Library+Reading+Challenge

**The Big Idea**
Reading is important for students’ success

**The Essential Question**
How does reading impact me?

**Introduction**
Everyone always tells you reading is important, but why? How will it actually help you once you’re out of school and in "the real world"? Is what you're doing in school going to help you become a better reader? If reading is so important, maybe you should take a look at how you can become a better reader, and how that will make you more successful in school and the future.

**The Challenge**
Find a way to get other students to read more

**Assessment**
Rubric for student presentation of solution or Reflection on and documentation of process.

**Collaborative Environment**
Students can choose the collaborative environment they would prefer. The teacher can set up a Ning for their use or a space on the Learning Portal (Moodle), or they can use a Web 2.0 tool such as Wiggio, Wikispaces, etc. As long as the space is available to students 24/7 and can be used to communicate and share resources, it is an acceptable collaborative environment.

**Possible Guiding Questions**
What do I read? What do students in our school read? Where do we get the things we read? Who reads a lot in our school? Who doesn't read much in our school? What does our school do that encourages reading? What does our school do that discourages reading?

Possible Guiding Activities

 * Become Pollsters** - Do a survey of all the students in the school. Find out how many like to read, how many don't, what kind of things they read, and anything else you can think of that would help you come up with a solution


 * Borrow Ideas** - What are teachers, schools, or kids doing that is or isn't working for them? Look for ideas that you could use or change to work for you


 * What's Your Reading Nutrition Intake?** - Have students create photo journals of all the things they read in a week (including cereal boxes, web pages, billboards, and other things that "aren't real reading")

**Possible Guiding Resources**
[|Time to Lean, Time to Read] - An English teacher in Texas talks about how she finds time for her students to read in class

How to Read a Book You Don't Want To Read media type="youtube" key="I_GrdE5HsgQ" height="229" width="288"

How to Kindle Reading- How do we usually give students a choice in reading?
Guys Read- a site from author Jon Scieska (pronouced SHEska) to help guys like to read. Includes lists of books that guys have submitted

ReadKiddoRead-a site from author James Patterson with lists of lots of different kind of books.

====Students' View of Intelligence Helps Grades - Research shows that when students know that they can increase their intelligence by working harder to learn, they do better in school====

[|The Home Run Book: Can One Positive Reading Experience Create a Reader? by Stephen Krashen] - A research study on if one book that someone enjoys can make them like reading

- An essay by a 4th grade teacher about how reading teaching is done under No Child Left Behind

**Student Solutions**
Solutions must be:


 * Thoughtful - Your team should have put a lot of research time and thought into what the solution should be; you need to have planned out your solution.
 * Concrete - Don't just say something like "kids need to read more." Say "We will do this thing to help kids to read more." Be specific!!!
 * Actionable - It should be something that you can do!
 * Clearly Articulated - Be clear about what your solution is.

How to present the solution:
 * In a podcast, short video, or other multimedia format that can be published online
 * 2-5 minutes in length
 * clearly state the challenge
 * clearly state the solution
 * present how the solution will or can be implemented

**Reflecting and Documenting**
Students will document their work and reflect on the process using posts, videos, podcasts, etc., on a group blog, wiki, or other collaborative space.