Quote:
Originally Posted by jersysman
It does discourage the ones that do not win and that should not be the goal at this age. Participation should be the goal. The adults here need to come up with something better that will encourage the children to read more and not discourage the others. [...] All children participating in events such as this are all winners and should be treated as such.
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Easy enough to do.
"If you read 1-5 books, you win.... a prize."
"If you read 6-10 books, you win.... a bigger prize."
"If you read 11-15 books, you win.... an even bigger prize."
And for all people reading more than 15 books, they win the biggest prize, and 50% discount on a year's library access. The person with the most books gets a year of free access.
This way, everybody who finishes one book wins something, and there's incentive to read more.
edit: The prizes can be quite small. The smallest can be a bag of candy from a local store. Every kid who finishes one or two books comes away with a bag of candy at least. To win something bigger, you'll need to finish 6 books, which requires the sustained effort of reading at least 1 book a week. The prize could be a ticket to go see a movie in the theatre.
When putting in the effort of reading 2 books a week, you end up in the highest category (you've read 12 books, so you have some buffer time). The biggest prize could be to go see a movie and go to McDonalds afterward. And, you may actually stand a chance to get the 50% library access discount on top of that.
All of this stuff could be easily sponsored by the local grocery store, movie theathre and McDonalds, assuming that there aren't going to be 5.000 kids in this contest. It's cheap advertisment for them.