My daughter's elementary school does AR but also as an added incentive, the principal and the assistant principal give a challenge to the students. The first year I believe the challenge was for the entire school to read 50,000 books that year. If the students reached the total goal of 50,000, then the principal would shave his head (the principal is man) and the asst. principal (a lady) dyed her hair purple. The school met its goal and they had an assembly and the students got to watch the hair cut and hair dying happen before their eyes. The following year the goal was 80,000 books and the administration had to sit in a tree and read books to the students. Yes, they met this challege too. This year the challenge, for the students of Jouett to read 120,000 books. They read 140,000 books. All the students read and each class turns in the # of books read to the office. The Principal and Asst. Principal went up in a hot air balloon as the reward this time. What's up for next year????? We will see.

Okay folks, here's what we have developed so far:

The program will be called DREAM-Developing Readers by Educating And Motivating.

It will be an incentive based program that will run through the entire school year. We kick off in late September with our Book Fair and Parent Teacher Conferences by giving each student a reading book of their choice valued at $5 or less(borrowed that idea from someone on the forum!). At this time families will also have the opportunity to sign a Reading Contract in which they promise that each participating family member will read or be read to at least 60 minutes a week. We will provide log sheets for tracking their time and every family who signs up will be able to participate in a drawing for reading related items.

Monthly families will turn in their reading logs and at our PTO meeting we will draw for a prize package from all the families who met their goal for the month. At the end of the school year we will have a big package(donated hopefully) that would be all family activity related items that all families who achieved their monthly goals for the entire program will have a chnace to win.

Throughout the school year we will have Family Events-a Reading Night(ordered the kit from this site), two book exchanges, a Family Game Night(again a kit from here that we used last year)with dinner, and another Book Fair in the spring.

For the book exchanges: We will announce two weeks prior to the event that students may bring in gently used books for the exchange. Teachers will track how many books each child brings in and provide us the names and numbers for that evening. People who bring books that night will receive vouchers to redeem. You can select one book for every book you bring in. We are also going to ask teachers and the media specialist to contribute any books from their libraries that they no longer want. We will lay the books out on tables and will hopefully have the time and peoplepower to sort them by categories. We plan on tying the exchanges in with the other family nights we will have going or at least have them on PTO meeting nights.

Whew!!

We're really excited about this and hope it all comes together as we have it envisioned in our minds. I'm giving it a generous budget, but we're hoping to get grants and donations to cover the majority of the costs. Needless to say this is all a new thing to us, so I'll try to keep updating as things move along.

We ahve done both DEAR and the AR program. The AR program is county and state wide- but each school decides how to reward.

With AR- when our kids get to 25 points, they get a pecially designed button (we made them on the PTA button machine). At 50 points, they get a "walk" with the principal (she sets aside 2 afternoons a month for this).
At 100 points they get "lunch" with the principa (they get their lunch and eat with the Principal in the Teacher's lounge- she gives each of them a special "treat").
At 150 points (few make it this far) they get a free book from a local bookstore.
at 200 points they get a large prize,(to be determined- different each year).

I love the idea of a book swap (bring unused books- or outgrown books from home) and trade at school. Not quite sure how to do this one, though. Any ideas?

Usborne Books has a pledge-based reading incentive program (like the March of Dimes Walk-a-thon) called Reach For the Stars!! The school earns up to 110% of the $$ amount collected in books, and the percentages can be split however the school sees fit. It is suggested that the children receive at least 50% of what they collect, with the remainder divided between the classrooms, library, and awards for the children who read.

We did grades 1-3, if they read 15 books per lvl(ea 25 pg counts a book) , get a prize (8 lvl per round) after round 8 get a gold medal.

We did grades 4 and 5, if they read 300 pages per lvl, get a prize (8 lvl per round) after round 8 get a gold medal.

Prizes consist of pencils, school store coupon, lunchline coupon, skateland, pizza hut, chili's reataurant, little games (ie. .99 bag o' plastic prizes).

We are going to give away prizes for each class (top3 each classroom), grade (top each grade) and school (top3)

Not sure what the prizes for those are yet. :confused:

Our grade school does DEAR but no one keeps track of the hours read. We do the Book It program if the teacher wants. My K did this but the 3rd didn't. We have AR and I like the main jist of the program but it takes them a while to get to new materials, which I don't care for because my kids like the new/current stuff vs. the stuff that's been around 5-20 years. This year our school did a Read to Race program for 3-5 but I don't really know much about it other than if students read more than ?# of books, they were given tickets to the local drag races.