Herok thinks this is great for any teacher or librarian who wants to get their pupils more engaged with reading… A Readathon is an easy to run sponsored reading challenge. Children read for pleasure and are excited by the extra challenge to raise money for seriously ill children. Children talk about books, share and swap favourites, and are genuinely motivated to read.
The effects are amazing. It can literally transform their lives!
About Readathon
Reading for pleasure enriches children’s lives. Those who read for pleasure are more like to flourish academically, socially, emotionally and career-wise. That’s why Readathon was created.
Readathon encourages children to read for pleasure with its simple but effective sponsored reading challenge. It’s not only the young readers who benefit from Readathon. Readathon also provide free books for participating schools and raises funds to help seriously ill children throughout the UK.
How to run a Readathon
Any UK school may run a Readathon – and it’s easy to run!
• request your free resource pack.
• announce your Readathon’s start and finish date
• give each child a sponsorship card
• help them list what they’d like to read
• encourage them to find sponsors
• after the closing date, return their sponsorship cards and money to us.
On receipt of your cards and money, we’ll send you your Readathon Reward pack:
• a certificate for the school
• a testimonial for the school’s official Readathon organiser
• a Scholastic Book Clubs voucher for free books for your school library, worth 20% of your sponsorship total
• (from September 2013) two free £5 National Book Tokens with which to reward your most deserving pupils (you choose the criteria)
• an invitation to sign up again for next year.
What should the children read?
Whatever they want! Readathon is all about reading for pleasure, so they should be reading something they want to read, not what they have to read, e.g. books, ebooks, comics, newspapers, magazines or even computer game instruction manuals. Children are usually keen to stretch themselves and often come up with great ideas e.g. five books about horses or ten books by Michael Morpurgo. You don’t even have to be able to read to join in the Readathon. Younger children may “read” so many picture books or pledge to share stories with an adult. What matters most is that they have FUN!
Why everyone loves Readathon
• pupils love reading to raise money for seriously ill children
• parents love to see their kids enjoy reading
• schools love the new incentive to read and the free books earned for their library
Any UK school may request a free Readathon resource pack at any time of year, containing all they need to organise a Readathon sponsored read. Register your school now for Readathon. You’ll be glad you did!
