It’s been a phenomenal year, with our user numbers tripling since 2012. To accomodate all our new readers, we have optimized the site and moved it to a new server. We will also be introducing some exciting enhancements. Here are just a few:

• Faster, faster, faster! We have recoded some of the key elements of the site which has resulted in much speedier performance overall. This should be a huge improvement in 2013-2014!
• A much prettier, re-designed user interface, with many more online hints and tips. Reading Rewards will be a lot easier to use and understand for our young members! What’s more, we have used something called responsive design, which means that it will not only work but also look great on iPads and other tablets.

New and improved RR!

• An awesome RR Store with something for everyone! In addition to customized rewards from parents/teachers/librarians, kids will also be able to buy a Joke of the Day, a Video of the Day, or a Raffle Ticket from Reading-Rewards that could win them a real prize! We will soon being holding monthly raffles, with some great prizes. What’s more, our store looks GREAT.

The new RR Store

• Nicer badges! Kids will also earn badges as they reach important milestones for Minutes Read, Books Read and Books Reviewed. We love our new badges, and know the kids will too!
• Games: we have temporarily removed our resource-intensive games from our site. We are looking into partnering with professional game developers to turn our Fun & Games section into something exciting!
• 90 RR Mile/day limit removed. When we started, we wanted to limit the number of RR Miles that kids could earn, and decided on a 90 RR Miles/day maximum. In our new version, kids will earn RR Miles for every minute of validated reading, with no daily limit. Hurray, hurray!
• Time-zone support for our friends in APAC, particularly all our Australian and New Zealand friends! Now your reading time will be calculated in your own time zone, and not compared to our New York server time zone! This should make a big difference to you.
• Alternate email addresses for validation. Children will now be able to add email addresses for more than 1 parent.

We’re also going through our site with a fine-tooth comb, and sorting out little issues that we’ve uncovered along the way.

Rest assured all your information will remain intact as we roll out the new version on May 25th. We can’t wait for you to see the new RR, and we are sure you will love it as much as we do!

Happy Reading!

Michelle and Carole

Not surprising.

A recent Nielsen poll suggests that 44% of kids in the US want an iPad for Christmas.

So I suppose in a way I should consider myself lucky that the top item on my son’s list is something called Skylanders…

Although they may not realize it while they are working on their lists, Lady Montagu put if perfectly when she said, in 1752:

“No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. She will not want new fashions nor regret the loss of expensive diversions or variety of company if she can be amused with an author in her closet.”

Yes somehow, unwrapping books, no matter how enticing they may be, pales in comparison to the shiny electronic gadgets, DVDs, and video games.

MotherReader has some great ideas over on her blog, including ways to wrap a book, and 105 ways to give a book. You must check them out for inspiration, I know I will! There is nothing I love more than browsing my local bookstore for great picks for my kids, but I’ll be looking for some creative ways to make them stand out amidst Mario and all the rest.

You’ll also find great inspiration over at The Book Chook, where Susan has brought together literacy-related holiday inspiration from around the kid lit blogosphere.

No excuses to not include books, and lots of them, under the tree this holiday season!

Hope you’ll share any advice you have on how to give books this holiday season!

Happy Reading,

Michelle

(In case you’re interested in The Hunger Games,  check out the new trailer that’s just been released!)

Back to my younger guy. Lately we’ve hit on a few books that he’s thoroughly enjoyed (and finished!), so I feel it is safe to call them top picks for reluctant reader boys. Here they are!

NERDS: National Espionage, Rescue, and Defense Society (Book One) Michael Buckley 

He’s about half-way through this first book, and keeps coming to find me to describe where he’s at, and what new, funny think has just happened to Jackson, one of the main characters. To me, that is huge: not only is he enjoying reading it, but it is something he wants to share, as well. Yess!  Check out the review from Amazon.

Darth Paper Strikes Back: An Origami Yoda Book (Tom Angleberger)

My guy enjoyed the Origami Yoda follow up even more than the original, and that’s saying a lot! The bonus instructions for folding your own darth paper were a huge hit, too! Check out the review from Amazon.

Big Nate: In a Class by Himself (Lincoln Peirce)

Well, he loved the Wimpy Kid series, and he loved Big Nate. It’s a definite Jeff Kinney read-alike, but does it matter? An absolute top reluctant reader pick.

If you’re interested in more books for reluctant readers, you may want to check out a couple of previous posts where I polled our Reading-Rewards.com members, specifically boys, for their favorites!

Book Boys Love – Part 1

Books Boys Love – Part 2

Do you have any books you’d recommend to young reluctant readers? We’d love to hear from you!!

Reading-Rewards.com is an online reading incentive/reading log website that can be found at www.reading-rewards.com. Kids log their reading time, and are invited to review their books once they’ve finished them. Once their reading entries get validated by a parent (optional), their minutes get converted to points (RR Miles) they can use to redeem for rewards that their parents or teachers set up for them. A full set of features allow teachers to set up groups for their classes and track individual and group reading. A great alternative to paper reading logs!

That’s an incredible number, one that’s hard for even adults to wrap their heads around. But what about kids? When I told my boys about this milestone, I could see they were struggling a bit to grasp the enormity of it.

So I pulled out a fantastic book I bought a few years ago, that is just perfect for the occasion.

In ‘If the World Were a Village‘, author David Smith invites young readers to imagine the world as a global village of 100 people, with each person representing 62,000,000 people in the real world. Since its publication, the population has already grown enough so that today, each person in Smith’s village would have to represent 70,000,000 people! But that does not take away from the book’s value in any way…

Smith discusses nationalities, languages, ages, religions, food, air and water, schooling and literacy, money and possessions, and electricity, in ways and numbers that kids can grasp. It finishes with a view of our village in the future, as well as resources on teaching children about the earth’s population.

Some stats that surprised my kids (and even me, if I’m completely honest!)

• Of the 100 people in our global village, only 30 people have enough to eat. 50 are hungry all or some of the time, and 20 are severely undernourished. This is despite the fact that there is enough food to feed everyone: it is jut not divided equally…
• 32 of our villagers breathe air that is unhealthy because of pollution.
• Of the 73 people over age 15, 17 cannot read at all.

And finally, a great NG video to share with the kids:

Are you discussing 7 billion at home or in your classroom today? Any good resources you could share with us?

Happy Reading!

My younger guy, however, has had a little black cloud hanging over his head for most of the week because he had 2 pretty major reading assignments, one in English, and one in French, due when he goes back this week.

You know about my passion for getting kids to read, and how important I know it is. But I have a problem with this kind of assigned reading, when kids almost can’t help but associate reading with feelings of negativity, and almost despair.

Neither one of these books were books of his choice, and neither are they what one would call a classic. I would feel a bit better about it had one of these been the case. For their French assignment, they were given a few minutes in the school library to pick a book off the shelves, and THAT was what they had to read. Make the wrong choice, as my son appears to have done, and it’s simply too bad. It’s back to school in 2 days, and he’s struggling to get through 180 boring pages. And believe me, he is counting every page and minute.

His English assignment was slightly better, in that they had to choose from the Classic Starts collection, so at least he read something worthwhile (Robin Hood).

I would much prefer the teachers had asked them to do a set amount of reading per day, with books of their choices, rather than force them to read quite the opposite during their break. It has really been almost painful to watch over the last couple of days, as my guy has had his assigned reading on his mind nearly constantly, and not enjoying a minute of it, while his older brother, who appears to have totally lucked out in the homework department, relaxes, plays his games, and reads Mockingjay (Suzanne Collins), for the pleasure of it.

I believe it is important for teachers to assign certain books during the year, so that kids are exposed to more than Wimpy Kid, Big Nate, etc. But give them too much, during their supposed time off, and making the choice so seemingly random, well, I just don’t get it.

Encourage the kids to read regularly during their break, yes. But try and make sure this is a pleasurable activity, by allowing them to pick their own, well-suited books, and not turning it into some stressful assignment.

My guy has just poked his head of the room, and announced that he has read another 17 pages, with 84 more to go by the end of day. This was accompanied by a mammoth sigh and almost pitiful eyes. In my opinion, this is completely counter-productive.

What are your thoughts about this kind of assigned reading during school holidays? I’d love to hear from you!

1. The more kids read, the more they know.

Seriously, who wants kids to know stuff? Just think about all the conversations you’ll be forced to have about topics you may know nothing about. It’s enough they learn all this stuff in school, and then bug us with homework we can’t remember how to do anymore. Are YOU smarter than a fifth grader? I know I’m not, and I certainly don’t need my kids trying to outsmart me with all the things they’ll learn from reading.

2. When kids read, they can lose themselves in imaginary worlds

Narnia? Hogwarts? Camp Half-Blood? Seriously, those places do not exist, and pretending they do is just plain silly. Will knowing where to place them on an imaginary map help my kid with his geography grade? Will reading about how to train a dragon get my boys to walk their dog more often? I think not. Why let them dream about far-away, fairytale lands when real life is always so wonderful?

3. Kids who read, succeed

Research has shown that the more you read, the smarter you become, and that reading directly affects a child’s intellectual development. Who wants successful children? You know what that means, don’t you: a successful child is one that will eventually leave home. Now, I know you love your children. Love them more than life itself, right? So why would you want them to ever leave home and become successful individuals in their own right? Don’t you just cherish the idea of doing their laundry, cooking for them, paying their bills FOREVER? If you love your kids as much as I do, you won’t be ashamed to admit it. So KEEP YOUR KIDS AWAY FROM BOOKS.

4. Reading increases a child’s vocabulary and grammar, and has the potential to improve writing skills

Do you keep a little folder with all those sweet notes your child has written over the years, with all those misspelled words and the funny grammar? Aren’t they just the cutest? It warms my heart reading how much my boys ‘luv’ me, and what ‘prezints’ they want Santa to bring them on ‘Krismas’. Seriously, if they carry on reading, their writing skills are going to improve, and what will happen to my little folder then, I ask you!?! And anyway, all those spell-check tools in today’s word processor and texting applications fix everything anyway, right? And we know they never get anything wrong, right?

5. Reading improves a child’s probability of staying in school.

Why would I want my child to stay in school? Check out this list of highly successful high-school dropouts. Why should I spend my hard-earned money on schools, books, supplies and all those extra-curricular activities for my kids when chances are,  if they simply drop out, they will become millionaires. I mean, seriously, it’s a no-brainer, right?

I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture. So please stop the head banging, and turn on that TV. It must be about time for somebody to get voted off an island or something….

Happy Reading! ( you know I had to end with that, I couldn’t help myself…)

Today we added a comprehensive Classroom Reading Summary Report, which provides a reading group administrator detailed stats that include the following:

• Total reading minutes per student
• Total number of books finished per student
• Reading minutes (graph form)
• Percent target reached (if you have set a daily or weekly reading target for your students, this pie chart will show you which percentage of your students reached the target, on average, in the period.
• A detailed list of books read, along with student reviews, grouped by student name

The report will look something like this:

This is our most comprehensive report yet, and we really hope you like it!

How to print off your classroom reading summary report:

1. Log in to your Reading-Rewards.com account
2. Click on ‘Printables’
3. Select the group you want the report for
4. Select the date range you are interested in
5. Click on the ‘Print’ button in the ‘Group Summary’ section
6. Your report will begin to download immediately!

While you’re on the Printables tab, be sure to browse around a take a look at the different reading log templates and reports we have available:

Be sure to let your kids know about the Printables section, they’ll be sure to want to print off their progress occasionally! And if you have any special requests, please do let us know by using the Contact Us form on our website!

Our kids generally love the outdoors, but the idea of a 2 hour trek through the forest didn’t do much for them. But when we mentioned we’d combine it with a treasure hunt, and their challenge would be to find hidden treasures along the trail, they couldn’t wait to get going!

Geocaching is a real-world outdoor treasure hunting game. Players try to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, using GPS-enabled devices. There are over 1,500,000 hidden geocaches all over the world, so chances are, there are some near you.

Our first time, we happened to be going to Pinnacle, in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, and we found out on the geocaching.com website that there were at least 3 hidden caches there, along our planned hike route. Yay!

You don’t need much more than a GPS-enabled device (in our case, iPhones!), and a free membership on Geocaching.com. There you can search their database for caches near you or near your destination: you’re sure to find one! You will get the exact GPS coordinates of the ‘cache’, as well as a description of the site and other attributes (difficulty, for example).

Once you get closer, use your GPS or smart phone with Geocaching app, and navigate closer to the hiding spot. I loved doing this with the iPhone app, because it would tell us how close we were (ie: 53 meters), and in what direction to move (ie: NE). Because we happened to be in the woods, this was very useful! We pulled out the iPhone compass, and taught the kids to read it. They loved swapping between the Geocaching app to see if they were getting closer, and then the compass, to get back on track.

When you’re within a couple of meters, it’s basically just a question of looking for a little hidden container. They don’t contain much, little trinkets people have left behind, and the basic concept is you can take the trinket if you replace it with something else.

Once you’ve found the cache, you log that you’ve found it, either using the smartphone app or the Geocaching website.

Our kids at the summit!

We found all 3 that first day, and spent a good three hours on our hike without a single complaint from the kids. We’ve repeated the experience several times since, and no longer ask the kids: Shall we go for a hike? But rather: Shall we go geocaching? The answer is always yes…

This is an activity I HIGHLY recommend, as it has taught the kids so much about general navigation outdoors: reading a GPS, compass, understanding distances, etc. And of course, it’s a great way to spend a few hours outdoors with the whole family, which is always priceless.

Want more information? Watch this video that tells you everything you need to know!

Between now and the end of October, Reading-Rewards.com members will be racing each other to find the most Halloween icons in our grid. Kids get 1 try per 10 minutes of reading, up to a maximum of 6 tries per day.

How to play our Halloween Treasure Hunt

1. If you don’t already have an account, sign up for a free account on Reading-Rewards.com
2. Make sure you spend some quiet time reading, and then sign in to your account on Reading-Rewards.com, and log some reading time! Not sure how? Here’s how to use our online reading log!
3. Make sure that your reading gets validated (unless your reading gets automatically validated, your parents will receive and email asking them to approve your reading time!)
4. Click on Fun and Games, and click on the Halloween Race button
5. Click on a slot where you think you’ll find a Halloween surprise!
6. Remember, the more you read, the more tries you’ll earn!

Happy Reading, and Happy Halloween!!!

Your kids’/students’ security is our top priority.

We have added privacy setting on reading groups, which will allow you to make your groups completely private. If you enable this setting, before being able to view or join your group, users will be asked to provide a security code that is unique to your group.

If they fail to do so, they will not be able to view any information about your group.

We strongly recommend that you change the security setting on your reading group by doing the following:

1. Log on to Reading Rewards
2. Access your group’s page from the ‘Groups’ tab
3. Click on the ‘Edit Group’ button
4. Set ‘Secure group with a code’ to ‘Yes’
5. Take note of the security code (randomly generated) to hand out to any new students that wish to join your group

This does not affect current group members, nor does it affect students that you created and added to your group yourself. This only affects future members of your group that wish to join you on their own.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or concerns.

Happy Reading!

The Reading Rewards Team