Read-a-Thon

Get Ready for Read-a-Thon! Friday March 15th - Friday March 22nd

Students are reading while their families are asking their personal networks for donations to support our school! 

The Read-a-Thon supports: 

  • Students’ growing reading muscles

  • Goal-setting and focus - How many minutes will your student read in a day? In a week?

  • Teamwork - Each student’s reading time will count towards their class total (there’s a fancy trophy for the class that reads the most minutes)

  • SFC! This is the biggest PAC fundraiser of the year. Our goal is to raise $25,000+ and we need families to help!

How it Works

  1. Check your student’s backpack the week of March 11th for their Reading Log. 

  2. Help your student set their reading goal, counted in minutes. 30 minutes a day? 45 minutes a day, 120 minutes a day? All minutes spent reading, in school and at home, count towards a student’s and their class’s reading total for the week. 

  3. Create a personalized donation page for your reader.

  4. Share your donation page by text, email, or social media: send to family, friends, coworkers and neighbors who you can ask for donations to support your reader and our whole school. They won’t give unless you ask. 

See the Frequently Asked Questions for more information.

Creating a Personalized Donation Page

We are using a new donation platform this year for Read-a-Thon so that families can create custom pages to share with their networks. Personalized donation pages increase the connection that people feel to who (your kid) and what (our school) they are supporting. And they donate more! All donations are tax-deductible and donors will receive an automated receipt by email for their tax filings. 

Fear not: It’s simple to do from your phone or computer and will allow you to track and personally thank your donors. 

Here’s a Sample Student Reader page, so you get the picture.

Get started creating a donation page for your super reader! Note that if you have more than one student at SFC, feel free to create just one page that has both of their names.

Here is a step-by-step guide to creating your donation page: 

  1. If this is your first time using Betterworld, register yourself (adult) as a new user. 

  2. Under Page Settings, enter your kid(s) name and set a donation goal. The sky’s the limit! 

  3. Draft a quick message from your family about the Read-a-Thon, what your kid is reading and their reading goal, and what their donation supports (our Super School). Feel free to copy and modify the message from the sample student page.

  4. Once you click through to Register, you’ll be able to further customize your page with privacy settings (choose public or restricted) and photos. 

  5. Photo should be jpeg or png and 600x400 or somewhere around there. Bigger is not better! Do what you like to customize the images, but here are suggestions for keeping it simple:

    1. Use one photo for the “Image” and zoom in on the faces using the magnifying glass.

    2. Use the same photo for the “Cover Image” not zoomed in.


Now you’re done! Scroll to the top of your settings page and click on “view” Web Address. Make edits as needed.

FAQs

  • Read! Use the provided reading log to keep track of all the time they spend reading. They will also get to participate in classroom activities all week long.

  • Yes, a friendly competition between classes. There will be a class trophy for the K-5 class that reads the most minutes. Middle school students will get a pizza party for the humanities section that reads the most minutes.

  • Yes! Parents, guardians, siblings, and other family members may read aloud to your child. K-5 students can also earn extra minutes for completing activities on the Reading Bingo Board on the back side of the reading log.

  • Individual reading time, being read to, and homework reading. Read books, magazines, comics, non-fiction, poetry, graphic novels, digital reading apps, or news in any language!

  • We will kick off the Read-a-Thon at the Fantastic Fox Assembly on Friday, March 15th and it will end on Friday, March 22nd at the end of the school day. This is the cut-off for accumulating individual reading minutes.

  • Make sure that your child has recorded all their reading minutes on their reading log. Use the Read-a-Thon envelope to turn in your child’s reading log, and any collected cash or check donations. Return this to your teacher by Tuesday March 26th. We encourage you to continue to collect donations until Friday, March 29th.

  • Sponsors can be parents, relatives, neighbors, co-workers, anyone in the community. The money raised during the Read-a-Thon is important to fund programs at SFC, so ask away!! Create your donation page here. It’s easy and really works!

  • That is up to the sponsor. We encourage sponsors to give a flat donation (as opposed to dollars per-minute pledges). In the past we received donations ranging from $1 to $5,000. Even small donations add up quickly! All donations are tax-deductible.

  • If you do not set up a personal donation page, we can still accept credit card donations here. You can ask your donor to forward you their receipt so you can see who has made a donation. Cash and checks are also welcome. Checks should be made payable to PROJECT OLE. Collect in an envelope and turn in to your child’s teacher.

  • It has been a long-standing value at SFC that kids will not fundraise for their own education. In this case, students do their part by reading, and families work to support them by soliciting donations (among other things ;) ).

  • Yes, all students are encouraged to participate regardless of the amount raised. Have your student fill in their reading log because each class is working toward a total reading goal!

  • Contact Curry, our Read-a-Thon Chair at curry_walker@yahoo.com.