School of 340 nets 1,243,344 reading minutes in Dec/Jan
Written by John Borst on February 4, 2008 – 5:32 pm
by John Borst
Sacred Heart Catholic elementary school in Sioux lookout, Ontario with an enrolment of 340 students has just logged 1,243,344 minutes of reading in their annual “reading challenge”. For the past three years the school has challenged its Public school counter-part as a way of inspiring children in the community to become more involved in reading.
The challenge ran from December 3rd 2007 to Family Literacy Day January 27th 2008. The 55 day span includes Saturdays and Sundays and the Christmas vacation period. Over that period, each student read 3657 minutes, that’s 60 hours or more than one hour per day per student on average.
The students tracked their reading minutes with thermometers on the wall which in some case bent up onto the ceiling. In the foyer, a ‘Wall of Fame’ displayed reading buddies, reading guests and students who like to read.
Each year “the challenge” is a lead up to the Sioux Lookout Literacy Festival. Held on January 28th and 29th as part of Family Literacy Week, this year over 200 people braved the cold evening temperature to eagerly play literacy games, explore software available on the laptops, learn how to choose books for their children and investigate different strategies for building words and becoming a better speller.
The celebration focuses on engaging parents in a variety of literacy activities that their children are experiencing as part of on-going literacy initiatives at the schools.
Other activities are Karaoke, the never-ending story created by participants, a bake sale, Spelling Bee, book exchange, door prizes and jellybean guessing contest. In addition, Mike Lawrence, a children’s book author who works at the local Day Care partnered with the school to host a writing workshop.
Many of the students from Lawrence’s workshop were among the thirty-four entries for the local writing contest. This event sponsored by the towns library is the final event in the Sioux Lookout Literacy Festival.
