Spark Student Motivation: 30 Book Challenge

It's Saturday, which means I'm focused on helping keep my students motivated! Today, I'm linking up with Joanne from Head Over Heels for Teaching to share how I keep my students reading between book clubs. Reading during book clubs isn't really a choice in my room. We get excited about the genre and the authors and then students need to read at least two books from my picks before they are "done" and able to move on. But of course, they are always welcome to read more...

But what happens after students "finish" a book club study? That's where the 30 Book Challenge comes into play! I was inspired by a Pin I saw on a Pinterest from Runde's Room's Teachers Pay Teachers store. I thought, This looks like something my fifth graders would LOVE... so, why not give it a try! My fifth graders love a good competition, only (shhhh!) this competition is with themselves. I found this great recording sheet online Google Docs. Click the image to get you copy!

Students each get a set of the "rules" at the beginning of the year for the challenge. All books read during our class read aloud do not count. These should be books students are reading independently. We put our chart in our data sections of our binders and then it's teacher hands off. The rest is up to the students. There is a special reward at the end of the year for those that complete my challenge! Last year our prize pack include a free personal LaRosa's pizza, Culver's ice cream, a popsicle during class, bonus raffle tickets for our end of the year raffle, and  personalized bookmarks. I was able to get all the certificates donated through student reward programs by various restaurants so the prizes cost me ZERO dollars, except for the freeze pops ;)

This challenge really seems to motivate many students to keep reading even when they have "finished" our in class reading work. It also gets my "fiction junkies" into some nonfiction information texts and biographies. Plus, there are still 8 free choice squares... Who doesn't want some choice?

Our school also has a huge annual fundraising and reading competition each year. It's kick off is a video of principals, teachers, and other students reading and getting excited ABOUT reading! This year even author Cynthia Lord even joined our video! We just wrapped up this year's Recording Breaking Reading Challenge. Our goal as a school was to read 1,000,000 minutes! Students could use any books finished during our school wide campaign for my 30 Book Challenge!  The week end in a victory cheer as we exceeded our goal of hitting 1,000,000 minutes! That means teachers and principals will be racing in front of students next Friday for the ultimate bragging rights!

The best part, most of the work is hands off from my end - students only need to record evidence they read by stopping and jotting about the books on their weekly reading log and recording the books in the "Books I Read in 5th Grade Chart" in the data sections of their binders for books to count. You can grab my In School and Out of School Reading Log for free by clicking the image below. 

How to do you keep reading motivation alive?