Completing the 40-Book Challenge is one of my favorite things to do each year. If you're just getting started with it though, it can be a little daunting. To help you out, I've gone through and answered some of the questions I'm asked most often. This will help make it easier for you to start the 40 book challenge with your students.
Do you do the 40 book challenge with your students?
What if not everyone completes the challenge?
That is okay! Each year, when I introduced the challenge, I do have students to ask the question “But Mrs. Sanchez, what if we don’t finish?” I assure them that everything will be okay. Because most of them, if they really truly have tried to do the challenge, will end up reading more books than they did the year before. Each new book that they read is a win. I don’t make a big deal out of it, but I definitely do celebrate the books that we do read.
How do your lower readers complete the challenge?
My lower readers have the same task as everyone else in the class. They need to read 40 books. In the individual conferences that I have with students, I will sit down and look at the books that they are reading. In those conferences, I do talk with my lower readers about books they can read. This might mean that some of my lower readers finish the challenge before the rest of the class because they are reading books on lower levels. To me, that is okay. I give them the charge to start the challenge over again. After all, just think of how much growth they would make if they read 80-120 books in a year!
Do you give them a reward for finishing?
I try not to turn this into a "simply read to get the reward" challenge. Because of this, my students don’t come away with any free pizza or ice cream. They don’t get extra recess time or anything like that. For my students to read all 40 books, I do like to give them something though for all of their hard work. What I do is I allow them to select one book from our classroom library that then becomes their own book. It can be any book that they want from our library. Now, you might be thinking “Jamie, I don’t have all that money to spend on books for my students, to just give books away.“ If this is something that you really want to be able to do, there are different ways to make this work. Secondhand bookstores are always a fun way to find new books that can be added to your classroom library. I also love Scholastic. They will often have books that students are interested in reading for relatively decent prices.
Another idea you could pursue is asking for donations. You can set up a Donors Choose project which allows other people to donate to your classroom. (New to Donors Choose? Click here to set up your own account with my referral code!) You can find books on Amazon that you want to add to your library and create a new project page. As you share your project with family and friends, you will be surprised just how many people are willing to contribute to help students learn and grow.
How do you keep track of what your students are reading?
To help my students keep track of what they have read, I created a reading tracker. This reading tracker has eight different sections that include a book counter, a list of the types of genres they will be reading this year, a list of books they want to read, a list of books they have read, book reviews, and more. I find that having this comprehensive book tracker has helped my students to be more successful at completing the 40 book challenge. I've got a blog post linked here that focuses just on this question, or you can click here to go straight to the tracker I use with my students.
Do you count larger books as 2 books?
When I introduced the 40 book challenge to my students for the first time, I told them that books are over 300 pages with counters to books. Guess what my students did? Yep. They went and found all the books that had 300 pages or more that they could count as two books. If they found one that had 299 pages, some of them would not read it. What I do now, is look at the books that they are reading in their book conferences that I have with them. If I notice that they are reading a book that is particularly long, or that might take them a long time, I will let them know privately that they can count that specific book as two books. This isn’t announced to the class, but I do recognize that some of my students are reading larger books like Harry Potter. These take longer to read, and I want to recognize the hard work my students are doing.
Do you limit the number of books a student can read from a series?
The only types of limits that I try to give to my students are the book genres themselves. If they decide that for all of their informational text, they want to read books from the "Who Was...?" series, I let them. If they decide about all of their realistic fiction books come from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, as long as they haven’t read them before that works for me.
What are your normal genre requirements?
Each year I change things up a little bit. Here is this year’s genre reading requirement:
- Realistic Fiction: 6 books
- Historical Fiction: 4 books
- Fantasy: 4 books
- Science Fiction: 2 books
- Mystery: 2 books
- Action/Adventure: 3 books
- Informational: 7 books
- Biographies: 2 books
- Student's Choice: 10 books
How do you help students who don't want to do the challenge?
How do you make sure your students actually read the books they say they are reading?
- Who were the main characters in the book?
- What was one of the main problems?
- How did the characters solve the problem?
- What was your favorite part of the book and why?
- How would you have changed the ending?
