In January 2018, District of Columbia Public School Library Programs launched the “Read Across the City: The Three Million Minute Reading Challenge,” encouraging students, teachers, staff, and parents to read books of their choosing every day. Readers tracked their minutes using the Beanstack, online tool to track books read and the time spent reading them.
We have wonderful news to share this School Library Month: DCPS not only met, but exceeded the goal, logging a total of 3,775,048 minutes read January — March!
Each school library maintains a unique Beanstack site and holds challenges and events to engage the school community in reading all year. For the “Read Across the City: The Three Million Minute Reading Challenge,” each school was given a reading goal based on student enrollment. Of 115 schools, 32 met, and in many cases, greatly exceeded their goal for this challenge and many others came very close to meeting their goal. Thirty Challenge winners will receive a kit of 50 new books filled with the industry’s best literature from Junior Library Guild (JLG) from Media Source, Inc. In addition, those 30 schools will be awarded a one-year subscription to JLG — a $1200 value — and can choose from over 75 categories of PreK-12 grade fiction and nonfiction books for their schools. Two schools will receive a selection of 100 new books from DCPS Library Programs.
Involving every member of the school community — teachers, staff, family members, and students — is vital to developing a strong culture of reading for every student. Providing students access and agency to choose books they want to read is key in developing a true love of reading. DCPS Libraries support students to read every day, everywhere!
As of today, the current total of minutes read and tracked on Beanstack is 3,875,134!! Keep reading!
These schools met or exceeded their goals for the Read Across the City:
Three Million Minute Reading Challenge:
Bancroft ES
Brent ES
Brightwood EC
CHCS (Peabody, Watkins, Stuart Hobson)
Columbia Heights EC (CHEC)
Deal MS
Garfield ES
H.D. Cooke ES
Hardy MS
Hearst ES
Janney ES
Kelly Miller MS
Key ES
Kimball ES
Lafayette ES
LaSalle-Backus EC
Mann ES
Marie Reed ES
Miner ES
Murch ES
Oyster-Adams Bilingual
Payne ES
Powell ES
Ron Brown High School
Ross ES
Savoy ES
Stoddert ES
Thomson ES
Truesdell EC
Tubman ES