YOUNG HOOSIER BOOK AWARD PARTICIPATION:
MAKE IT A REALITY
To excel in reading, students need to first learn the skills and then practice them. It’s no secret that one of the reasons for the decline in middle grades reading scores is the lack of practice in reading. The challenge before us is formidable. How do we convince middle graders to set aside their computer games long enough to discover the almost endless adventures open to them if they give themselves a chance to journey into the creative minds of writers? How do we convince middle graders to realize that there is an alternative to the expensive technology? How do we convince them that the most marvelous wizardry of all resides within their heads? All they need to tap into it is a book and a good light source. Oh, but that’s so much easier to say than to accomplish. We have to provide young people with enough motivation to want to open the pages of books they truly want to read.
One of the ways many states provide that motivation is through book award programs that encourage and celebrate independent reading. The programs involve students from primary grades through high school, affording all students an opportunity to participate in the program and to vote for their favorite books. Arizona has the Grand Canyon Reader Award, Connecticut the Nutmeg Children’s Book Award, Kentucky the Bluegrass Award, North Carolina the Children’s Book Award. Indiana has the Young Hoosier Book Award. It is a program that should be available to all Indiana middle grades students.
If your school is like most Indiana middle grades schools and participates in the Young Hoosier Book Award, compare the number of students who read five or more of the books and participated in this year’s school’s recognition program with a realistic goal that you would like to achieve in the 2008-2009 school year. Use this information to expand the program. The results will be better readers, higher reading scores, and a larger percentage of your students completing high school. If your school does not allow its students to participate in the state’s important Young Hoosier Book Award, then something vital is missing in the school’s reading program. To get involved, see <<http://www. ilfonline.org/AIME/YHBA/YHBA.htm>>.
Let’s assume that reading is important in your middle grades school. Next, let’s assume that your school of 500 sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students provided ample copies of the 20 Young Hoosier Book Award books included on the 2007-2008 list. Finally, let’s assume that the school provides a recognition program for the students who read five or more of the books and were eligible to vote for their favorite books. How would you know that the program was successful? Is it realistic to believe that all 500 of your students will read at least five of the books and attend the recognition program?
The first step in a successful Young Hoosier Book Award program is, of course, providing access to the books. Consider the following to ensure enthusiastic
participation:
= Promoting the books on the school Web site;
= Involving the principal and teacher in schoolwide activities;
= Keeping parents informed of the program starting in the summer;
= Purchasing posters from the Indiana Library Federation for displaying names of students and books read; and
= Using older students who have voted in past years to help provide motivation to encourage the middlegraders to read the books.
Certainly one measure to evaluate the success of the program would be a steady rise in the number of students who participate in the recognition program. If your school has 500 students, would it be realistic to have 50 percent of the students read five of the books? That would be 250 students. Would it be 5 percent or 25 students? Even 5 percent would be better than the state average of 1.2 percent that voted in 2007 for their favorite middle grades Young Hoosier Book Award book. What if 25 percent or 125 of your students now vote? What if you increased the percent of participation to 35 percent or 175 students? The additional 10 percent would mean that you increased the number by 50 more students who were recognized because of their reading of at lease five of the books on the list. Now that would be something special for your school.
The big question is, of course, how are you going to motivate your middle grades students to participate in the Young Hoosier Book Award Program? The answer is not an easy one. No one knows your students better than you do. Consider what it would take to get them involved. Perhaps a group of students from each grade could design a plan to increase involvement. Working as a team, you and your students could commit yourselves to making school-wide participation a reality.