03/10/2006
Tiogue students meet reading challenge
By: Jessica Selby

TIOGUE - Teachers, administrators and students filed into the gymnasium at Tiogue School last Friday afternoon.
There were no balls being tossed around, no jump ropes spinning nor were there any screams of command being made. Oddly enough, the room, although filled with people, was silent. Students and teachers simply settled down into a comfy spot on the floor with a good book.
They had gathered together to get in a few last pages for the fifth grade sponsored IDITAREAD challenge. As part of the IDITAREAD, the fifth grade students asked their fellow classmates and their teachers to document how many pages they read outside of their regularly assigned classroom work. The students were given log sheets and told to write the name of the book, how many pages they read from it and then have their parents sign off on it.
The goal at the start of the project, according to Denise Richtarik, the principal at Tiogue School, was to reach 10,000 pages. But, by the end of the month, she said, the project took on a life of its own. By the end of the challenge, all 18 classrooms and staff had read 132,634 pages.
Part of the motivation behind the staggering number, Richtarik said, was her challenge to out-read the students.
"I would get on the loud speaker every morning and tell the kids how many pages I read and then they would raise their hands in their classroom if they read more than me and their teachers would keep track," Richtarik said. "They were so excited about it, they wanted to beat me and many times they did."
"I would tell them 'last night I read 16 pages' and some of the kids were like '16, that's all,'" she said. "It turned out to be a great motivator for the kids."
In 28 days Jessica Titus, a fifth grader at Tiogue, read 30 books, which she said was equivalent to 6,959 pages.
"I don't know why but it doesn't take me long at all to read," Titus said.
Tara D'Aleno's fourth grade class read more than 12,000 pages.
"I said to my students, 'no way, we must have made a mistake,' but I recounted the numbers several times and we really did read that much," D'Aleno said.
Sara Cayouette, a fifth grader, read 278 pages from two separate books, "The Get Rich Quick Club" and "Captain Underpants."
"Can you imagine kids 5 to 11 years old all enjoying the same thing at the same time," asked Susan Flynn, one of the fifth grade teachers at Tiogue School who initiated the school wide challenge. "When else do you see that? Never."