Reading suggestions: Year 7 & 8 Reading Challenges

The Year 7 & 8 Reading Challenges

If you feel you need help to build a regular reading habit you should choose the Habit Builder challenge. You then commit to reading for a certain amount of time on a certain number of nights a week for a period of six weeks and will need an adult at home to sign off your reading in your planner (p.116). This challenge is most successful when you commit to doing it at regular times each week. After six weeks we hope that the habit is firmly embedded and you can move on to a new challenge.

The Genre Explorer, Classics Champion, Culturally Curious and Non-Fiction Knight are all about broadening reading horizons. You choose a certain number of books that will be a personal challenge for you (one you should be able to complete in under an academic year but not in less than a term) and then aim to read from a range of different categories.

• For Genre Explorer these will be books from different fiction genres.
• For Classics Champion they can explore all sorts of different books that have stood the test of time.
• For Culturally Curious they can choose from a variety of books that allow them to explore cultural diversity in its broadest sense - books about other countries and cultures, books originally published in another language, and books about communities that are distinctive in some other way e.g. neurodiverse, socially diverse or physically diverse.
• For Non-Fiction Knight you go on a journey through the non-fiction section, reading books from different Dewey hundreds classes.

Finally we have two very different challenges:

• Superstar Reviewers send me three book reviews that are good enough to publish on our book review blog.
• If you haven't found a challenge from our menu that suits your reading tastes you can Build Your Own. You might have a target number of books you want to read but don't want to be constrained by certain types, or maybe you want to finish a series...or read prizewinning books...or read books that have been adapted for for film or TV ...- the choice is entirely yours as long as it is a challenge for you.

We love to celebrate strong reading habits and thoughtful readers, so when you finish a challenge, you get a Principal's Commendation in recognition of your consistent effort, the chance to sign off a diploma task, a special reading badge for your blazer ....and, of course, a new challenge!