By JEANNETTE SHAMBAUGH
Moapa Valley Progress
Grant M Bowler Elementary students and staff celebrated reading week last week during series of activities that lasted five days.
This year’s theme “Reading is a Voyage” took students on a reading journey across the globe to discover new places through reading filled activities and lots of pirate fun. Students and staff started each day with a different dress up theme: everything from dress up as a pirate day and words on ye shirt day to dress up as your favorite book character day.
Every day of the week a new mystery reader would read a book to students across the intercoms in their very best pirate voices until students could guess who they were. At the end of every day the entire school would play book bingo, or have a book walk until one lucky class would win.
Students were also encouraged to read as much as possible at school and home to earn Accelerated Reader (AR) points. This year’s goal was to earn 8,000 AR points in one week. Not only did the students meet their goal they beat it by over a thousand extra points and they earned a total of 9,880 AR points in just 5 days! Students earn AR points by reading books and taking comprehension tests to see if they comprehended the book they just read. When students pass the test, they earn their AR points.
Students and teachers worked very hard incorporating reading into every second of the day and making reading fun. Kassandra Underwood a 3rd grader at Grant Bowler said, “Reading week is my favorite time of year we get to play a lot of fun reading games, win prizes and best of all read read read.”
Walking the halls of the school, one could hear the excitement from all of the classrooms.
The school also held two very special assemblies to celebrate reading week. The Grant M Bowler Honor Choir performed for the entire school on Thursday. On Tuesday, 11 very brave 4th and 5th grade students recited stories to students that they had memorized for the storytelling assembly. During the assembly teachers judged each story and gave all groups scores. The top 3 scoring storytellers will be moving on and competing at the Bristlecone Storytelling Festival in Mesquite on May 4-5.
The winners moving on and competing in the festival are: Ella Johnson & Alexa Reese, Avary Jolley & Hannah Rowley and Jaxon Holmes. Congratulations to the winners and congratulations to all students at Grant M Bowler Elementary for working very hard and earNing all 9,880 of their AR points.
