This year, we’re on a quest. Our goal? To read 1,000,000 minutes between all the students at our school!
Now, for those of you at larger schools, you’re probably thinking, that should be no problem at all! For us however, we only have about 230 students in our entire school for grades K through 6! That means, to reach our goal, each student would have to read about 4,347 minutes a piece. That works out to roughly 72 and a half hours per student, or, about 3 straight days of reading!
Our goal is certainly no small task but at this point, we’re well on our way. Our sixth graders have been collecting reading logs and totaling them every week and to date, we’ve read 764,150 minutes! That leaves us with only 235,850 minutes left to go. On this pace, we should definitely reach our goal.
As we’ve been adding up reading logs every week, we’ve also been keeping track of our progress through both bar and line graphs. We’ve kept them up outside our cafeteria for the school to see. We’ve also been keeping them up on Google Docs to share with everyone else as well! The first graph is interactive so you can hover over each bar to see how many minutes we read each week!
We’re going to keep working hard to reach our goal. We can’t wait to see what surprises are in store once we finally do!
Do you think your school could reach one million minutes?
What books are you reading right now?
Dear Mr Avery’s class
What a fascinating challenge you have done. The books I’m reading right now are mainly historical, non-fiction and world myths & legends.
These books give me a better view of the world and what maybe will happen in a few thousand years. So what books is your class into right now? I hope your students like history.
From your blogging friend
Navajo, Room 24
Dear Mr Avery’s class
What a great challenge to conquer!
In our school we will probably reach one million minutes because we have about four hundred people in our school or maybe even more.
The books that I’m reading at the moment are a series. There are four books and I’m on the second book that is called Eldest. The series are called Inheritance series. They are really good books. I recommend you do read them.
Your blogging friend
Johanna, Room 24, Taradale Intermediate
Dear Mr. Avery,
I love reading. It’s so much fun! There’s so many different story lines and problems and settings and so much to take in. And sometimes when the author is really good you can feel like your actually watching the story happen! I love when that happens!
Sincerely,
Molly
Dear Molly,
The same thing happens to me to when I’m reading a book and then I turn on the telly. I feel like I was just watching that but I was actually reading the book. I also love reading because I go into my little world of reading. I agree that there are so many different settings and problems.
♥ Fiona:)
Dear Mr Avery and class,
It is Ashleigh here from Taradale Intermediate school. Our school has about 460 students so we could probably all do it if we tried. Looking at your graph I think it is pretty amazing how much your school reads a night! I was very impressed. The book I am reading at the moment is called conspiracy 365. It is not usually the type of book I would read as it is an action book but so far I am really enjoying it.
What type of books do you all like to read?
I would love to keep in touch with you all.
Your blogging buddy
Ashleigh, Room 24.
Dear Mr.Avery,
I am so happy we are trying to reach 1 MILLION MINUTES! 😀 We can totally do it. We have 3 more months! What book are you reading or your class? I am reading Twilight. I recommend it for EVERYONE! It is so good. Ariel (last year’s student) is reading it too! She is beating me in a reading contest but I am so close to done! I feel eager and am going to soon be reading New Moon.
Sincerely,
Ashley S
Hi Ashley,
Great to hear from you! I hope everything is going well in 5th grade!
I think we can definitely reach 1,000,000 minutes. We’re only about 200,000 minutes away. I’ll have to update the graphs!
I just finished reading The Hunger Games. I really enjoyed it. I think the next series I might read is Percy Jackson. All of my students say that they really enjoy it and I should read it. What do you think? I’ve never read the Twilight books. I know a lot of my students really enjoy that series too!
Have a great Friday!
Sincerely,
Mr. Avery
Dear Mr Avery and Class,
Wow I hope you can get to your goal.It was fun skyping with you.Sorry I did not interduce myself.
I am Max from 4KJ in Australia.
Only Some of us knew who you were at first.Me I had no idea who it was but it turned out to be Mr Avery.
Well Got to go
From Your New Friend From Down Under Max 🙂
Dear Max,
I hope we can get to our goal too. I think we’ll definitely be able to though!
I had a lot of fun skyping with all of you too! Mrs. Morris, Miss Jordan and I thought it would be a lot of fun to see if you could try to guess who I was. I thought some of you would be able to figure it out!
Enjoy your time off from school!
Sincerely,
Mr. Avery
Hi, My name is Kassidy and I am a student from the sixth grade window. In our school we have about 500 kids in grades K-6! You guys are a pretty small school! At school the teachers can choose if they want us to do reading logs or not! Here at my school if you are in the 4-6 grade you get an iPad, that you use for educational purposes! We have done a lot with iPads this year. Do you guys have anything like iPads? Why is your school so small? Do you live in a small town? Well come visit the sixth grade window then go to the right hand side where the kids are and look for Kassidy and visit my blog (:
Sincerely,
Kassidy
Dear Mr. Avery,
I think it was fun skyping with you this morning.
Did you like skyping with us this morning? For you it was about 8:00.
From Lilli
Dear Lilli,
It was a lot of fun skyping with all of you yesterday! It was weird that it was morning for you and night for me though? Just like now. Right now it’s 9 at night for me on Thursday and it’s Friday morning for you!
I hope you enjoy your time off from school. Are you doing anything fun?
Sincerely,
Mr. Avery
Dear Mr. Avery,
What an awesome class challenge…I love the integration of mathematics with your graphs. Your blog is fantastic. I look forward to spending more time reading about all of the learning going on here. We have only been blogging for about two months and the amount of learning we have gained has been amazing. Thank you!
Mrs. Beaulieu
Dear Mrs. Beaulieu,
Thank you! Blogging is such an amazing addition to a classroom. It provides so many new opportunities for learning and sharing!
If you ever have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask! We’re always more than willing to help!
Sincerely,
Mr. Avery
Dear Mr Avery and class,
Greetings! I am Skye from 4KJ, Australia. I decided to come and have a look at your blog. It is very interesting!
Anyway, what a sensational post. I enjoyed reading it. What a big challenge! You are doing a super job so far. The school that I go to has about 736 students so we would probably do that really quickly if we did it.
I like reading a lot of books. I used to read Harry Potter in grade 2 but it got a bit hard so I stopped reading it, but because I am in grade 4 I think I can understand it more. I am going to read it later in the year. I like Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Go Girl and Dear Dumb Diary. Has anyone heard of those books? Do you like them? Are you reading them or have you already read them?
Right now I am reading a book from school called Amy’s Pen Pal. It is about a girl called Amy. She has a pen pal called Samantha who comes down and visits her. Instead of spending time with Amy she spends time with girls Amy doesn’t like.
I have a blog and this is the address: http://skyessuperblog.global2.vic.edu.au/
Your blogging buddy from down under,
Skye
Dear Skye,
Thank you for taking a look at our blog!I love reading, and it looks like you do too. I’ve read the whole Diary of a Wimpy kid series and I think I’ve heard of Dear Dumb Diary. Have you seen the Diary of a Wimpy Kid movies? I have, and I loved them. Right now I’m reading the Percy Jackson Series. Have you heard of that book? What is your favorite book? I think my favorite book is the Liberation of Gabriel King. I hope we will be able to read 1 million minutes 🙂 Please visit again.
Sincerely,
Hannah
P.S. I also have a blog it’s called Hangin with Hannah. You can find it under student blogs. 🙂
Dear Mr. Avery,
Setting a million minute challenge for reading makes me smile! Anytime I hear about schools encouraging students to read, read, read I get very happy.
It’s the most important skill a student can have, but it’s sure a lot more fun to develop when it’s part of a game.
I have been reading a lot this year because I set a reading challenge for myself to read 366 books. So far I have read 94 and I think I will achieve my goal by the end of the year.
Do your students know they can listen to books too? I listen to audiobooks I borrow from the library in my town when I drive to work. Right now I am listening to Crispin by Avi and just finished reading The Lions of Little Rock. That’s a story about two girls in Little Rock Arkansas who wanted to be friends at school, but couldn’t because one was white and one was black. It is a historical fiction novel based on some events that really did happen in the days of racial segregation.
I also wanted to mention that I thought using the tables and graphs was very helpful for me to see your school’s progress.
Keep reading! What book are you reading right now Mr. Avery?
Mrs. Hembree
Dear Mr Avery,
WOW 1,000,000 minutes of reading that sounds hard.
Some books I enjoy are Skulduggery Pleasent playing with fire, Master Of Books, The book of lies and Swindle.
Skulduggery pleasent playing with fire is about 2 people named Skulduggery and valkrie trying to stop Baron Vengeos, Dusk and Billy Ray Saguine from summoning the Faceless Ones and Destroying any living thing in sight. Oh yes and Skulduggery is a skeloton wearing a tuxedo and can throw fire. (So can Valkrie) all the good guys are Fredrick, China, (weird name) Tanith Low, Skulduggery Pleasent, Valkrie and The Ancients. The bad guys are Dusk, The Infected Baron vengeos Billy-Ray saguine, The grotesqury and Spring-Heeled-Jack.
Be for now,
Riley (4KM)
Dear Riley,
Wow that book sounds interesting! My favorite book that I’m reading right now is called DARK VISIONS. So far it’s am amazing book! I found this book for three dollars at job lot when I went after my birthday.
Bye for now!
~Sam 😀
Dear Mr Avery and class,
Hi, my name Shakira I’m in Miss Jordan’s class. In the happy birthday video I was doing the yo part. By the way what a fantastic blog I’m gonna try and earn my blog.
From,
Shakira:D
Dear Shakira,
Thank you for writing a comment. I hope you earn a blog of your own! Owning a blog is very exciting. I have one of my own that I won. Thanks again!
Sincerely,
Hannah K.
Dear Mr Avery and Grade 6
Wow, aiming for 1,000,000 minutes is exciting! We hope you have a lot of great books in your library to keep you busy building up those minutes.
In B4 we have been reading the Magic Tree House series. We’ve had the first two books as read-alouds and several kids are reading books 3-9 during Daily 5. We think they are wonderful stories.
Others have been enjoying some Dr Seuss books and many of us like non-fiction books.
We think that if your school can reach a million minutes then we probably could too, because we have about 200 kids in our school.
Good luck with getting to 1,000,000
from B4
Dear B4,
We definitely have a lot of books that we’ve all been reading. The Hunger Games has been a huge series that a lot of students have been reading of late. They’ve also been reading the Percy Jackson series, some are getting into the Harry Potter series. All of those have kept us busy reading! On average, our grade level has been reading between 6,000 to 7,000 minutes a week.
A lot of us loved the Magic Tree House series when we were in younger grades. I always loved how they were transported to all these great times and places!
We think your school could definitely reach 1,000,000 minutes!
Sincerely,
Mr. Avery’s Class
Dear Mr Avery
I love your stats! What a great challenge. I wonder if our school would make it… we have some avid readers but only 75 children in our school. Do you include books you read in class?
I like the way you can hover over the graph to read the number of minutes for each week… it’s fun to try and guess why some weeks have lots of minutes (everyone got new books for Christmas?) but why so few at the end of February? Any ideas?
We are reading Tales of Splendour by Madhur Jaffrey to go with our India Topic in A Room with a View, as well as our Poem a Day. Favourite books at the moment are the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Beast Quest series and Jacqueline Wilson – lots of children are reading those.
Happy Reading all!
Mrs M & A Room with a View, UK
Dear Mrs. Monaghan,
We haven’t included books we’ve read in class. That’s actually only been minutes read at home. So, if you include books read in class, I think your school could definitely make it!
We think we had so few at the end of February because of school vacation. You’d think students would spend more time reading then but it turned out that definitely wasn’t the case!
We definitely have a lot of students who love the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. The Hunger Games and Percy Jackson are really big with us right now too!
Thanks for writing in!
Sincerely,
Mr. Avery
Dear Mr Avery’s class
To be honest I don’t think I will be able to do your challenge, because we have alot of children at Taradale Intermediate so it would be hard to get all the information together.
At the moment I’m reading a book called Just Annoying by Andy Griffiths, I read the book just about every spare moment I have!
What’s the book that you’re reading?
Yours sincerely
Cody, Room 24
Dear Cody,
That would definitely be tough to get it all together with a lot of students at your school. However, you could have each class add up their own minutes and then have one group total them all up! With that many students, you’d have no problem hitting a million minutes though. Maybe you would have to try for 2 million!
I’ve never heard of that book before. It sounds like you recommend it though. Do you think it’s something I should read?
I actually just finished the Hunger Game series! I loved it. I read it every spare moment I had. The move comes out here in the United States tomorrow. I’ll be going to see that one as well!
Sincerely,
Mr. Avery
Dear Mr Avery,
Your school challenge sounds magnificent!
My school has over 500 students that all love to learn new things so I definitely think if we all put our heads together we could accomplish 1,000,000 minutes of reading in a breeze. Right now I am stuck on Andy Griffith’s book Just Crazy, it’s a funny book that you should read to your class because I know that they would all enjoy it as much as I do.
If you would like to visit my class blog I would love to read your comment and I know it would be very much appreciated by the whole of Room 24.
From your kiwi friend
Briney
Room24, Taradale Intermediate
http://room24tis.blogspot.co.nz
Dear Briney,
Thanks for your great comment! Cody wrote in talking about a book by Andy Griffith’s too. I haven’t read either of them but I think I’ll definitely have to check them out now!
With over 500 students, I definitely think you could reach over 1,000,000 minutes easy! I bet if you really tried hard, you could even come close to 2,000,000 minutes!
I’ll have to swing by your blog and leave a comment. Thanks for visiting!
Sincerely,
Mr. Avery
Dear Mr Avery,
Hi my name is Jess and I am in Miss Jordans class. So you liked The birthday video we did! In the birthday video you couldn’t see me because I was at the back,but I was still dancing.
The Million minute challenge sounds really awesome and hard at the same time. At my school we have about 730 people so it would be quite eays for us.
Right now I am reading the Harry Potter books and I am up to the second one.[I just finished the first one YAY!]
Here are some questions I am going to ask you,
What are some of the books you are reading and are they good fit books?
Did you like the birthday video and what was your fav thing in it?
Also do you really love the million minute challenge?
Well see you soon,
from your blogging buddy
Jess!
Dear Jess,
Thank you so much for writing on our blog! I always love hearing from students in one of my favorite classes!
I LOVED my birthday video! I was so happy to see it from all of you. I definitely didn’t expect a rap! I loved that part. All of my students did too!
Harry Potter was one of my favorite series. I read them all a while ago but I think I’d like to read them again! I actually had never seen any of the Harry Potter movies before so I just started renting them. I just finished The Prisoner of Azkaban. I really liked it. I’m excited to get through all the rest of them. Have you ever seen the movies? Did you like them?
Right now I just finished reading The Hunger Game series. I’m going to see the movie tomorrow and I’m very excited to. A lot of my students are reading that series right now too. It’s really popular here in the United States. I think the next one I might read is the Percy Jackson series. Have you read either of those before?
Everyone loves our Million Minute Challenge. We get a big surprise if we reach one million minutes and I think we definitely will!
Thanks for your amazing comment!
Sincerely,
Mr. Avery
Dear Mr Avery and class,
My name is Liv S from Miss Jordan’s class, 4KJ. (I was holding up the “V” in your birthday video from 4KM and 4KJ.) This is the second time I have been in Miss Jordan and Mrs Morris’ class so I am very lucky.
WOW, what a challenge. So far your school is doing a fantastic job. Our school has around 730 students so we would reach our goal in a short time, that is if we were doing the challenge.
Some popular books in 4KM and 4KJ are:
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
The Babysitters Club
The Harry Potter series
I am a book lover so I have read many different books but just loved the Harry Potter books.
Personally at the moment I am reading a bestsellig French book called Monsieur Cadichon. It is about a donnkey retelling his stories of the past. What are some popular books in your class?
From your new blogging buddy,
Liv S 🙂
Dear Liv S,
First of all, you did an amazing job holding up the “V.” It looked like you’d been practicing the way you were able to so enthusiastically lift that up!
You are extremely lucky to be in their class again! I just got to know Mrs. Morris and Miss Jordan the year that you were in their class. Now I know them much better! I know they’re both amazing teachers.
If you were doing this challenge, I think your school would reach it very easily! I bet if everyone tried really hard, you could even reach close to 3 million minutes!
A lot of those books you mentioned are pretty popular here too. A couple other series everyone loves right now is The Hunger Games and Percy Jackson. I just read The Hunger Games and I loved it.
Harry Potter is one of my favorite series ever! Once I started reading those books I just couldn’t put them down. I think I read the first four books in about a week! Have you seen all of the Harry Potter movies? I’m just starting to watch those now.
I’ve never heard of the book that you’re reading right now but I think I’m going to have to check it out. It sounds like a really interesting book.
Thanks for sharing! Hope to hear from you again soon.
Sincerely,
Mr. Avery