Reading has become trendy at Iola Middle School these past two months, thanks to Librarian Rachel Palmer’s love of sports.
An avid Chiefs fan, Palmer used the excitement surrounding the NFL playoff season to launch the “Road to the Super Bowl Reading Challenge.” Palmer shared news of the Challenge at Monday night’s USD 257 board meeting.
In January, homerooms at IMS competed as teams and earned points by logging their time spent reading, which were translated into football terms.
“Each minute of reading equaled one yard,” explained Palmer. To get a 7-point “touchdown,” a homeroom would collectively need to have 100 minutes of reading time — or 100 yards. To earn 3-point “field goals,” students could either read a sports or nonfiction book, and then write a short review about the book.
“The media center was busy,” said Palmer. “Students were excited to participate.” The top two teams in the challenge advanced to the “Super Bowl,” where they went head-to-head. In addition to the team aspect, students also competed individually to be named the MVP of their homeroom.
The winning homeroom won a snack of chips and queso, with the runner-up getting chocolate chip cookies.
Palmer noted that there were many benefits to the challenge. “Students who aren’t typically avid readers were reading more,” she said. “We had students sitting together in the media center, reading sports books, and then swapping them between one another once they finished.” She added that students voiced, overwhelmingly, that they enjoyed the challenge.
Due to the success of this first attempt, Palmer is already working on future challenges. “Going forward, we plan on using a version of this challenge that will alternate between the NFL playoffs, March Madness and the Olympics,” she said. “We’re looking at maybe creating individual monthly challenges.”
PROGRESS IS also being made for the district’s English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) program.
Aubrey Westhoff, ESOL coordinator, gave an update on the program. Prior to taking on the coordinator position full-time this year, Westhoff was an elementary school Title I teacher.
“Before doing this job full-time, I wasn’t able to really monitor ESOL students as much as I wanted to,” she said. “Currently, I’m able to take the time weekly to monitor my middle school students and keep them accountable for their grades.”
Choosing to give up her role as a Title I teacher wasn’t an easy one. “When I was approached about doing this job full-time, I struggled with the thought of losing my bond to my Title team,” she said. “But being able to tell my students that I had worked with for several years that I was going to still be their teacher was an amazing feeling.” She shared that one of her students became emotional when he found out that she was able to go along with him to middle school.
PART OF Westhoff’s position includes adapting assignments and tests, so they are more user friendly for ESOL students. “For example, my sixth-grade students struggled with vocabulary quizzes in their English class. So, I created a template that allowed them to have a word bank instead of a drop-down option on a Google form,” she explained. “They were asked the same questions as their peers; it was just a different format that was easier for them to understand.”
New technology is proving to be promising in helping ESOL students in the classroom, noted Westhoff. She recently attended an ESOL meeting and won a pair of TimeKettles — earbuds that allow for lessons and conversations to be easily translated for the student and teacher in a language they can understand. “As a teacher speaks to an ESOL student, it is translated into the student’s primary language in real-time,” she explained.
Westhoff noted that while the TimeKettles are helpful for classroom learning, they are quite expensive. “It has opened the idea, though, of us looking into purchasing earbuds that are similar to the TimeKettles, but not as expensive for the district to purchase,” she said. She added that she and Technology Coordinator Ben Prasko are in the beginning stages of figuring this out.
