South Range 5th-graders pelt principal with water for reading prize

NORTH LIMA

The South Range Middle School’s fifth-graders lined up along the sidewalk, armed with water balloons as their principal Dan Szolek, dressed up in a Santa costume, ran down the line.

Wave after wave, the students pelted their principal with water balloons in temperatures just below freezing.

This was the reward they earned after reaching their first goal of the school year of reading 1,000 books last week.

“It’s nothing to do something like this if the students are going to follow through on their reading goals,” Szolek said, still damp from the event.

Students reached the first milestone in the 40-book challenge, in which every student in fifth grade attempts to read 40 books by the end of the school year.

Szolek said their goal is reaching 4,000 books since their fifth-grade class averages up to 100 students.

Kimberly Vivacqua, the fifth-grade language arts teacher who first came up with the idea of incentives, said students set their own goals to see what they read every nine weeks.

The school has been conducting the 40-book challenge for nearly a decade, she said, but school officials only tried adding incentives like this since last year to motivate their students.

Read more about the incentives and the reading program in Thursday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.