Keilor Downs College stepped up to the Premier’s Reading Challenge in a big way, powering past its target to set a new benchmark.
The school’s students have read more than 9000 books since the challenge kicked off in March, a big step up from their previous record of 7810 in 2016.
Student library committee manager Nicholas Tribe said the school had embraced the challenge and the students set some lofty goals for this year.
“We were hoping to do better than last year, get past 8000 was the first goal and it just went from there,” Mr Tribe said. “We had one year 7 student read over 300 books on her own, which was a huge effort, and a number got over 100. All up, around 250 students took part so it was a big effort from everyone.”
Author/illustrator Andrew Plant and local MP Natalie Suleyman were on hand recently to present awards to high-achieving readers. The school is already planning for an assault on 10,000 books in next year’s challenge.
Mr Tribe said the challenge would not have been such a success without the support of library staff over the year, and the benefits of the extra reading were showing in students classes.
“Nowadays you don’t see many kids reading, it’s more video games and things like that, so I think this challenge does get kids more interested in books,” he said.
