Photo courtesy of Janey White.
Students in the Highlands School library read during the January Read-a-Thon.
Each January, beginning on Comfy Cozy Friday, students and teachers at Highlands School begin the schoolwide reading program in which they start keeping track of how much reading they are doing. During the course of the program, students work to reach and exceed the goal of 10 hours of reading.
Highlands middle school students kick off the program with a Read-a-Thon in the library during which each participant tries to reach a 10-hour goal in a single afternoon, evening and night — reading nonstop from 2 p.m. until midnight. This year, 36 of the middle school students attempted it, and 20 of them were there until the very end.
Reading is its own reward, and other than that important benefit, the only “prize” for those who “win” School Wide Reading are bragging rights. As part of the tallying process, the school identifies top classroom hours, top student hours and classroom participation percentage. As an entire school, there were 4,510 hours total hours of reading.
Special congratulations to Mrs. Crawford’s third-grade class for reading 466 hours and 45 minutes — and to eighth-grader Madalyn for being top reader in the school with a personal record of 148 hours of reading.
– Submitted by Janey White.
