Dovalina School Students first in Laredo to Appear in Scholastic Book of World Records
Written by Post Public Information Representative, Oct 15, 2012, 0 Comments
Courtesy Maribel Valdez,
(Laredo, Tx)- Students at Dovalina Elementary School set a record and are making literacy history. For their efforts, the school is being listed in the Scholastic Book of World Records.
While athletes prepared for the 2012 Summer Olympics, at Dovalina kids were busy reading and competing in their own challenge, the Scholastic Summer Challenge. The Summer Reading Challenge is a free interactive program dedicated to helping kids keep their reading skills sharp throughout the summer by reading every day.
Anita T. Dovalina students joined the Scholastic Summer Challenge of Read for the World Record which began in May of this year and ended in August. Students in grades second through fifth grade recorded the number of minutes that they read throughout the summer. Close to 300 students participated and combined read a total of 549,032 minutes. The students were ranked 31 out of 900 schools worldwide.
More than 193,000 kids representing all 50 states and 25 countries read and logged an impressive 95,859,491 minutes, breaking last year’s world record of 64,213,141 minutes. The top 36 schools who reached over 500,000 minutes will be included in the Scholastic Book of World Records, 2013 edition which will feature Dovalina Elementary School.
“Just like the world’s greatest athletes, children need to keep their skills sharp and reading is like and other skill, it needs to be practiced,” said Beth-Ellen Tijerina, Dovalina Elementary School Librarian. The Summer Challenge motivates kids with weekly challenges, fun sweepstakes, virtual rewards, book chats and friendly competition. Students were also able to log their reading minutes, track their reading stats, and their school’s rank, collect virtual rewards in their ‘prize center’ and enter sweepstakes for the chance to win free books.
“I am extremely proud of the initiate these students took in motivating themselves to use community resources and find computers to login their minutes and for reading every day this past summer” Said School Principal Jose Perez III.
The students have set a goal to break their previous record and would like to annually appear in every edition of the Scholastic Book of World Records.
