Rachel Woodson and her students were announced as winners of the Winter Reading Club raffle through the St. Louis County Library. Woodson, an eighth grade English language arts teacher at Pattonville Heights Middle School, received a classroom set of books. 

Teacher librarian Julie Harder organized a Pattonville Heights Reading Challenge and partnered with the St. Louis County Library’s Winter Reading Challenge. The event ran from Dec. 1 to Jan. 31.

“Each teacher submitted a reading log sheet to me for each class period that participated,” Harder said. “They colored in circles for every 15 minutes they read silently.”

Students had to log 15 15-minute sessions to qualify for the contest and Harder submitted each qualifying teacher's name, number of classes who read and the grade level of the students to SLCL.

“For the Heights Reading Challenge, staff used the same sheet, and I held a drawing for four classes to win chips for their class,” Harder said. “Ms. Woodson's sixth hour also won that contest.” 

Other classes that won chips were Melissa Wetzel's first hour class and Jennifer Benoist's and Erin Zoltanski's eighth hour classes.

Harder said the teachers at Pattonville Heights were excited about the challenge and asked for more contests like this to help motivate their students to read. 

“As a follow-up, I worked with department leader Tara Jones to design a Race to Spring Break Reading Challenge that will begin on Feb. 14 and run to March 17.”