Before I begin, I cannot tell you how much I love the idea of this program. I also love the fact that I did not think of it, one of my staff members brought it to me.
Our school's Reading Tutor wanted to implement a summer reading program to encourage our students to continue to read in June, July, and August. The idea she brought to me was "Postcards to the Principal." In short, students would read, pick-up a blank postcard from our community library, and tell me about what they read. They could place the postcard in a box at the library which would then come to me.
My plan is to post all of the postcards in the hallway outside our school office. I am interested to see what they have read and what they wrote about. Who knows, maybe Postcards to the Principal will continue all year long, and there is a pretty good chance that I will write back.
Ryan, this is an interesting idea. Is there a concern that this program will further disadvantage those children with less family/social capital? (because more advantaged kids have families that are more likely to encourage them to read, can better get them to the library, etc.)
ReplyDeleteThat's a valid question and one I will look at once we receive all of the postcards. My hope is that the external motivation (gift cards) will be an incentive for the demographic you described to walk to the community library and pick-up a book.
DeleteGood luck. Will be interesting to see what you find out!
DeleteThis is so cool! This might be a silly question, but are your postcards pre-addressed? Could you get a community partner to actually put postage on those cards so as not to exclude the families that Scott was worried about? I know a few of my teachers do something similar to this, but I'd love to see us do it school-wide. Thank you, Ryan!
ReplyDeleteBarbara
The Corner On Character