Junior Library Guild (JLG) will sponsor Beanstack’s 2020 Fall into Reading challenge. The challenge is designed to work for schools at all stages of reopening, including those that are using a full-time or blended distance-learning approach. It will take place from October 1st to October 31st.
Making Up for Lost Reading Time
Zoobean and Junior Library Guild encourage all librarians and educators to join the Fall into Reading Challenge with their communities. The challenge is suitable for all ages, but was designed specifically with those serving K12 students.
The Brookings Institution predicts the curtailment of the 2019–20 school year could lead to increased and disproportionate impact on student learning loss, and we know that reading is often one of the core areas affected. It is important to motivate students to keep reading, and Zoobean believes that a reading challenge is the best way to do it.
“It’s always a good time to run a reading challenge, but right now it is absolutely critical,” said Felix Lloyd, Zoobean Co-Founder. “Students, like my own son and daughter, have been through a lot and there’s still more to come. A challenge is a great first step to get them reading again, without the added stress of exams or quizzes. We want them to read for the love of reading.”
The Fall into Reading challenge provides educators with a great opportunity to help students reach their reading goals in an enjoyable way. A recent study suggests that just six more minutes of reading per day can be the difference between students’ ability to rise to benchmark.
Minutes to Win It
The format for the Fall into Reading Challenge will be minutes logging, meaning that participants can read any books they want and log how many minutes they read at a time. All minutes logged will count toward their library or school community and bring them closer to winning. There are “extra credit” activities, designed to align to Common Core standards, that will count as extra points toward the grand total. For example, one activity will allow students to submit a written response that identifies the main theme or lesson in one of their books.
JLG will award prizes to the winning three schools or libraries. Prizes will include a yearlong subscription to the winner’s choice of three genre/reading level categories and, as an added bonus, access to JLG’s premier digital reading platform that offers unlimited simultaneous, multi-user access to ebooks and audiobooks.
For more information about the 2020 Fall into Reading Challenge, including prize details and how to join, visit the challenge website.
ABOUT ZOOBEAN
Zoobean, Inc. provides a mobile app and other products that help people achieve reading goals by tracking reading and participating in reading challenges. The company’s flagship product, Beanstack, helps public libraries and school districts create, manage, and measure reading challenges. A sister product, Beanbright, offers school buildings a free, streamlined, out-of-the-box version of the reading challenge service. Most recently, the company has introduced Badge Books, which are sticker books that work hand in hand with the free Beanstack mobile app. Zoobean’s investors include Kapor Capital, Mark Cuban, RevUp Capital, the AT&T Aspire Accelerator, and Amazon’s Alexa Fund. Its founders were previously Washington, DC’s teacher of the year and Google’s first head of K-12 education outreach.
ABOUT JUNIOR LIBRARY GUILD
Junior Library Guild is the subscription box solution for the modern librarian: A completely customizable collection-development service based 100% on librarians’ preferences, their readers’ interests, and their library’s budget. Unlike other book services, JLG titles are curated by our renowned editorial team who reviews thousands of manuscript submissions each year (prior to publication) to choose the best, award-worthy books for our members. With more than 95% of our selections going on to win awards, honors, starred reviews, and industry accolades, librarians trust JLG to bring top-quality books to their library that will engage and appeal to their readers.