Reading Miles Global Challenge

Read your way…around the world! 

Please note the deadline for entries for this competition has now passed and a prize draw winner has now been chosen. Read about the results.

The kids - they love it! Enthusiasm, desire and competition - and these are kids who don't read, can't buy books and live in areas where there aren't books at home.
Assistant Headteacher

New year – new challenge
The National Literacy Trust and Oxford University Press kicked off 2012 by launching the Reading Miles Global Challenge, a competition for all UK schools that ran from 9 January to 16 March 2012.  

What was it all about?

We know how important parental involvement is in helping children to become confident readers; the 2009 PISA/OECD survey found that 15-year-olds whose parents often read books with them during their first year of primary school show markedly higher literacy scores than those whose parents read with them infrequently or not at all.

However, it’s not always easy for schools to get families involved in their child’s reading – our recent research found that 22% of children reported that no one at home encourages them to read. The Reading Miles Global Challenge provided a platform for teachers to engage both pupils and parents, using the concept of collecting points for reading together at home…and having fun along the way!

How did it work?
Pupils were rewarded with 500 reading miles for every 10 minutes they spent reading. They collected these reading miles in their special reading passport on their very own reading world tour - a whopping 33,000 miles (or 11 hours) in total! 

An A3 wall map which charted the Reading Miles Global Challenge route could be downloaded so that pupils could see how far they had “travelled”.

Every pupil who completed their reading journey around the world was entered into a prize draw to win some fantastic prizes (see the prizes section below for details).

Download wall map
Download reading passport

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The “checkpoints”
As 33,000 miles might seem a little overwhelming, we split the challenge into seven journeys, each of which finished in a “checkpoint city”. The checkpoints were referred to on both the wall map and in the reading passports, and acted as interim targets for pupils taking part.

We produced a downloadable certificate template that could be presented to pupils when they reached one of the checkpoints, and a downloadable postcard template that pupils could complete when they reached a checkpoint and give to whoever had been reading with them, whether it was a parent, carer, sibling, grandparent or a member of staff at school.

Download certificate template   
Download postcard template

As children have reached different destinations they have been given their certificates in assembly and this has prompted other children to ask for passports too.
Teacher

The prizes

Each pupil who completed the Reading Miles Global Challenge could be entered into a prize draw to win a whole host of prizes for themselves and their school:

Big book packages: Oxford University Press gave away £50 worth of books for the winning pupil and £500 worth for their school.

A day of storytelling: Fantastic storytellers Snail Tales visited the school of the winning pupil for an action-packed day of performances of traditional tales from around the world and pupil workshops on storytelling, followed by an after-school INSET session for staff.

A family day out: The winning pupil was awarded a family ticket to their closest attraction, worth up to £75.

Supporting resources

Downloadable materials: 
Schools could access the suite of Reading Miles Global Challenge materials to help them run the challenge in school:

• Wall map. Download
• Reading Miles passport. Download.
• Certificate template. Download.
• Postcard template. Download.

In addition to this, members of our network were able to access exclusive resources around family engagement and using the challenge to make cross-curricular links:

• Ideas for engaging families. Download. 
• Cross-curricular links. Download. 

Useful websites: 

http://www.oxfordowl.co.uk
Oxford Owl is a brilliant FREE website built to support parents with their child’s learning. It has 250 FREE eBooks for ages three to 11, including a selection from the Oxford Reading Tree Traditional Tales (Key Stage 1) and Myths and Legends (Key Stage 2) series, which complemented the international theme of the Reading Miles Global Challenge. These eBooks are really engaging and work well both in class and at home.    

Oxford Reading Tree storyteller videos 
Oxford University Press teamed up with top storytellers Snail Tales (who visited the school of the winning pupil), to produce some great examples of oral storytelling from the Traditional Tales series. For schools who ran the challenge with Key Stage 1 pupils, the videos were a great way to hook them in to the stories and get them excited about reading the books themselves!

The nitty gritty – frequently asked questions

Q: What kind of reading counted towards the reading miles? Was it just books?
A: We wanted the Reading Miles Global Challenge to engage even the most reluctant readers, so there was no restriction on the type of reading materials pupils could choose. Books, comics, magazines and newspapers (such as First News) all counted towards the Reading Miles journey.

Q: Did all the reading have to take place at home?
A: No. As well as promoting family reading, the Reading Miles Global Challenge was about improving links between home and school, so reading miles could be collected from reading both in school and at home. We recognised that, in some cases, pupils may not have the support at home necessary to complete the challenge, and we didn’t want anyone to miss out. In these cases we advised that the pupil was assigned someone at school, perhaps a teaching assistant, to read with them and verify the reading in their reading passports.

Q: How did the reading passports work?
A: The Reading Miles passport was a way for pupils to record the amount that they read and track their progress through the challenge. 10 minutes of reading was the equivalent of 500 reading miles, and every time a pupil read for a 10 minute block, the person who was supervising their reading marked this off in the passport – with a tick, their initials or a sticker.

When a pupil had every 10 minute block marked off in their passport, they made it “home” and were eligible to be entered into the prize draw.

As both Class Teacher and Principal Teacher, I have found it to be an innovative and motivating resource that encourages pupils to undertake reading for enjoyment with set targets in mind. 

Read more feedback from schools.