Transcript

The idea of the hundred books began with the 100 days of school. So, I wanted to have something to mark for 100 days of school in order to have that celebration, and with fourth graders it was a little bit more challenging. So, the 100 books was a way to get them to read and it was for students to get to read five books first. And so, as the kids started reading, "let's see if we can get to 100". And they were like, "100 books, we can't do 100 books". I was like, "yes you can". I said "and 100 days of school is actually coming up pretty soon". And so we took down what day it was then and I would mark it off, I was OK, at this point we have 25 books and there are so many days left till we reach our 100 day mark. 

Now so they would read and they would read. Now as they read, I would actually have them write summaries. That way I can ensure that they actually read the book. Some of the books were from our summer reading program, so those books I was sure that they read because we do an assessment on those, but they were asked to choose their favorite books to share with the class. So some kids read a lot more than five books, but they were asked to choose their favorite books and every time a child read a book we would post it. It actually became more challenging with them once they saw that so-and-so had three books already, so they knew that they needed to get on their reading of their books. So, that's the way the 100 books came about and on the 100th day, we actually had more than 100 books. But we only posted the 100. So that was an excellent way to get them to read. It was an excellent way to build their vocabulary. It helped with their comprehension, and each child was reading chapter books that were on grade level.