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Million Minutes by March – The students of Parteen N.S started their trojan readathon back in November. Million Minutes by March – The students of Parteen N.S started their trojan readathon back in November.

Education

Million Minutes by March Triumph for Parteen N.S.

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Million Minutes by March – The students of Parteen N.S started their trojan readathon back in November.

The unique readathon began in November when teachers brainstormed how they could get their pupils to reengage with reading after the challenges of lockdown

Million Minutes by March The students’ reading was tracked by teachers and parents logging and signing records stating what their children were reading and for how long on a daily basis.
The students’ reading was tracked by teachers and parents logging and signing records stating what their children were reading and for how long on a daily basis.

Parteen N.S. pupils are basking in the glow of their recent success with their marathon reading challenge – for pupils to read for a million minutes in just 21 weeks from 3rd November to the end of March. This massive and unique challenge was a real test for the school as it equated to each of their 293 pupils reading for almost 3,500 minutes each!

On Thursday the 31st of March, the children marked their success with a massive Celebration Day in the school where children, staff and parents literally jumped for joy in the sunshine and seized some much-needed fun after the last few years of Covid challenges. 


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This unique readathon began in November when the teachers at the school brainstormed how they could get their pupils to reengage with reading after the challenges of lockdown and periods of school absence. They wanted to get the children excited about reading again and to bond together as a team setting a target that could only be achieved if they worked together towards a common goal.

 They decided to focus on the number of minutes that would be read rather than the number of books as this levelled the playing field for all, with the focus being on effort and time spent reading. The children really connected with the concept and not only reached their million minutes target, but smashed it by reading for 1, 317, 894 minutes in total!

They did this by teachers and parents logging and signing records stating what their children were reading and for how long on a daily basis and that data was compiled into a weekly report by the school Million Minutes Team. The school student council gave feedback to the school on a weekly basis and prizes were announced for the school Bookworms (the children who read the most each week) throughout the challenge to keep children focused and motivated.

Over the weeks, momentum was kept up through older pupils becoming reading buddies with younger children and reading outside together, zooms and visits from authors, journalists and sports personalities were organised such as Jacqui Hurley, Darren Shan, Razan Ibraheem, Alan Nolan, John W Sexton and Roisin Meaney. The annual school Scholastic Book Fair was also reintroduced after a Covid based hiatus of a couple of years to harness the storybook related excitement and to help restock class libraries with commission orders.

 The Million Minutes Celebration Day on Thursday 31st March saw the whole school community come together to mark their success in the beautiful spring sunshine. Children and staff dressed up as book characters, played together in the yard, danced Zumba with all the energy of Darren Nash and enjoyed absolutely fabulous magic shows with the amazing Terence Andrews. The day was also filled with fun activities such as literary based quizzes, “Masked Reader” challenges with their teachers and the pupils even got congratulatory video messages from Noni (Dermot Whelan) and author Lisa Thomson. A past pupil, Ruairí McMahon skilfully created a fabulous video memento of the day with his drone and camera skills which can be seen on the school social media accounts.

The fun and positivity towards books and reading was palpable in the air that day, but perhaps more importantly, the whole school community just got to come together (mostly outdoors!), to celebrate their team work and look forward to their next big challenge!

For more information on Parteen N.S., go HERE

For more stories about Parteen N.S., go HERE

Richard is a presenter, producer, songwriter and actor. He was named the Limerick Person of the Year (2011) and won an online award at the Metro Éireann Media and Multicultural Awards (2011) for promoting multi-culturalism online. Richard says that the ilovelimerick.com concept is very much a community driven project that aims to document life in Limerick. So, that in 20 years time people can look back and remember the events that were making the headlines.