WOW! That is a really cool idea to do for the AR program. We have not tapped into the idea of doing prizes for this. I know for March the school sets a goal and if the kids reach that goal, the principal will treat them. Last year she did popcorn, drinks and a movie for the whole school.
For Christmas we also got the parents involved in donating for this program. We suggested to the parents that if they were looking for a holiday gift for their child's teacher, they could donate to the AR program. We made gift cards that read:
Dear (teacher's name)
A holiday gift donation has been made in your honor to the Accelerated Reading Program by (student or family's name). Thank you for your dedication. Have the merriest of holiday seasons!

In addition the PTO also donated to each teacher for their gift and we did a similar card. Since it was our first year, we only had 7 families do it but it was a good start. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Each student takes a reading assessment test at the start of the program, and the results are used to steer the kids towards the books most appropriate for their skill level. Each book has a point value assigned to it. Prizes are awarded at various cumulative point levels for each student -- many of them are obtained from accelerated reader, but last year the top prize level was ice cream sundaes with the principal.

This year we are adding a school wide goal which will net the principal and I reading Green Eggs and Ham from the school roof. We only do AR for grades 4-6, so we will need to assign a value to books read by K-3 students to count towards the school goal.

Would like info on how your Accelerrated Reader(AR) program is ran. Do you go by points accumulated, books read, do you set a goal by the semester, year, etc? How do you use your points? Is it counted as part of a reading grade, etc? Are is only a few years old, and it need a little fine tuning.