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Our school-wide 20 Book Challenge is the heart of our literacy program at The Great Southwest. We use our reading challenge in place of programs such as AR or Reading Counts. Our program challenges students, teachers, and community members to read 20 different books from 20 different categories. The categories and prompts are built by Mrs. Friday through collaboration with the Literacy Team, ELA department, and Reading Department. Each year the prompts and categories change based on the needs of students. Students and teachers log their books through our Google Classrooms and we celebrate their reading success throughout the year.
We have our school board members and our Superintendent participating in our challenge.
Our program has spread to schools across our district, state, and country. Mrs. Friday has shared it at District PD conferences, the FAME state conference, and most recently at AASL.
20 Book Challenge Report
20 Book Challenge Report
20 Book Challenge Report
20 Book Challenge Report
20 Book Challenge Report
20 Book Challenge Report
Follett Challenge
Follett Challenge
The #swms20bookchallege was part of the Follett Challenge last year and and chosen as a People's Choice Winner, winning our school $8,000 to build our collection and continue to encourage the love of reading in our school.
Author Interactions Drive Student Interest and the #swms20bookchallenge
Author Interactions Drive Student Interest and the #swms20bookchallenge
Former NFL Player, Dancing with the Stars Champion, and middle grade author Rashad Jennings doing a "We love Reading" selfie with 150 Southwest students.
Speed Dating with Books
Speed Dating with Books
All Reading students started the school year in the Media Center and got to speed date all the best titles our collection has to offer. Even our Principal joined in and built his reading list for the year.
Banned Book Week
Banned Book Week
During Banned Book Week our students learned about their right to read, censorship, frequently banned books, and we book talked Property of the Rebel Librarian. All the students received signed book marks from Allison Varnes, author of the book.
Project Lit Book Club
Project Lit Book Club
Our school is an official Project Lit School and has been part of this national movement for two years.
Each month our students select 3-5 diverse titles to read from the Project Lit reading list and then we meet as a club during 7th mod and the students lead book club with discussion, Kahoot, and decide what to read next. We are also in process of a community book drive to place books in little free libraries across the community.
Our school-wide March Madness book tournament is done each year during the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament. It is a way to draw student interest and allow students a voice. Our Gifted students build our tournament as part of their enrichment and then the entire school fills out brackets to make predictions of which books will make it through. Brackets are submitted to Mrs. Friday and then the voting begins. Each round of voting lines up with the elimination games of the tournament. The tournament is shared on social media where many authors get very involved in the process. Mrs. Friday shares those interactions with the students. The winning author gets a trophy sent to them. Kwame Alexander has his trophy displayed in his office right next to his Newbery Award.
Book Bash
Book Bash
Students from Southwest and students from all of our feeder schools who have met the requirements for reading are invited to attend Book Bash, a celebration of our Sunshine State books. Students participate in a variety of activities including maker space challenges tied to each of the 15 books, a first line game, Kahoot, a puzzle game, and even voting with real voting booths from the Supervisor of Elections office. Our Book Bash lines up with the SSYRA reveal day and before students leave, they all get to see the brand new titles for the next year.
Florida Literacy Week
Florida Literacy Week
Literacy Week is run through the Media Center and we fill the week with literature appreciation activities. There are morning trivia contests (winning class each day gets breakfast!), character dress up contests, mystery outdoor reading locations, a trip next door to read to Kindergarten students, and an epic door decorating contest.
Soup with the Supe--Lunch with the Superintendent
Soup with the Supe--Lunch with the Superintendent
Our top 20 student readers and top 5 teacher readers had the opportunity to eat lunch with the Superintendent of Brevard Public Schools and our School Board Representative. Our students read their way in and then talked books and 20 Book Challenge over lunch with our District leaders.
Destiny Collection built and shared with students to help them access some of our most beloved titles as e-books and audiobooks.
Author Takeover on Instagram to encourage our students to continue reading by four New York Times Best-Selling authors.
We continued to celebrate our readers and their accomplishments by changing our 20 Book Challenge Celebration to a virtual one. All finishers (students AND teachers) got yard signs delivered to their homes with a swag bag full of tshirts, custom cookies, free books, and tickets to get free pizza, free Kona Ice, and other free treats. We did a Zoom celebration with 4 NYT best-selling authors that included a very intense scavenger hunt, the authors talked about each other's books, and showed us all kinds of top secret stuff they are working on.
Flyer given to every student to show all the ways our Media Center is still available and ready to serve them during learning through a pandemic.
IMG_1500.movVideo From Kwame Alexander to SWMS Students
Video From Kwame Alexander to SWMS Students
Kwame Alexander sent a video for the students of Southwest to encourage them to continue reading.
To provide full-time access to students learning from home, students learning in person, and students who may be quarantined or ill, I created a virtual library where students have everything they need. It is constantly updated and new content is added regularly. Items are added based on student request, teacher request, based on the focus for that time, or as new resources become available. Each item can be clicked on to take them to that resource or get them to the page they need to navigate to.
As a way to continue to grow the love of reading for our students, I created a digital version of our book tastings that we would normally do with classes. Each slide focuses on a different title for our Project Lit Book Club. All of our book club students and our two Advanced Reading Classes accessed this and used the resources available to choose which titles they'd like to use first. This was a safe way to have a "hands on" book tasting and our eLearners did not miss out.
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