Spreading Sunshine to Readers

Impact to My Classroom

# of Students Impacted: 45

I implemented a successful SSYRA reading challenge for my 45 students through generous donations from Futures Foundation. I was able to purchase 90 of the Sunshine State Reader Award novels. This provided access to the 15 titles that were selected to expose students to a variety of genres, curriculum connects and multicultural representations.

The students were excited by the opportunity and challenge to have multiple copies of the novels in their classroom. Everyone was able to find a just right book of their choosing or students could pick the same book as their friends. The opportunity for access was most important. On media center visits the students would browse the selection of SSYRA books and see that many were checked out. But they always had the full selection in their classroom.

Class-time was designated each day to read and take the follow up Accelerated Reader test on the computer.  Passing the test monitored progress. This was all part of the challenge to read and pass all 15 novels by the end of the year. They were excited to complete their daily assignments and have quiet reading time.

Additionally, students were excited to use these books to read at home and record in their monthly reading log.

The students can say it best:

It was a good challenge. It was fun to read.

 It gave you something to do in your free time.

It was a lot of fun.

--Nicholas

I loved having the SSYRA books.

It helped me start reading more books and helped me

learn how to read better and increase my reading speed.

--Rileigh

It was nice to be constantly challenged to read

and I especially liked that every time I finished

a book I always immediately had another one to read.

I also feel like having SSYRA books made

me feel like reading even more.

--Cadynn

The SSYRA books were pretty nice.

They definitely had me reading more to try to see what happens next. The books had action and some were even scary

and I love those types of books, so these were pretty exciting to read to myself even if I was home alone.

--Brynlee

I liked having them in the room because we don’t have to walk back and forth to the media center. I like the challenge.

--Kayden

I liked that there was a lot of action in the books.

--Tristen

It was great having them in our room because they were not all gone.

--Tina

I think it was way easier to read the books when they are in the room instead of hoping they have them in the media center.

--Braiden

At the time of the writing of this impact report, 45 students were impacted with 40 students passing at least 1 Accelerated Reader test. Eight students are on track to complete all 15 by the end of the school year and win the limo ride. Seventeen students will complete at least 8 of the 15 books by the end of May.

Overall, the number of students reading and being excited about passing the Accelerated Reader test was better than I have ever seen. I would love to have the novels in my room again next year. Thank you for supporting this project.