Read-A-Thon
Cambrian Educational Foundation, November 10, 2020
Dear Cambrian families,
The CEF (Cambrian Educational Foundation) is kicking off its inaugural read-a-thon across the Cambrian School District. This document is designed to give you all the information you need to have your students participate in this event. District wide readathon ! We have created an event that includes all Cambrian schools and students, and aims to celebrate Literacy and community in a fun and healthy way. All students are invited to participate, raising funds is encouraged, but totally optional!
All awards and encouragements will be given to students, classes and schools based on reading minutes only!
Why?
Ultimately, this competition has 3 main objectives:
● Put a focus on literacy, with the aim to motivate kids to read!
● Promote community, school and district spirit by inspiring healthy inter-school competition. ● To raise much needed funds for the Cambrian School District, to be directed towards mental health resources.
High Level - NEED TO KNOW -
Read-a-thon Dates - November 13th - January 15th
Kick off event, November 13 - Spirit wear day - Dress as your Favorite Book Character
Read-a-thon website - https://sites.google.com/view/cefreadathon/home
Plegestar website - log minutes and make pledges - https://pledgestar.com/cambrian/
CEF Read-a-thon email - cefreadathon@gmail.com
CEF Read-a-thon Co-Chairs: Melissa Ojczyk and Beth Erickson
It's as easy as 1, 2, 3...
1. Register Student on Pledgestar site (3rd Party site to manage reading minutes and donations)** - Instructions for Registering Students
2. Students Read and Log minutes.
a. Kids will record the minutes they spend reading on a daily basis through their pledgestar account. We are depending on families to monitor their kids progress. Teachers may be asked to give their opinion if children are exceeding expectations regularly.
3. Students ask family and friends to sponsor them through the pledgestar website
a. Donations can be collected through the website for credit card donations.
b. Please enter cash donations into Pledgestar site as a check for your own tracking purposes. c. All cash or check donations should be dropped off at your school site or mailed (please include student info and memo number provided by pledgestar with cash/check donations):
Cambrian Educational Foundation
℅ Readathon
4115 Jacksol Dr.
San Jose, CA 95124
** Note all students need to be registered specifically for this event. Any previous registrations on this site, for other events, will not be available in this event. ALL reading minutes are tracked through this site, so please register your children so that their reading time will be included in the competition.
What constitutes minutes of reading -
Reading, for the majority of students, will be when the student spends time reading written materials, books, manuals, instructional materials, etc. Students may log time they spend independently reading, in class or in their spare time. For younger students, or students with special education needs, the traditional reading may be extended to include being read to, listening to audio books, and reading exercises in class. In cases where the student is being read to, please only log 50% of the time.
Access to Books
Please check out the book access section on the pledgestar website. Here we have many ways for you to gain access to reading materials - including libraries, books stores, online sales, local book libraries, and online reading materials.
Book Recommendations
Our website includes a recommendation section. We will publish Cambrian student book recommendations by grade level, so your student can spread the word about books they enjoy. Conversely, your student can look for recommendations for their next read.
We are asking students to send us their book recommendation, their first name, grade and book name, with a small blurb describing why they recommend this book to cefreadathon@gmail.com. Where possible we will link this to common sense media's review to give parents an indication of the suitability of the recommendation.
Fundraising Directed to Mental Health in the District
● All funds raised will go directly towards the district's mental health initiatives. Mental health resources made available by this initiative will be available to the whole district. The specifics of the districts use of these funds will not be available until after the fundraiser has been finalized, since the uses will be contingent on the amount raised.
Fundraising Targets
● Fundraising, although a very important aspect of this competition, is not the main focus. In order to ensure equity there will be no rewards for fundraising, at either a school or student level.
● Fundraising goals:
○ Overall goal - $60,000
○ Goal per student - $20
● It is important to note that we recognize that some students will not have the ability to make financial contributions or raise funds. This does not preclude them from entering the competition, or from being successful in the competition. The focus of the competition aspect of this Read-a-thon is reading, and only reading.
Competition Details
There will be both district-wide and school-wide competitions.
● District award categories
● Top School - will be awarded the Cambrian District Read-a-thon Trophy
● Top Class - will be awarded the Cambrian “Reading Class of the Year”
● Top Reader - will be awarded the Cambrian “Reader of the Year”.
● Grade level reader - Awards will be given to the top reader in each grade level across the district
● School award categories
● Top Class - “School Reading Class of the Year”
● Top Reader - “School Reader of the Year”.
● Grade level reader - “School Grade Level Reader”
● Please see last page for how the minutes will be calculated to ensure fairness across the grade levels
How do we plan to determine the winner?
In order to ensure there is some fairness across the whole district, and we are able to measure Kindergarteners against 8th graders we will apply a ratio to the measured minutes. All students will log their minutes read. We will apply a ratio to these minutes, based on the expected minuted read for that age.
● Kids will log the minutes they read
● TK-2nd grade kids can log 50% of the time they are read to. (teacher, parents, audio book, siblings, videos of being read to …)
We will apply the following expectation to the students -
Grade Level Expected Reading time
(MINUTES)
TK - K 10
1 15
2 20
3 30
4 30
5 30
6 45
7 45
8 45
Every student will end up with a “Reading Ratio”
Reading Ratio = Total minutes read / Expected reading minutes
For Example:
Student Grade Level
Minutes Read
Expected Minutes Read
Reading Ratio
Fred 3 110 30 3.7
Samantha TK 75 10 7.5
Jane 7 230 45 5.1
Luca 5 210 30 7
From this you can see the TK student actually won with the least amount of reading time.
To calculate a class’s tally:
Class Tally = Sum (all students Reading Ratios)
To calculate the schools tally:
Schools Tally = Sum (all students reading ratio)/ number of students enrolled in the school.
How do I get help?
If you have any questions, or problems with any aspect of this competition, please reach out to the read-a-thon team at - cefreadathon@gmail.com, we are here to help.
Additionally there are school site specific reps that are also here to help:
Bagby Erica Burgess ericaecker@gmail.com
Farmmatre An Vo vo_an@yahoo.com
Farnham Beth Erickson (bverickson@me.com), Melissa Ojczyk (melissaojczyk@gmail.com)
Price Melissa Ojczyk (melissaojczyk@gmail.com), Nina Le (nina.do.le@gmail.com)
Sartorette Rachel Maze (rachel.a.maze@gmail.com), Rebecca Toy (rebecca.at.cambriansd@gmail.com)
Steindorf Cat Burmeister (cburmy@gmail.com), Beth Caro (elizabeth.ann.caro@gmail.com)
VSP Sam Shiraishi (sshiraishi@gmail.com), Jill Walters (walter.jill@gmail.com)
Mini Events and Incentives
● Please keep up to date with mini events and incentives that will be published weekly. We aim to provide fun ways to enhance your read-a-thon experience.CAMBRIAN SCHOOL DISTRICT
Email: klavond@cambriansd.com
Website: www.cambriansd.org
Location: 4115 Jacksol Drive, San Jose, CA, USA
Phone: (408) 377-2103
Facebook: facebook.com/CambrianSchoolDistrict
Twitter: @Supt_Andrews