Hazlegrove 100 Million word challenge.

02 Apr 2012

In the Spring Term, we set the children a challenge – to read one hundred million words. It might have seemed an enormous target, but the children have risen to the occasion, and have had great fun in doing so. Even some of the more reluctant readers have become bookworms.

On the last Friday of term, we broke the target. One hundred million words in 9 weeks – a fantastic achievement. Celebrations included: a special certificate of achievement for each Prep School child, Millionaires’ Shortbread as a treat at morning break for the whole School and “The Beast”, the loudest firework we could find, which was set off at morning break on Monday in triumph.

The children were still averaging 2 million words at the end of term, despite having broken the target and showed no signs of slowing down…
Those children who had read over a million words each were treated to a “Millionaires’ Club” lunch. Moules, smoked salmon and caviar, all washed down with a sparkling pink drink in a long glass. This was no ordinary school lunch, but then these are no ordinary school children. These 28 boys and girls are reading millionaires, each having devoured at least one million words since the beginning of the term; some had even become multi-millionaires.

Director of Studies, David Edwards laid the challenge and Mrs Warren, the Librarian, has encouraged the children throughout the term, ensuring that computers were always ready for test-taking. All agreed, over a fabulous lunch, that it had been a wonderful idea, and they very much looked forward to future library challenge!
To put a million words into perspective – if you read the whole Eragon series by Christopher Paolini, a pile of books approximately 7 inches thick, you will have read just over 900,000 words!