Students who read together, share rewards

Endicott students in preschool through sixth grade have all secured tickets to Silverwood theme park thanks to their combined reading efforts. The 72 students surpassed their reading goal by more than 3,000 minutes to qualify for the tickets through the Silverwood Read-A-Thon program.

For many years, students have been able to individually earn passes to the theme park through the Reading is the Ticket program, according to Julie Lust, Endicott school librarian who oversaw the efforts. Students had to read 10 hours over a two-month period outside of school to earn the pass. Lust noted only about half of the students earned their tickets through that program.

This year, the Reading is the Ticket program only offered certain schools the passes, and Endicott was not one of those selected. Other area schools chose to read for tickets to Plant 3 Extreme Air Park in Moscow. Silverwood took the helm with its own new reading reward program, the Read-A-Thon. The park set the goal of 150,000 hours of reading from pre-k through sixth grade students in Washington, Oregon and Idaho in five days time. Unlike the Reading is the Ticket program, students could count the time they read in school toward the goal in addition to their home reading.

"Our preschool through sixth grade teachers were eager to help make this Read-A-Thon work," Lust stated.

Reading is already part of the student's curriculum, so it was easy to rack up the minutes. The top reading day for one class was 1,260 minutes. Each day, Lust sent the totals to Silverwood for the overall count. By the end of the fourth day, Endicott students were already 3,000 minutes over the 10,800 minute goal. Not only did Endicott surpass its mark, the program as a whole ended with more than 200,000 hours of reading accumulated by participants around the Northwest.

The free tickets have now been sent home with all the students and are good June 8 through Sept. 29 of this year.