WITS created reading challenges as a way for reading teams to discover new genres of books. Epic! has a vast selection of awesome, diverse books. It can be difficult narrowing down and choosing one topic, so these challenges are meant to help guide reading teams when starting a new book.
There are four reading challenge categories:
- Hero, Action, and Adventure
- STEM/Inventors
- Environment & Earth Science
- Fairytales
These categories are topics that WITS students have universally loved reading about over the years. The majority of books in each category are diverse and uplift authors, illustrators, and characters of color. Each one (expect the Fairytales challenge) is divided into two grade level bands, second through fourth grade and fourth grade and up. All the challenges have three to five challenge questions. Students and mentors have to read books that correlate to each challenge questions in order to complete the challenge.
WITS staff chooses one challenge at the beginning of every month to share with their programs. This activity is optional for reading teams, but so far we’ve seen students and mentors enjoying tackling the challenge questions every week. It is a great way to mix-it-up in a virtual setting.
Try WITS reading challenges at home with your own students! The links to the Epic! collections and the challenge questions are below:
- Hero, Action, and Adventure
- STEM/Inventors
- Environment & Earth Science
- Fairy tales
