We use AR and it is awesome. The kids go crazy over it. After so many points they get a top dog reader tshirt and the prizes are from very little to a day at the beauty school where you get your hair and nails done, a limosine ride around town for 30 minutes, lunch with a special guest (usually they pick a principal or a favorite teacher), every day on the newscast at the school, they announce all the top dog readers when they get their shirts. Our kids love it. There is a bulletin board with graphs and the kids get to put their die cut with their name in the correct point spot. The teachers even read stories to them and they always use the AR books so all the kids in the class can take a test afterward. Maybe we should check out AM!.
At this point we do not do the AM just the AR. The PTO alotted $5000 for this program this year. It is the only program we sponsor completely. We have a fabulous turn out on our program which runs from 1 - 4th. When the kids reach 50 points they get a Tshirt, there's a reading wall of honor where their pictures and points are posted. Their points can also be used at a fall and a spring AR store run by our volunteers, there's a pizza party for certain point levels in the fall and an ice cream sundae social in the spring with the Principal and child on our patio area. The children may also use their points to purchase books at the book fairs in both fall and spring. In between that time there are various other incentives offered. Teachers make up the AR board and the PTO actually just runs the AR store. The rest the AR board does. I would think the same process would work for the AM program as well.
Our school had a "store" that was operated twice a year for the students to purchase items from pencils to books and science kits. We(the PTO) allotted $250 to purchase items and had a volunteer to the shopping. However, we found that only a small protion of students were participating. This year we decided to put those funds toward our character education rewards program and asked that teachers reward students for every book read(1 ticket for the drawing) and larger reward(2 tickets) if the book was an AR. Most of our teachers require their students to read a certain number of books per month and some require that a certain number of those be AR. It's great to encourage children to challenge themselves in their reading, but we felt that they should be rewarded for EVERY book they read. We feel that more children are benefiting from this new reward program than the previous, so our money is better spent.
Our school has been using the AR and AM program the past two years for 1st-4th graders with mixed reviews. Do you use it at your school, how does it work, is it counted as part of a reading or math grade, when do the children spend their points and on what, and how much funding does the program receive from PTO?
