Cornerstone Christian Academy, an elementary school in Richmond, has a creative motivational reading program.

This year, the theme is ‘Readers Run Wild!’ On one wall of the library is a giant board game depicting a zoo with various animal attractions, including a waterfall, a kids’ zone and a snacks wagon.

To move around the zoo, students collect points by reading books in class and at home, and then completing comprehension quizzes online through Renaissance’s Accelerated Reading program. Every stop grants the player a different reward.

The most coveted stop is the snacks wagon, which earns the reader a popcorn party in the library. Students in each house team can consolidate their quiz points to buy popped corn kernels to fill huge popcorn bags decorating the halls near the library.

Each student is given a reading log folder which contains monthly goal sheets.  Star readers are featured as gold and silver medalists on a podium outside the library.

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The highlight of the program is a read-in at the end of February. Every student – and teacher – comes to school dressed as a favourite storybook character, from The Cat in the Hat to Anne of Green Gables.

Each classroom has reading stations containing different forms of reading, and guest readers in costume. At the end of the morning, there is a costume judging parade and a dramatic storybook presentation by the teachers. This year, the teachers are performing If Only I Had a Green Nose by Max Lucado – with students’ artwork incorporated into the backdrops.

This is followed by a school-wide literacy event in March in which the students all become authors. A teacher-directed author study of Lucado’s work will end in a Book Walk Celebration presentation.

– Pat Codling and Charlotte Sakaki

February 2011