Writing and Reading Challenge for Next Year

This place seems as good as any to write about my ideas for next year.  Writing contests have really inspired me to increase the rigor in my classroom.  It is also the goal of the Language Arts Department to increase rigor for all students.  We've been talking a lot about homework.  As a department, we've decided to require 100 minutes of reading outside of class, since research shows this is the number one way for students to increase reading ability, vocabulary, spelling, writing, etc.  It's also easy for students to do independently and easy for teachers to grade.  Our hope is that by making it a school-wide policy, it will be easier to get the word out to advisory teachers, support staff, and parents.  The more adults that can encourage students to get their homework done, the more likely it will be for them to get it done.

I wanted to do something similar for my ELD classes.  I decided to have them write for homework - a journal or a blog or something along those lines.  I'm looking into setting up a blog on a UEN page that students can respond to each week.  Posting writing on Facebook may also be an option.  Things I already do, NaNoWriMo, Script Frenzy, will fit nicely into a plan like this.

Even with these two things in place, there always seem to be parents and students who want more homework and definitely students who can also use additional challenges.  I have an idea for two different challenges.

1.  The Reading Challenge: Students would be required to read ten books and write a book review for each book.  (I have a form for a Blog book review that I would use).  Each book would have to be from a different genre: non-fiction, biography/autobiography, anthology of poetry, historical fiction, science fiction/fantasy, etc.  The idea would be that students would be exposed to a wide variety of literature.  They could use the time spent reading for their reading logs.

2.  The Writing Challenge:  Enter ten different writing contests.  I would compile a top ten of contests that we've tried.  Some of the contests will be class assignments, but some contests would have to be entered on students' own time.  Students would write in a variety of genres and attempt to publish their work.

I was thinking of some different recognitions to honor students who complete one or both of the challenges.  They would definitely get recognized at our end of the year awards assembly.  Possibly we could take a field trip to McDonald's, or get a guest speaker from a published author, or some other cool prize.