Eighth Graders Embark on "Million Word Challenge"

From personal growth to the pursuit of knowledge and the general broadening of one’s world view, the impact that a book can have on a life is immeasurable. What is infinitely more measurable, however, is just how many words can be found in each novel or short story.

This week, Eastchester Middle School  eighth graders kicked off their participation in the Million Word Challenge, a new initiative launched by ELA teachers Andrew Weiss and  Kristen Pyrch. Over the next seven-and-a-half months, students will track the books they read—and the number of words in each book—as part of an exercise designed to encourage a passion for independent reading and promote more peer-to-peer discussion about books.

Pyrch and Weiss began having discussions about launching some sort of initiative to generate excitement around reading as early as last year, before ultimately devising the rules of the Million Word Challenge. 

“We decided we wanted to move forward this year with something that would motivate kids to want to read while also giving them a lot of power over their choices in reading,” said Pyrch.”We wanted to make reading about more than just a grade, and that was the impetus behind this challenge. Reading is something that all people do, and we wanted to model for them that these are behaviors that students engage in in order to be successful, both inside and outside of the classroom.”

The rules of the contest are simple; beginning with the Unit 2 novel in the eighth-grade curriculum (either “The Pigman” by Paul Zindel or “Red Kayak” by Priscilla Cummings), students will continue to read books on their own time, complete a Google form to alert their teacher when they have completed a book, and use one of the online tools available to them in order to determine the overall word-count of that book and input that number into their individual reading logs. The goal is for students to read one million words by the end of the school year. 

The total words read by each class will be added to a continuous tally, and the first ELA class to reach 10,000,000 words will receive a pizza party, while celebrations will be held for students and classes reaching other word-count milestones throughout the year.

One key aspect of the competition is that there are few limits on the types of books that students can read and count towards their overall tally. Graphic novels, religious texts, short stories, audio books and more are all on the table.  

“Academic reading does count for this, but we wanted kids to pick books based on their own interests, build reading stamina, and also encourage kids of every different reading level to feel like they are a part of this,” said Weiss. “Other reading challenges we’ve seen that are done in other districts often count the number of books or the length of a text, but we found that this particular challenge hones in on the act of reading itself. 

“Whether you’re reading on your own, reading to a sibling or reading with a friend, reading is reading and every book you read makes you smarter,” he added

Pyrch and Weiss say that they’ve already spoken with students who are eager to get a jump start on the competition, hearing from those who are organizing reading groups and identifying certain texts that will be fun to explore from a narrative standpoint.

“I think when the kids hear the word ‘challenge’ their ears perk up, and we could see right away that they were listening,” said Pyrch. “But we want this to be a gentle competition of sorts, something that would help with the motivation.

“Students are starting their own book clubs, getting together with their friends, reading the same books and talking about it,” she added. “They’re banding together, and I think it’s opening their eyes to see that people actually do this in the real world as well.”