help. This facet of RIF activities is beginning in the week of Feb. 2 in Lincoln Elementary School, where 2 pre-K and 8 K children will be taught by 7 RIF volunteers and, at RIF's request, the school's principal and its coordinator for community and family affairs. Howe and Pleasant Valley Elementary Schools are slated to be next. Partnerships RIF has established partnerships as follows: The Schenectady City School District has conducted three volunteer training sessions with the promise of more as needed, provided RIF with teaching materials, is showcasing RIF on the district website, Facebook page and e-News formats, and is arranging background checks for the growing cohort of RIF volunteers. The Schenectady City School District Education Foundation has agreed to allow RIF to operate under its 501(c)3 umbrella. The First United Methodist Church in downtown Schenectady is providing RIF with office space and teaching venues at no charge, with the local GE Elfun Society expected to donate a computer system for the RIF office. The Schenectady Police Department, the Schenectady County Sheriff's Office, and the Schenectady Federation of Teachers have agreed to advocate among their ranks for volunteer teachers for RIF, with the goal also of fostering better relations especially between the police and other uniformed services and minority communities in the city. The Schenectady Boys and Girls Club is providing RIF with teaching venues and free-of-charge liability insurance for all the RIF volunteers. RIF has partnerships also with the historic (National Registry) Proctors Theatre in Schenectady, to help RIF build its stock of donated children's books and to provide a venue for RIF activities, and with the Blue Roses Theatre in the John Sayles School for the Fine Arts at Schenectady High School, to provide reading-relevant performance programming. More partnerships are anticipated. Public Relations and Raising of Funds and In-Kind Donations The RIF logo of the Book Worm artwork, displayed prominently on the RIF website and Facebook page, has been donated. The design and management of the RIF Facebook page (The Reading Is Fun Program) and website ( http://www.readingisfun.org )  have been donated. More than 900 children's books and sundry educational apparatus and writing supplies have already been donated, with more anticipated. $15,000 in grants and individual donations have been raised, with more anticipated to meet varied program teaching needs and to hire one or two part-time salaried personnel to manage the increasingly complex RIF central administration. RIF Looks Ahead RIF's goals and plans for the next 3-5 years are to broaden its activities, as follows: to have ever more RIF volunteers work with ever more Schenectady families and their 4-year-olds who are not yet enrolled in district schools; to embed RIF volunteers in the after-school programs of all nine elementary schools in the city, to work there with 4- and 5-year-olds enrolled in the school district's pre-K and K classes, and, where possible, with the children's parents or other principal caregivers present; to have RIF volunteers work in all the elementary schools' after-school programs with youngsters in Grades 1, 2, and 3 who are deemed by the classroom teachers as needing additional help in learning reading-readiness and conversational skills and vocabulary, again, where possible, with the children's parents or other principal caregivers present—to help counter the propensity of many third-graders across the nation to fall off the reading and math tracks and never get back on, with insidious effects for the youngsters' later lives, their communities, and the nation; to explore the possibility of transforming RIF from a 10-month (September–June) program into a year-round (September–August) program, to improve the prospects that its pre-K, K, and Grades 1, 2, and 3 student participants will not suffer a diminution in reading skills over the summer hiatus between the end of one school year and the beginning of the next one; and to periodically mount Reading Rallies in public venues around the city, comprising clusters of 4- and 5-year-olds and their parents or other principal caregivers and volunteer teachers, to engage in reading-related activities, and a Grand Reading Jamboree, to be held in a public venue each year in June, comprising all the youngsters in RIF and their parents or other principal caregivers and all the volunteer teachers, again to engage in reading-related activities, with all the youngsters receiving awards for having participated in the program. The Reading Is Fun Program Board of Directors Al Magid  Founder and Executive Director [email protected] Mary Lou Russo Chief Operating Officer Phyllis Holzhauer Director for Community Outreach Nicki Foley Director for Communications Gordon Zuckerman Finance administrator, Liaison from the Schenectady City School District Education Foundation Kate Abbott Liaison from the Schenectady City School District Director for Instructional Support Services 175 IMAGES 30 Book Report Templates & Reading Worksheets Reading Competition for 1st & 2nd grade The 28th Annual Book Report Competition 50 Fun Book Reports Book Report Fun by The Teaching Bank 101 Ways to Make Book Reports Fun! Book Report Projects, Reading COMMENTS Reading is Fun Parents and teachers, if you have questions about the quizzes or the Reading is fun! program send an e‐mail to D oug Church. ... Reading Level: 1-4 5-8 9-12 All. Book Title Author Levels Quiz : 101 Questions About Ellen White: E.G.White Estate: 9-12: 101 Questions About Ellen White (E.G.White Estate)-quiz.doc : 20 Questions God Wants To Ask ... 26 Read Across America Day Activities To Celebrate Literacy Try one of these fun book report ideas: a book report cake, a clothes hanger mobile, or even a book report charm bracelet. 7. Read your way across the map. This is one of our favorite Read Across America activities. Students get to choose reading activities and color in the map of the USA as they complete each activity. How to Run a Reading Challenge Contest at Your School Decide your contest theme, type, and time frame. Pick your theme from our ready-made challenge templates or work with your dedicated school success manager to design your own. Decide if you'll set a reading list of specific titles, like your state's award winners, and if so, which ones. Then, set your contest timeline, making sure to mark ... 15 Tips for a Reading Challenge 11. Easy record keeping. Make recording what books students are reading painless for both the students and you. Use a "status of the class" or book log. You can also have students keep a reading log that has the title, author, date finished, and star review. 12. PDF Reading is Fun! The object of the game is for one player to end up with one of each of the six cards. Rules of play: • To start, shuffle the cards and deal 7 cards to each player. • Put the extra cards in a pile at the center of the table. • The dealer begins play by drawing one card from the top of the center pile. Reading Challenge for Kids Reading challenges or reading competitions offer a solution to this problem for any grade level, whether they are elementary school, middle school, or high school students. For more than 100 years, these programs have promoted community literacy and helped establish a culture of reading - and recently, they've received an upgrade. 12 Creative Book Report Projects Your Students Will Love 12 Creative Book Report Projects Your Students Will Love. April 20, 2022 admin. Whether you're teaching a whole-class novel, or finishing a round of independent reading or literature circles, post-reading assessments are always more engaging when they're more than just a test or essay. Below, you'll discover a dozen fun book report ideas ... 17 Best Online Summer Reading Challenge Ideas for Kids Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge. Here's a great way to keep kids engaged in summer reading - The Scholastic Summer Read-a-Palooza! Kids are encouraged to track their reading in a free online Scholastic-provided resource with books, games and events. As kids reach tracking goals, they receive rewards and unlock book donations for others. The Ultimate Master List of Reading Challenges AtoZ Reading Challenge. Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge. Back to the Classics Challenge. Black Book Card Challenge. Flourish and Blotts 2022 Harry Potter Challenge - The Ordinary Wizarding Levels (O.W.L.s) Reading Challenge. Beat the Backlist Reading Challenge. Books in the Freezer Horror Challenge. 15 Creative and digital book report ideas that will get your students Click to open. 7. Book cover. Here, students get to be creative and invent their own book cover (front and back) of the book they just read. Or maybe just a cover for of a piece of text you've read out loud. They can use the whiteboard tools: pencil, type tool, switch colors, add images, etc. Click to open. 8. Top 5 Creative Book Report Ideas That Guarantee Success in Class Assigned reading helps students develop their critical analysis skill, and book reports test their progress. But it is not enough to simply analyze a literary work — you also need to express your creativity while presenting book report ideas. ... And to make sure you get the highest score for your project, we prepared five fun book report ... Best Reading Challenge Ideas & Contests for Your Classroom First, pick a number of books to tackle. Younger children who are reading early readers and picture books will be able to read more than older kids who are reading chapter books—you want a challenge, not a cakewalk, but don't make it impossible either! Four chapter books in a month or 10 picture books or early readers is a good place to ... Reading Competition Ideas for the Classroom Turn a reading competition into a way to raise funds for your classroom or school. Give students a reading goal sheet and ask them to collect donations from family, friends and neighbors. Adults can pledge a certain monetary amount per book read or a flat fee for the whole competition. Then as students read they can record their progress on a ... 20 Ideas To Inspire Your Students To Read More Than Ever This Year 17. Have fun while boosting word skills. Help your readers read more fluently and accurately with these easy to prep, multi-sensory, and fun sight word activities. Start a sight word band, build a rock word wall or feed the word monster. 18. Teach close reading to help students to get more out of books. Your Fun Time Reading 1. Register to start participating in the competition using the REGISTER button for your reading Level. (Ages 5 through 12: LEVEL 1 / Ages 13 though 18: LEVEL 2) REGISTER ONLY ONCE 2. To report on other books read throughout the competition, use the LOGIN menu (located in the header) to access your level's LOGIN PLATFORMS and REPORTING PAGES. 42 Creative Book Report Ideas for Every Grade and Subject Here are 42 creative book report ideas designed to make reading more meaningful for kids. MiddleWeb. 1. Concrete Found Poem. This clever activity is basically a shape poem made up of words, phrases, and whole sentences found in the books students read. Competition Increases Student Reading More than 1,500 fourth and fifth graders in the New Haven public schools agree! They read nearly 5,000 books this year as participants in the city's annual Book Bowl, a contest that tests students' knowledge of ten selected books. They kids compete against other students at the same grade levels. On the Podcast: Creating Joyful Classroom Reading Communities The book challenge rests on the foundation of a classroom reading community built on research-based practices for engaging children with reading. Assigning a 40-Book Challenge as a way to generate grades or push children into reading in order to compete with their classmates, corrupts everything I have written and said about reading. READBowl READBowl is the FREE global reading competition where PreK-12th grade aged teams around the globe compete to read for the most minutes. The competition begins the week before the American College Football National Championship (2nd Monday in January) and culminates with a live crowning of the World Champions of Reading on the morning of the National Football League's (NFL) Super Bowl Sunday. Reading Contests Creating a reading contest is a perfect way to motivate readers. These programs are great for year-round, holding multiple contests throughout the year, or you can hold them seasonally. You can have them compete in a multitude of ways. For schools: Grade levels. Rival Schools. Classrooms. Students in one classroom. Ages. Etc. For libraries: Reading Challenge The Booker Prize Reading Challenge is a self-guided reading challenge that encourages readers around the world to explore the 2024 longlist, share their thoughts, and connect with fellow Booker Prize fans. Whether you want to read just one book or the entire longlist, we'd love you to take part. Annual Report First Annual Report. January 2014-January 2015. Program Overview. Acting with vision and vigor, The Reading Is Fun Program (RIF) has made enormous strides toward its goal of becoming a permanent, integral part of the civic life of Schenectady and the learning life of Schenectady children. Currently, 70 Schenectady families are signed up to ... essay homework paper phd review speech study thesis