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“I like to read”, said J, a River East Day Treatment 6th grader. “It just gives me quiet time.”

For the past 5 months J and all of his classmates have been nose deep in fiction books, sports books, poetry books, you name it, trying to reach a classroom goal of 5,000 pages read. The previous month, the classroom celebrated their 4,000 pages read victory with a Subway Sandwich party, so needless to say, all of the students were eager to continue reading to find out what 5,000 pages would bring.

“Reading is so important and is something that I love to do,” said Mr. Ayer’s. “So I wanted to come up with something to encourage the students to read.”

The students keep track of their progress on a public poster that is updated by each reader on a daily basis. The poster details when the next reward is coming, but it does not say what that reward might be.

Read more about the reading celebration:

For the 5,000 pages read celebration, Mr. Ayers’s decided to take the advice of Lab Staff member, Tess Pease, and team up with The Lab to throw a surprise pancake breakfast party complete with blueberry, chocolate chip and banana nut pancakes, sausage links and orange juice.

“I was going to do toasted ciabatta bread and olive oil,” said Mr. Ayers. “But pancakes sounded WAY better.”

After the students reached their goal of 5,000 pages, Mr. Ayers said that he wanted to keep the pancake party a secret, so he gave them one clue, “thin and round”.
“I didn’t really care what the prize was going to be,” said 6th grader, K. “It just smelled really good when we got close by.”

To the student’s delight, the pancakes were, “soft and warm” and the chocolate chip pancakes seemed to disappear a bit quicker than the rest, but there was plenty of food for everyone to have seconds, thirds and even fourths!

After raving reviews of the pancake party, Mr. Ayers’s 5th and 6th graders are already working toward their next goal of 6,000 pages and are well on their way at 5,321 pages read to date!

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