Bernie Ready - Pins at 20 books, we give them bookmarks at 10. The little dollar bill thing there is an electronic book, bookmark, buck, and we give those in June, the month of June. While other schools' kids have stopped reading, our kids read more in the month of June than any other month because for every three points they read, they get a bookmark and they can get a popsicle with it.

We also have a big award assembly. This is similar to what you might do in sales. We really rally.

Kids wear their ribbons, and they clap for each other, and they root for each other. You can see by their faces how excited they are, and this is another motivational thing to get kids to read books. When a child has read 40 books on our team, they get to send up a balloon with a little card saying where they are and please send it back.

We've gotten balloons from all over New England and Canada. One of the amazing things is people who find these normally don't just send back the card, but they've written letters. We've gotten letters back from teachers.

We've gotten letters back from captains on a lobster boat telling us what they do and how when they were children, they liked to read, and they tried to encourage the children to read, and we read these to all the children. We are kind of evaluating this program. Hopefully next year we can get some biodegradable balloons because in science we talked about it, and we don't want to hurt the environment, so hopefully we can find some balloons that won't harm whales and birds and fish.

We have a plaque in the library. The top student who has accumulated the most points in each year gets the name up. The first year was 100 points.

The second year was 194 books, and then the third year was 200 books. Now in the fifth grade we only allow the children to read two and three pointers, which are usually fifth grade or above books, and currently we have two girls that have read around 225 books this year. I never thought that the 200 level would fall, but it did.

Also, the last month of school we gave the children a list of 100 books. We had a mother volunteer. She read 100 children's books on her own, made up questions, and she plays like a college bowl with the children.

Each class plays against itself and gets the best team from the class. Then we have each class play off against each other on the stage, and paperback booksmith at one of the book companies in town gives the kids free awards. I took a survey, and before children came into my class, reading in 87-88, 31% said reading was their favorite subject.

After the program, 57% said reading was their subject. It became the number one subject. 88-89, only 8% liked reading, the best subject when they came in.

At the end, 44% said reading was their favorite subject. Also, we're constantly trying to get children to watch less TV. The blue bar indicates reading.

Reading was up 50%, 87-88. Television, the red, was down 17%, 88-89. Reading was up 76%.

Television viewing was down 23%. When you have a program like this, this is the school librarian. You need to be friends with your school librarian.

She's very, very important. She's the one who the work gets doubled. We just had the fifth grade on the program, and the years we just had the fifth grade on the program, I measured the library circulation, and it was 25% in the school K-5 with just the fifth grade on the program.

It's really significant, and it really increased her job. But she loves books, and she encourages the kids. We had to increase the kids' amount of books they could take out of the library.

They now can take three books out at a time, and they can take them out over the weekends. We've talked about getting kids to read. I've showed you surveys that showed reading became their favorite subject.

I showed you surveys that television time dropped, reading time increased. But teachers want to know how about their skills. Are their skills improving?

All the studies say that if you get a child to read, their skills will improve. Well, I decided to test that. In 87 and 88, I gave my children the Metropolitan Achievement Test in reading in the fall.

They scored a 78. Now, when you give the test in the spring, it takes into consideration a year's growth. If they scored 78 in the spring, they would have grown a year, and it would have showed the program had at least maintained itself in that year.

Instead, the students in 87 and 88 jumped up to 86%. Now, this is very, very significant. In 88 and 89, in the fall, they were 81%, and in the spring, they jumped up to 90%.

When I gave my children the test this fall, I've got a real nice, nice classroom. When I gave them the test, I just got this. This was hot off the press.

It just came out back last week, the test results. In the fall, they had scored a 74 percentile. This class has just torn the covers off books.

They have read so much. As I said, every child in my class is going to read at least 40 books. This is just a heterogeneous group.

There's no groups. We have no reading groups. In the spring this year, 89%.

They went from 74 all the way up to 89. It's unbelievable. I have to pinch myself. I can't believe it. I can say beyond a doubt that not only does it become their favorite, not only do they watch less television, do they read more, but their skills go up. Their comprehension goes up.

Their vocabulary goes up, and I can tell you that. One of the things in this program that you must have is support from the administration. This is my principal.

He comes in, talks to the kids about books. He's backed me up all the way. He's behind this program.

If you're going to start this program, make sure you get the administration behind you. These teachers are timid. They won't go out and start new programs if they think the principal is not going to like it.

Convince your principal. Show him these results. I'm passing them out to you.

This really does work. Once you have your principal behind you, your PTA, you can really go. With this program, you will get your children to read.

Give them time in class to read. You can make a significant difference.

Teaching will become such fun, you won't believe it. The kids will read more than you ever thought they're capable of reading. You can actually change the way children behave.

This slide was sent in to me by a mother. She wrote a note and said to me, I'm sending you in a slide of Justin. This is how he eats breakfast every morning.

He wants to read every morning. What I have to do is I have to put his breakfast on the table. He eats it while he's reading.

I've had loads and loads of parents telling me how their children read and read and read. I had one woman come in to me and say, You've changed the whole neighborhood. The children used to come home and play after school.

Now they come home and read. I said to a lady, You can always motivate children to read. It's just so gratifying as a teacher to see kids reading a book like this.

I can't stress enough that you should try this type of program. It really, really works. In the pass-out sheet, my telephone number is there.

If you start this program, if you have any problems, which you will, kids will read so much. I had lots of problems, but they're happy problems. They're problems that come about when children read so much.

Give me a call. Any way I can help you, I will. Thank you very much.