I never got prizes for reading and I LOVE to read. What made me read was the content of the books and there are so many more good and interesting books for children now. Children crave attention and time spent with them more then any trinkets we can give them. When do they start reading because they want to?

As soon as we stop buying Nintendo, GameCube, GameBoy, cell phones, etc. for them.

We read books when we were younger to travel, to experience new people, places and things, for romance, for sci-fi, for westerns, for culture, etc. Children today get the same thing from videos, computer games, TV, and the earlier mentioned 'vices'.

I guess you could call it a new form of the age-old 'generation gap'.

I totally understand prizes as an incentive for kids that don't like to read or haven't become fluent readers but I know that i is wasted motivation for kids that love to read. My kids have done pizza hut pizza reading programs for years. I remember doing it with my oldest child in grade school and she's in college. I don't like their pizza, so we always just threw the certificates for the little pizza's away. Still do. My kids read because they like to read. When we do incentive programs for what should be expected behavior we set our kids up for disappointment later. So, okay give everyone a basic reading goal and then for extra effort do a lunch with a teacher or Principal, or teacher if that will make a student strive more.

I never got prizes for reading and I LOVE to read. What made me read was the content of the books and there are so many more good and interesting books for children now. Children crave attention and time spent with them more then any trinkets we can give them. When do they start reading because they want to?

Our school runs the AR program also. We do the store trinkets that they can turn in at the end of each month and get prizes, a lot of the prizes are also school supplies. I have no problem with it simply being I think it's a good think to reward kids with prizes...not for everything but sometimes its nice for the kids to feel their hard work pay off with prizes. My son started reading the Harry Potter books in November (they are AR books also) and is now on his 4th one. Our teachers have a party after school for all the kids that participate in the AR Program (they don't make it mandatory)once the entire school has reached so many points. Stuff like a dj (we get them from the local highschool) food, face painting...simple things.
They also earn gift certificates to pizza hut, chick fila, mcdonalds....once they reach a certain amt of points (its a given instead of something they have to use their points on). There are tons of things you could do. Lunch with teachers that the PTO would cover, bowling with the PE Teacher.....

I will apologize now for the length of this post as this has been a HUGE issue at our school lately.

Our teachers run the AR program as far as the testing, etc...goes. However, not every teacher treats AR equally. Some shove it down the kids, make it mandatory and also part of their grade.(which makes them not want to read at all...my son has a teacher like this this year) And then some don't really use it at all. And of course we have a wide range in between. So at our school we feel like we have to offer rewards (which are paid for by the parent club).

In past years we have let the students spend their points as they wish but had specific items at each point level. 10 = candy bar, 25 = soda & snack, 50 = pizza party and 75 = movie ticket. However, if they had 100 points they could get 10 candy bars. This was a nightmare because of the way we tried to hand out their stuff.

Now after almost a year of heated discussions we are moving toward recognition rewards instead of monetary. We will be putting displays in the cafeteria. 1 for the point clubs and another will be a bar graph for each grade that will show the tests passed. Also for each test passed they will get an entry in a drawing in the library for gift certificates (from our Scrip program). We will pull winners each month and one for each grade. We are also working on the privilege rewards to go with the point clubs. Those are a little harder for us since the teachers are not always willing to cooperate.

I think I covered everything.

We've been doing AR for a while now and PTO just bought $600 worth of new tests for the program.

At the end of the year, we host "game day". Parents bring in board games and those students that reached a certain point in AR get to have a "free" day of playing games and winning prizes and such. They really look forward to it.

Our PTO sponsors our AR program by supplying the monies for the prizes. Our Title I aides usually order the prizes and they are usually responsible for seeing the kids are rewarded when they reach a different point club.

You could have them to have lunch with the principal after they reach a certian point club. Our principal eats with our kids once a week for their birthdays and they LOVE it. She takes a few at a time in the conference room and lets them watch cartoons and they have some big conversations! It is so sweet. Some of our teachers will let the kids eat in their room for different reasons, AR goal being one reason. She will take the kids down there and the rest eat in the lunchroom as usual. It is a good behavior reward too. The "other" school in the county offers a small field trip to a local resturaunt. You could offer extra recess or extra gym time. That cost nothing but the kids benefit from it healthwise (but don't tell them that,they just think it's fun). You could have parties for them that offer them drinks and cookies, even pizza.

Someone posted an idea for a Reading Night on here; their kids get to have a slumber party with the principal. I loved that idea and shared it with our principal because when she first took over she was worried about the kids with an over average amount of points had all the prizes offered and she didn't want them to feel left out. She thought the idea was great.

That is a few ideas. Good luck! I think AR is a great program.