At George Spencer Academy, we know that children who read for pleasure are more likely to be successful and happy throughout their lives (OECD, 2002) and we are always looking for ways to provide them with opportunities to do this. This is why the school is running a ‘readathon’ in conjunction with the literacy charity ‘Read for Good’.
‘Read for Good’ is a charitable organisation that believes reading changes lives. Since 1984, they have been running sponsored ‘readathons’ across the UK reaching 1,000 schools and 200,000 students each year. The charity uses the money raised to provide new books and storytelling visits to seriously ill children in hospitals across the country and schools receive 20% of the money they raise to spend on resources for the library to help continue to build their culture of reading.
We are encouraging students in years 7-9 to participate in the ‘readathon’ from Monday 26th June to Friday 14th July and to do so, they should do the following:
- Set a reading target – They should set themselves a target for reading over the 3 week period. This might be completing a specific book or number of books, or reading for a set time each day. It should be realistic and achievable to help with motivation and they should write it in their planner to refer to. They will have an opportunity to do this during their English lessons.
- Get themselves something to read – Use the fantastic range of books in the library and on the e-Platform https://georgespencer.eplatform.co/ to choose material to read. There are no rules, students can choose anything from comics to classics, audio books to blogs, graphic novels to magazines. There will be recommended reading lists with books from different genres promoted throughout event in the library.
- Get supporters to sponsor their reading – Donating sponsorship as students complete their reading can be done easily in one of two ways. Students can either:
- Collect a sponsorship card from the library and make a note of the donors and their donations, before collecting the money and bringing it into school, or…
- Ask sponsors to donate at this link https://readathon.my.salesforce-sites.com/sponsor – sponsors simply search ‘George Spencer Academy’, complete the online donation form and any money is added to the school’s total.
Any support you can provide in encouraging your child to take part would be greatly appreciated, whether it be donating a small amount to support the fundraising or talking to them about what they’re reading and their progress towards their reading target, every bit of support will help.
We hope this event will motivate our students to continue to read in the final half term but also support a fantastic charity, doing vital work across the UK. For more information about Read for Good please visit www.readforgood.org.
Mr T Furber
Assistant Principal, Learning Experiences