Reading Rewards

Exciting Changes Coming Soon!

Some of you may have noticed a different look to our blog as well as our Facebook page. Over the past few months, Carole and I have been working very hard on a brand-new version of Reading-Rewards that we will be rolling out on May 25th, 2013!

New Reading Rewards

 

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.
    • 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

By |May 9th, 2013|Reading Rewards|0 Comments
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New Reading Log Printables!

While many use Reading-Rewards.com as a great alternative to paper reading logs, few people realize that we have a cool ‘Printables’ section where kids and teachers can print off reading progress using a number of different reading log templates and reports.

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’ sectionClassroom Reading Log Summary
  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:

By |October 17th, 2011|Reading Rewards|1 Comment
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  • halloween
    It’s a Halloween Treasure Hunt! It’s a Halloween Treasure Hunt!

    It’s a Halloween Treasure Hunt!

It’s a Halloween Treasure Hunt!

It’s that time of the year again, and we thought we’d send the kids on a Halloween Treasure Hunt!

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.

Halloween Treasure Hunt

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!Halloween Treasure Hunt
  6. Remember, the more you read, the more tries you’ll earn!

Happy Reading, and Happy Halloween!!!

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 […]

By |October 5th, 2011|Reading Rewards|0 Comments
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Security Enhancement – Private Reading Groups

We’re happy to announce a security enhancement on our Reading-Rewards.com reading groups, that has been rolled out today, September 13, 2011.

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

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 […]

By |September 13th, 2011|Reading Rewards|0 Comments
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Reading Rewards Badges Are Here!

Do your kids love to collect things? If they’re anything like mine, they’re badgering you at the first sign of a potential new collection: Pokemon cards, Chaotic cards, Beyblades, SillyBandz (shudder), you name it. What do they do with them? Lose them everywhere, leave them in piles all around the house, fight over unfair trades… Ok, so maybe that’s just my kids. As far as I can tell, most of the time it’s simply a race to see who can collect the most, the fastest. Add notions of ‘rare’, ‘super rare’ and (gasp!) ‘ultra rare’, and you turn it into an absolutely must-have collection. I’ll never forget the look on a poor store manager’s face last year when those dreaded Silly Bandz were all the craze: she simply could not keep up with the waves of kids coming in, raiding her displays, literally going berserk if a new pack came in. For colored elastic bands!!

This got me thinking… What if we rewarded kids (Reading Rewards kids, that is!)  with a card of some sort, every time they reached a reading milestone? Show them all the cards they can collect if they keep reading. Make some more desirable than others. Make some …. (gasp!) ULTRA rare! :-) I can see the reading frenzy starting already!

Introducing RR badges, the latest must-have collection for your RR kids!  Only this time, instead of shelling out your hard-earned cash to add to their collection, your kids will just have to keep reading and logging their minutes on Reading-Rewards.com!

Kids […]

By |September 9th, 2011|Reading Rewards|0 Comments
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How to set up a group on Reading Rewards

Once you have signed up for one of our accounts from the Reading Rewards home page, your first step as teacher or librarian will be to set up your group.

  1. From the ‘Groups’ tab, click on the ‘Create a New Group’ button.
    Create a Reading Rewards Group
  2. Click on ‘Next’
  3. You will get a notification that your group has been created, and your group will appear in your list.
  4. You can now either create student accounts yourself, or get your students to register themselves from the home page of the website. Students will need to provide an email address (either their own or a parent’s) if they register on their own. Be sure to tell them your group name, we will ask them for it upon registration!
  5. To create the student accounts yourself, click on the ‘Add Student to Group’ button. That will open up the following form:
  6. Fill in the required information, and then click on ‘Save this student’ or ‘Save & Add Another Student’
  7. When you have created your student accounts, you can hand out user names and passwords to your students, and get them started! Make sure they view our first tutorial, How To Log Reading Time.
  8. Once your group is up and running, here are a few things you will be able to do using the buttons on your group page:
  • Follow your group’s progress from the ‘Target’ tab!
  • See a nice dashboard of all your group members, what they’re currently […]
By |August 25th, 2011|Reading Rewards|1 Comment
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How to log reading time on Reading Rewards

It’s the start of a brand new school year, and we thought we’d put together a few posts with some detailed instructions for all our new users! We’re very excited to welcome you on board our community of young readers.

In this first tutorial, we’d like to show you how to log your reading time.

  1. Sign in to Reading Rewards by clicking on the ‘Login’ button from the welcome page. Don’t have an account yet? Make sure you use the sign-up button, first. It’s free!
  2. This will take you automatically to your ‘My Reading’ page. This page is divided into in 4 main sections:
    • My Library shows you all the books you have read or are reading.
    • My Wishlist contains your book wish list.
    • My Profile shows you your summary statistics and reading level
    • Log Reading Time, which shows you your reading log history.
  3. Click on ‘Log Reading Time’ in your Reading Log section:
    Log Reading Time
  4. That will take you to the Reading Log Detail screen below
    reading log details
  5. If you are adding a new book, the following screen will open up:
  6. Once you have clicked on the book title, you will be taken to the following screen. Click on ‘Add to my Library’.
    Add book to reading log
  7. This will take you back to the Reading Log Detail screen:”reading
By |August 24th, 2011|Reading Rewards, Reluctant readers|3 Comments
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How to pick the best books for your kids: 10 top tips!

Secret to picking best books for kids

I’m going to let you in on a secret. And it’s a biggie. Getting kids to read is simple, really. Astonishingly so, in fact. And I am going to share it with you, now.

Ready? You have to pick the right books.

Books they’ll enjoy. Books at their reading level. Books that cater to their interests, not yours.

I know that’s hard to do! How many times have I caught myself saying: You’ll LOVE this book, it was my favorite when I was your age! Only to have them gawk at the cover or title, read the summary and say ‘Puulllease, mom’. Ok, so maybe some of Judy Blumes titles aren’t ideal for my two tween boys…

So how does one help a possibly reluctant reader pick a book he or she won’t want to put down? Here are my top tried and tested, sure-fire ways to get your kids reading:

  1. Reading-Rewards.com (Book Recommendations tab) Well, you had to know I’d tell you to check out Reading Rewards, right? But I bet you didn’t know that beyond being a really cool online reading log and earning rewards, there’s a Book Recommendations tab that’s full of great reading suggestions. Here’s what you’ll find:
    • Most Popular Books on Reading Rewards, as logged by our almost 5,000 users. Click through to read member reviews!
    • Books members liked: This tab allows you to make selections by age and gender, and see what members like you have enjoyed. A random selection, but you may find some great […]
By |July 4th, 2011|Book recommendations, Reading Rewards, Reluctant readers|8 Comments
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Reading Rewards at your local library!

I’ve been wanting to share my thoughts about how Reading Rewards can be used in Youth Libraries for a while, so when I noticed ‘Gulf Beaches Library’ in the Reading Rewards ‘Top Groups of the Day‘ almost every day this week, I decided to contact their administrator to see how they were getting on, and maybe get a little feedback.

I got an almost immediate answer, and wanted to share the lovely note with you. I am so excited about this story of how Reading Rewards is being used (very successfully so far!) by Florida’s Gulf Beaches Library:

“This year, I was very excited and a little nervous to see what would happen when Gulf Beaches Library went up and running on Reading-Rewards.com. I had printouts available about reading prizes, but this year I hoped to use Reading Rewards to manage summer reading logs.

In the past, I’ve relied both on in-house designed and on professional promotional sheets, but I was never satisfied. Both systems meant  a herd of kids coming at me just before a packed program, all of them needing to have their logs stamped.   No matter how cute the sticker or the stamp, I couldn’t spend any real time with any child. It was all rush, rush, rush.
When I explored Reading Rewards, I realized that I’d be able to view their reading daily AND they would be able to view each others, which might lead to a nice bit of competition, AND exchange opinions about books they were reading.

I created a group, naming it simply, Gulf Beaches Library, loaded […]

By |June 24th, 2011|Reading Rewards|0 Comments
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Featured User Series: Meet Marco!

In this fourth post in our Featured User Series, I’d like to introduce you to 10 1/2 year old Marco! Marco joined Reading-Rewards with his class in September 2010, and has logged just under 109 hours of reading time. That puts him at the Reading-Rewards Jellyfish level. Woohoo, that’s a lot of reading, Marco, well done!

Marco’s class, from Montreal’s St-Paul Elementary School, has logged a total of 105,268 reading minutes since September. Good job, you guys!

I contacted Marco to ask him a few questions:

Do you have an all-time favorite book? What sort of book do you generally enjoy?

Marco: My all-time favorite book would probably be Diary Of A Wimpy Kid 5: The Ugly truth. Not just because it’s funny and all, because I love the style they write it, like a diary. I think they put just the right amount of text on each page. Book Series I really enjoy are Big Nate and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. I enjoy a very funny (not too long, unless the book is amazing)book.

Where is your favorite place to read? When you do usually read?

Marco: I like to read in class, the first 10 minutes or so, my teacher gives us time to read or write. Occasionaly, I choose reading. Sometimes even whem i’m watching some boring show, I would definately pull out a book and read. I usually read at my house, in many different ways.

Do you enjoy using the Reading Rewards website? What do you like about it? Could you tell us what would make it better?

Marco:  I love using the Reading Rewards website because I think […]

By |June 2nd, 2011|Reading Rewards, Reviews|0 Comments
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